Hacking a Roland CAMM3 PNC-3000

[Robin Hewitt]

I've extended the table 2" forwards with a lip. Then I decided that driving my Warco mill using MSDOS was a right PITA after seeing what Windows 7 can do with this thing.

I have the new software about 80% complete so I'm going to do that before I cut the splashguards. It takes a DXF file, converts it to a cut and then drives the mill.

Back in a few weeks, if I don't get sidetracked again :whistling:

Robin

[cooliced]

i love this little machine..

What materials are you going to cut with this and what sort of things are you going to produce?

[Robin Hewitt]

What materials are you going to cut with this and what sort of things are you going to produce?

You asked me that before, you want me to be more specific? :naughty:

Specifically, I plan to cut Alumec and make injection tooling.

Alumec is a sort of improved 7075 T6 alloy in 3 grades which can hold a deeper temper. Get it from Blackburn metals.

[cooliced]

Ah so i did.

Sounds very interesting. keep it up mate

[audryhome]

Hi Robin,

I have an old PNC3000 at home, used it few years ago but EPROMS seem to be dead now (25 years old...).
I understand you have reprogrammed yours, and I would like to give another life to my machine.
Do you know where I can find the original EPROM content?

On the longer run, I would like to replace all this venerable electronics with a Raspberry PI + some kind of controller board (the one used on 3D printers or a custom designed one, linux enabled if possible). Do you know about such initiatives?

Many thanks for your help

Kind Regards

Jean

[cosmonat]

Hi Jean,

Are you looking into selling the machine? I would be interested in buying it.

Regards,
Alex

[Snowy]

Is there any more information on this?

I've just bought one and was reading through and then it stopped.............

Would love to hear more

Snowy

[Robin Hewitt]

I can run the motors so X,Y and Z all arrive at their target simultaneously, I can read all the buttons and quadrature encoders, I can light the lights and stuff. I can read a sequence of positions and speeds from a serial host then execute them as a tool path.Whether that is of any use to you rather depends on whether this next bit looks like something you could understand...

;
;***********************************************
;
; Home: Go to the limit switches then return
;
;***********************************************
;
Home:
ld hl,0 ; zero coords so we get the return offset
ld (Xcoord),hl
ld (Ycoord),hl
ld (Zcoord),hl
;
ld a,4 ; Set the sequence so it starts
ld (hseq),a ; with a lift
ld hl,NmiHome ; Tune in to the Home service
ld (NMI),hl
;
call NotIdleLoop; ; returns when stepping is complete
;
ld hl,0 ; We started from zero so the position
ld de,(Xcoord) ; counters will have the distance moved
and a ; To get a return co-ordinate we need
sbc hl,de ; to reverse the counts.
ld (mX),hl ; subtract the position from zero
;
ld hl,0 ; repeat for Y
ld de,(Ycoord)
and a
sbc hl,de

[Doddy]

Eh?, that looks like Z80 (if I can remember 40 years ago)

[Robin Hewitt]

I'd rather rather do Z80 Assembler than STM code using HAL, I like to get down and dirty