Turning centre retrofit help/project on a Mazak/Yamazaki

[spluppit]

Many thanks for your reply irving,

Currently it's not earning it's keep, It has been pretty much a pile of cast iron in my way for some time. I will elaborate on that if required.

As far as I'm concerned the machine can be down for as long as it takes, if it's 2 years so be it. The only other option is the scrap heap, which would be a crying shame. I have been down the route of having a commercial control fitted to my 3 axis mill as a full retrofit, servos the lot. It's a long story that i don't really wish to go into on an open forum. There is something that may interest you irving, regarding another thread i read about commercial conversational software.


As regards to demand, this is a subject i was going to touch on. I do feel there is a demand, I can not be the only small business that hates commercial controls and the idiotic prices they charge. Plus the problem of no longer available parts and what is available is a fortune + service engineer. I do think anyone that could cobble up a control and all the ancillaries could well find a nice niche. As you say, for another thread.

I know its not as easy as 1-2-3 as you say. I think the thing to remember here is all commercial controls are g code based, every single one uses g code in the back round, that includes all conversational controls. The only difference is they have given a graphical way to input the data so its easy to understand, so rather than having to know what g code you are writing, you get a graphical prompt. Its a little bit like the macro facility in mach 3 (that i have seen) where you can say i want to machine pocket and then configure the macros for all the variables related to a pocket of any given type. Thats all the conversationals are. The g code you guys have on your software has all come from industry standard and it is totally the same.


I know that does not account for integrating hardware and making everything work, but its a start.


I'm in in the Maidstone area of kent.



Kind regards,


Scott

[Gary]

This is a nice lathe, and it would be a shame to do nothing with it.
I have a Hardinge lathe that i am updating, but i will be also changing the servos from brushed to AC servos.
the initial problem you will have is the interface to the drivers.
A lot of the old servos used +/-10V and this will be a problem with most of the PC based systems.
Then you have the PLC functionality that you will need for the tool changing turret.
This will require I/O, and even without the turret the lathe will need quite a bit of I/O, so will need additional hardware for the I/O and a dedicated CNC controller has PLC and a lot of I/O built in.
you also have all the Estop, collet opener coolant and other switches and pendant control already built into the panel.
With the PC based system, i would need a faster system than the parallel port, so looked at the smooth stepper, but was put off from the feedback it has had, i would also need some sort of modbus I/O expansion to handle the additional I/O.
Also with Mach 3 it would be open loop, so the controller would not know if the axis was out of position.

When you take all of this into account the costs between a PC based system and this dedicated CNC controller are not that far from each other.

I know someone who converted a hardinge lathe the same as mine to use Mach3, but it was not that straight forward, but can be done.
I considered Mach3 for the update, but then decided to go the with a CNC controller.
The controller that you pointed out would work, but you would most likely need to update the drivers because it only gives out clock and direction.
There are others that can use +/-10V but they are a lot more expensive, so it would most likely be better to change the motors and drivers.