Hi Iggy.
I inherited a year or two ago, a nice Shizuoka ST-N CNC mill. This is a
3-axis machine with a nice large CNC rotary table giving it a 4th axis. It
was given to me by a good friend who couldn't fit it into his workshop. It
has low hours and was only ever used for machining acrylic.

This Japanese machine was originally sourced from and fitted out by a UK
company, Matchmaker, who fitted an unknown control system with arm mounted
CRT and button panel. The only thing we can easily recognise in the bird's
nest that is inside the control cabinet is the 4qty, Westamp PWM servo amp
model no. 30060-3. I take it that this means we have servos rather than
steppers? This makes sense as they (large) motors have 4 brushes. I think
they have 2-wire tachos built in too. I'm not sure what encoders we have yet
as they haven't been stripped out for identification.

The control system is dead. The CRT is dead, and I don't trust the Westamp
boards. However we'd probably keep the big DC PSU, buy 4 new servo drives
and fit a variable freq drive for the spindle.
This brings me to the big question. What controller should we choose? We'd
like to do as you have done, and use EMC2 on a (Linux?) PC, but don't have
any idea of what controller we need for the 'bit in between'.

I'd appreciate your advice on this if can spare a moment.

Many thanks in advance.

JB

On 2011-03-09, JB wrote:
Hi Iggy.
I inherited a year or two ago, a nice Shizuoka ST-N CNC mill. This is a
3-axis machine with a nice large CNC rotary table giving it a 4th axis. It
was given to me by a good friend who couldn't fit it into his workshop. It
has low hours and was only ever used for machining acrylic.

Awesome! I am envious.

Kirk has a similar mill

http://www.wallacecompany.com/machine_shop/Shizuoka/

He is on emc-users mailing list.

This Japanese machine was originally sourced from and fitted out by a UK
company, Matchmaker, who fitted an unknown control system with arm mounted
CRT and button panel. The only thing we can easily recognise in the bird's
nest that is inside the control cabinet is the 4qty, Westamp PWM servo amp
model no. 30060-3. I take it that this means we have servos rather than
steppers? This makes sense as they (large) motors have 4 brushes.

Most likely servos then.

I think
they have 2-wire tachos built in too. I'm not sure what encoders we have yet
as they haven't been stripped out for identification.

The control system is dead. The CRT is dead, and I don't trust the Westamp
boards. However we'd probably keep the big DC PSU, buy 4 new servo drives
and fit a variable freq drive for the spindle.
This brings me to the big question. What controller should we choose? We'd
like to do as you have done, and use EMC2 on a (Linux?) PC, but don't have
any idea of what controller we need for the 'bit in between'.

I'd appreciate your advice on this if can spare a moment.

JB, you are on a good track. You have a great machine with a great 4th
axis.

The control is junk.

You need to subscribe to emc-users mailing list at

https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users

Then you need to go slow and identify your hardware (what servos? What
voltage and current?)

Try to find a schematic of the mill, if you can, pre-retrofit. It will
help you identify wires from all opints like limit switches, valves
etc.

What you want is certainly doable, will probably take a while, but can
be done in steps where the result of each step is verified. For
example, you can hook up one servo motor to one servo drive, and
"drive" it by selding a signal from a battery to the niput of the
servo drive.

Try to identify your servos first.

You may reuse things from the old control, such as relays, power
supply, and possibly even servo drives.

i

"Ignoramus27783" wrote in message
...
On 2011-03-09, JB wrote:
Hi Iggy.
I inherited a year or two ago, a nice Shizuoka ST-N CNC mill. This is a
3-axis machine with a nice large CNC rotary table giving it a 4th axis.
It
was given to me by a good friend who couldn't fit it into his workshop.
It
has low hours and was only ever used for machining acrylic.

Awesome! I am envious.

Kirk has a similar mill

http://www.wallacecompany.com/machine_shop/Shizuoka/

He is on emc-users mailing list.

This Japanese machine was originally sourced from and fitted out by a UK
company, Matchmaker, who fitted an unknown control system with arm
mounted
CRT and button panel. The only thing we can easily recognise in the
bird's
nest that is inside the control cabinet is the 4qty, Westamp PWM servo
amp
model no. 30060-3. I take it that this means we have servos rather than
steppers? This makes sense as they (large) motors have 4 brushes.

Most likely servos then.

I think
they have 2-wire tachos built in too. I'm not sure what encoders we have
yet
as they haven't been stripped out for identification.

The control system is dead. The CRT is dead, and I don't trust the
Westamp
boards. However we'd probably keep the big DC PSU, buy 4 new servo drives
and fit a variable freq drive for the spindle.
This brings me to the big question. What controller should we choose?
We'd
like to do as you have done, and use EMC2 on a (Linux?) PC, but don't
have
any idea of what controller we need for the 'bit in between'.

I'd appreciate your advice on this if can spare a moment.

JB, you are on a good track. You have a great machine with a great 4th
axis.

The control is junk.

You need to subscribe to emc-users mailing list at

https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users

Then you need to go slow and identify your hardware (what servos? What
voltage and current?)

Try to find a schematic of the mill, if you can, pre-retrofit. It will
help you identify wires from all opints like limit switches, valves
etc.

What you want is certainly doable, will probably take a while, but can
be done in steps where the result of each step is verified. For
example, you can hook up one servo motor to one servo drive, and
"drive" it by selding a signal from a battery to the niput of the
servo drive.

Try to identify your servos first.

You may reuse things from the old control, such as relays, power
supply, and possibly even servo drives.

Many thanks for the fast response and pointers. I'll join the mailing list.
I'm already on CNCZone. There is a good section on EMC there too.
http://www.cnczone.com/forums/emc_li...chine_control/
I'll get the servos off later this week and check them out.
Cheers,
JB

On 2011-03-09, JB wrote:

"Ignoramus27783" wrote in message
...
On 2011-03-09, JB wrote:
Hi Iggy.
I inherited a year or two ago, a nice Shizuoka ST-N CNC mill. This is a
3-axis machine with a nice large CNC rotary table giving it a 4th axis.
It
was given to me by a good friend who couldn't fit it into his workshop.
It
has low hours and was only ever used for machining acrylic.

Awesome! I am envious.

Kirk has a similar mill

http://www.wallacecompany.com/machine_shop/Shizuoka/

He is on emc-users mailing list.

This Japanese machine was originally sourced from and fitted out by a UK
company, Matchmaker, who fitted an unknown control system with arm
mounted
CRT and button panel. The only thing we can easily recognise in the
bird's
nest that is inside the control cabinet is the 4qty, Westamp PWM servo
amp
model no. 30060-3. I take it that this means we have servos rather than
steppers? This makes sense as they (large) motors have 4 brushes.

Most likely servos then.

I think
they have 2-wire tachos built in too. I'm not sure what encoders we have
yet
as they haven't been stripped out for identification.

The control system is dead. The CRT is dead, and I don't trust the
Westamp
boards. However we'd probably keep the big DC PSU, buy 4 new servo drives
and fit a variable freq drive for the spindle.
This brings me to the big question. What controller should we choose?
We'd
like to do as you have done, and use EMC2 on a (Linux?) PC, but don't
have
any idea of what controller we need for the 'bit in between'.

I'd appreciate your advice on this if can spare a moment.

JB, you are on a good track. You have a great machine with a great 4th
axis.

The control is junk.

You need to subscribe to emc-users mailing list at

https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users

Then you need to go slow and identify your hardware (what servos? What
voltage and current?)

Try to find a schematic of the mill, if you can, pre-retrofit. It will
help you identify wires from all opints like limit switches, valves
etc.

What you want is certainly doable, will probably take a while, but can
be done in steps where the result of each step is verified. For
example, you can hook up one servo motor to one servo drive, and
"drive" it by selding a signal from a battery to the niput of the
servo drive.

Try to identify your servos first.

You may reuse things from the old control, such as relays, power
supply, and possibly even servo drives.

Many thanks for the fast response and pointers. I'll join the mailing list.
I'm already on CNCZone. There is a good section on EMC there too.
http://www.cnczone.com/forums/emc_li...chine_control/
I'll get the servos off later this week and check them out.

Do not pull them unless you need to (I did not need to pull mine).

Do the servos have a data plate?

i

On Wed, 9 Mar 2011 17:47:43 -0000, "JB" wrote:


"Ignoramus27783" wrote in message
...
On 2011-03-09, JB wrote:
Hi Iggy.
I inherited a year or two ago, a nice Shizuoka ST-N CNC mill. This is a
3-axis machine with a nice large CNC rotary table giving it a 4th axis.
It
was given to me by a good friend who couldn't fit it into his workshop.
It
has low hours and was only ever used for machining acrylic.

Awesome! I am envious.

You turd!!! I looked and looked for one of these fine machines. Never
found a good one nearby and ended up buying an Excello. Do you have
the tool changer with it?

You're right one target with EMC for this machine. Almost the exact
same job Iggy just finished.

Karl

On 2011-03-09, Karl Townsend wrote:
On Wed, 9 Mar 2011 17:47:43 -0000, "JB" wrote:


"Ignoramus27783" wrote in message
...
On 2011-03-09, JB wrote:
Hi Iggy.
I inherited a year or two ago, a nice Shizuoka ST-N CNC mill. This is a
3-axis machine with a nice large CNC rotary table giving it a 4th axis.
It
was given to me by a good friend who couldn't fit it into his workshop.
It
has low hours and was only ever used for machining acrylic.

Awesome! I am envious.

You turd!!! I looked and looked for one of these fine machines. Never
found a good one nearby and ended up buying an Excello. Do you have
the tool changer with it?

You're right one target with EMC for this machine. Almost the exact
same job Iggy just finished.


Karl, doesn't that Schizuoka have a tool changer too?

If so, I *hate* JB!

i

"Ignoramus27783" wrote in message
...
On 2011-03-09, Karl Townsend wrote:
On Wed, 9 Mar 2011 17:47:43 -0000, "JB" wrote:


"Ignoramus27783" wrote in message
...
On 2011-03-09, JB wrote:
Hi Iggy.
I inherited a year or two ago, a nice Shizuoka ST-N CNC mill. This is
a
3-axis machine with a nice large CNC rotary table giving it a 4th
axis.
It
was given to me by a good friend who couldn't fit it into his
workshop.
It
has low hours and was only ever used for machining acrylic.

Awesome! I am envious.

You turd!!! I looked and looked for one of these fine machines. Never
found a good one nearby and ended up buying an Excello. Do you have
the tool changer with it?

You're right one target with EMC for this machine. Almost the exact
same job Iggy just finished.


Karl, doesn't that Schizuoka have a tool changer too?

If so, I *hate* JB!

i

No it doesn't have a toolchanger! You can relax guys. We did also have to
hire a big truck with a crane to collect it. It's a bit of a monster but I
think it will be invaluable. I'm in the process of building another trike.
This one for my wife. A BMW K100 bike mated to (probably) a BMW E36 back
axle. I have done a few and i've often cursed te lack of a CNC machine.
Milling **** out by hand and doing all of the inevitable 'fettling' is a
time consuming job. Much better to squirt the design over a DXf (I hope!).
You may want to hate me again when i tell you about the machines we run at
work.
http://www.amada.com/site/default.as...emlk3610nt.htm
and
http://www.amada.co.jp/english/produ...nt_series.html
Plus a few of these:
http://www.salvagnini.com/salvagnini.php?s=291&new=1
and even some (8!) of these:
http://www.vossloh-schwabe.com/image...200801_eng.pdf
At work we really _do_ sheet metal.
I'll keep you posted as to progress on the mill.
Cheers.
JB