Orac retrofit - a bit of reassurance!!!
Posted: Wed 18 Jun , 2008 9:20 am
Hi guys!
We're in the process of retrofitting one of our four Orac's after many years of use! We've sucessfully got our EasyMill running on Mach 3 using aftermarket driver boards, but the Orac is a different monster altogether - mainly because it's imperative that we can screw cut!
So, currently the machine is what you'd class as "bare bones" - basically all the internals are gone, other than the power supply unit, and inverter. The two new stepper drivers are in, as is the PC which is going to run the thing.
However, my concern is the spindle - and making Mach 3 talk to it - the inverter isn't a Parajust any more, as the machine went back to Denford a few years back. It's now got an Omron 3G3JV inverter to control the spindle motor. From reading a few of the threads on here, am I right in thinking that a Digispeed XL can be connected to the outputs on the parallel port to create a 0-10v analogue signal from a PWM output from Mach 3, which can then be connected straight to the inverter to give us spindle speed control?
Next question would be how to connect the encoder to Mach 3 as well, so it knows where the spindle is... but I'll maybe leave that for another day!
If someone who's done it could confirm that I'm going the right way here, that would be much appreciated!
Many thanks - we'll get some photo's up once it's all together!
Ben
We're in the process of retrofitting one of our four Orac's after many years of use! We've sucessfully got our EasyMill running on Mach 3 using aftermarket driver boards, but the Orac is a different monster altogether - mainly because it's imperative that we can screw cut!
So, currently the machine is what you'd class as "bare bones" - basically all the internals are gone, other than the power supply unit, and inverter. The two new stepper drivers are in, as is the PC which is going to run the thing.
However, my concern is the spindle - and making Mach 3 talk to it - the inverter isn't a Parajust any more, as the machine went back to Denford a few years back. It's now got an Omron 3G3JV inverter to control the spindle motor. From reading a few of the threads on here, am I right in thinking that a Digispeed XL can be connected to the outputs on the parallel port to create a 0-10v analogue signal from a PWM output from Mach 3, which can then be connected straight to the inverter to give us spindle speed control?
Next question would be how to connect the encoder to Mach 3 as well, so it knows where the spindle is... but I'll maybe leave that for another day!
If someone who's done it could confirm that I'm going the right way here, that would be much appreciated!
Many thanks - we'll get some photo's up once it's all together!
Ben