Quote Originally Posted by John11668 View Post
Right a new thread on this
Taking advice from here , I am about to start building a board to make this work.

I intend to remove Boxford's boards but retain the Lenze controller. Anyone wanting to have a play with these boards shout now!

What is the function of the optoisolator and do I need to retain it ?

Then the transformer has tappings at 20v with rectifier ,
Other tappings at 9v (x2) , and 12v seem to have their rectifiers external, on the the processor board .
Am I better to do away with this and fit distinct PSUs for each required voltage ?, or retain this and rectify the outputs

I am trying to fathom the circuit of the relays , with their forward , reverse, and latching functions for spindle control . These have been working so hope to retain them, Will spend some time getting head around their function

All suggestions welcome
I was watching you orignal thread with interest.
I've jsut come out of the other end of a Boxford VMC190 conversion to Linuxcnc

I would be interested in the pair of boards that have the drivers on them, two or three block things about 2" x 3"
You will be using more modern drivers I assume.

I kept the Lenze speed controller, but my isolation board on the end of the lenze was toast, so I had to wire the lenze into the control board. This is not that straigth forward as the lenze 0v to 10v (for spinlde speed control) floats at 110v to 122v
I found a step/dir to 0v to 10v board with on/off relay and its all working a treat now

I converted an ORAC Lathe to LinuxCNC about a year ago and its been great, It threads a treat which was something I could never get my boxford BUD running Mach3 do. IT all done on the cheap with a PC mother board parallel port and an additional port card

The VMC is also using a single parallel port card that provides two parallel port connections
In LinuxCNC set the first one up as OUT and the second as IN and you have more than enough inputs.
Both machines have a control panel with real buttons

Cheers,
Paul