Retrofit of an Industrial CNC Pro Router

[ShawnM]

Ok, here I go on yet another retrofit project. This time it's an Industrial CNC Craftmaster 612 Pro Series machine, it's a 6x12 router sold here in the US but it's a Chinese import, here's a link to the machine.

https://www.industrialcnc.com/CNC-Route ... uters-6x12

For a US company selling these at a pretty good markup they still use a crappy parallel port controller with Mach3 software. It's just junk.

This will be my first machine with dual drivers for the Y axis and auto squaring. It currently has Leadshine M860 drives and some wimpy power supplies. It's already been retrofit once with a smoothstepper and it was a poor job at best. None of the limit switches are hooked up, the VFD is manual control and there's no tool touch of plate. It has 2 proximity sensors on each axis and it uses very nice shielded wire just about everywhere. I have not removed the motor covers yet to get any data on them or the VFD. It has rack and pinion drives on all axis. It's a really stout machine with mediocre electronics at best. Time for an Acorn.

I searched the forum for info on the Leadshine M860 drives and find only one post with only a mention of this drive. The owner would like to just upgrade the controller and software and wire it up so everything works and add a touch off plate and spindle control. It also has a vacuum table that we can control.

I looked through the schematics from Acorn and find no M860 drive diagrams. I assumed it wires to the DB25 like my current machine is wired with different leadshine drives. Although, reading the drive manual, found here, http://www.leadshine.com/UploadFile/Down/M860m.pdf, they can be controlled with 5, 12 or 24 volts depending on some jumper settings with some added resistors on the voltage lines. This leads me to believe they can wire up to the screw terminals on the Acorn using 24 volts. No?

I'm starting a list of parts and supplies needed to get this party started, looking forward to yet another Acorn conversion.

[Dan M]

The screw terminals don't put out 24v the drivers have to have a voltage input on them. I'm pretty sure with out looking at the pdf since it didn't work, you just need to use the db25 like the other leadshine drivers.

Dan

[ShawnM]

The screw terminals don't put out 24v the drivers have to have a voltage input on them. I'm pretty sure with out looking at the pdf since it didn't work, you just need to use the db25 like the other leadshine drivers.

Dan

Correct, I saw the "external" power supply in the wiring diagram for the 24 volts, I should have been more clear on my explanation. I checked both links and they both work.

[Dan M]

Maybe it's my phone, when I click on the link it says the pdf can't be downloaded. Either way every time I see anyone asking about leadshine drivers the response always is to use the db25 with a bob. I would use the db25 and a db25 bob so you don't need to mess with resistors. I looked up the manual online and it looks like it's super simple to hook up to the db25 using the leadshine schematic. That's what I would do personally, I'm sure Marty or one of the guys who use leadshine drivers will chime in on this.

Dan

[martyscncgarage]

Get a DB25 male breakout board from Amazon to connect your drives. Use Acorn for the IO

Marty

[ShawnM]

Ok, there’s been a slight change of plans and the owner of the router decided to upgrade to closed loop steppers. He purchased 4 Longs Motor hybrid closed loop stepper kits. They each include a Nema 34 motor (34SSM9460-EC1000) and a HBS86H drive.

A quick search of the forum yields on topic for the HBS86H and the OP lists two drives in the topic so it’s confusing at best. He was not able to get his drive working off the headers but did get it working using the db25.

This is my FIRST attempt at wiring and using closed loop steppers and drives with the Acorn.

I decided to bench test one drive and motor last night per an Acorn schematic and video. I wired a single drive to the Acorn X axis headers using 5v to the PUL+ and DIR+ on the drive and the PUL- and DIR- to the acorn STP and DIR and wired up the ALM or fault to input 5. Wired the encoder and motor to the drive per the spec sheet. Motor and drive running on a 48 VDC power supply.

Steps per set to 4000 on both and turns ratio set to 1 for testing. The setup worked EXACTLY as it should the first time. I commanded G0X1 from the MDI screen and the motor turned 1 full revolution. And then G0X0 reversed it 1 full turn.

I guess my question is should I leave it this way or would there be an advantage to wiring it up to the db25? I haven’t done any other tweaking or tuning yet.

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it right? Any input or pointers would be welcomed.

[martyscncgarage]

You are fine the way you wired it....
The advantage of using the DB25 is you don't need the +5VDC power supply. You wire the +pul and +dir to the Step and direction terminals on the DB25 which provide the logic voltage.

[ShawnM]

Thanks Marty, I’ll leave it alone and wire up the other 3 drives and keep testing.

It has 2 motors on the Y axis and this will be my first attempt at axis paring also. I watched a video last week that Keith did for axis paring with some cool automatic features built into CNC12. I didn’t see how old the video is and will check if anything has changed with version 4.20. I need to add a second home switch to the right side of the gantry. This giant 6x12 machine came with 3 home switches and none were wired to the current BOB running Mach3, go figure.

So far so good with the bench testing with the Acorn and these closed loop drives. I’ll tear the existing machine down in about 2 weeks. I still have 2 small jobs to cut for the owner.

This is going to be a fun but challenging project, looking forward to it.

[ShawnM]

Ok, I have the machine retrofitted with the new closed loop steppers and the Acorn. For those that dont remember, this is a CNC Industrial brand 6x12 router. As seen here - https://www.industrialcnc.com/CNC-Route ... uters-6x12

She's humming along very nice. I'm impressed by how quite closed loop steppers are and they seem much faster than the old steppers and I'm using the same power supplies. I'm sure it has something to do with the motors inductance as the new motors are much, much lower than the old open loop steppers that I removed. The new closed loop steppers are also rated for less holding torque than the old motors I removed and they drive still the machine faster and smoother than it ever ran before.

I have the Leadshine clone HBS86H drives wired to the terminal blocks on the Acorn and it's working great. I opted not to use the DB25 if I didn't need to as that's one less adaptor board to buy.

This is my first attempt at wiring a dual drive Y axis and motor paring. I followed the directions in the Acorn Axis Pairing & Squaring Guide and everything worked as planned. I have N/C NPN switches at all home limits. 3 wired in series to input 1 as "homeall" and the 4th is on the Y axis slave and wired to input 2 for "slavedhomeinput". They are the same brand that Centroid recommends and purchased on Amazon. A Roko brand blue proximity sensor. They all work great, I think.

I have the wizard set to "Automatic Axis Squaring/Alignment" and followed the setup for the auto homing and auto squaring with software paring.

I am not where the machine is at the time of posting this so I dont have a report file to post today.

My issue is that every once in a while during the testing I'd get the message that the master and slave tripped at the same time. I started with the suggested .025" difference (roughly) in the master and slave home switches where the slave switch tripped first. I have the feed rate for homing set to 50 and the deadband distance set to .005.

So I continued to adjust the slave limit switch distance to move it further away from the master so it trips first by itself but not too far that it racks the gantry too much. I also increased the alignment distance in the wizard to closely match the distance between the two switches.

My questions are-

Is my homing feed rate set too high and it overshoots a little when it approached the metal tabs that trip them?
Would it help at all to slow the homing feedrate down?
Is it because these "generic" proximity switches are just not that accurate?

Since this is my first attempt I think I did everything right but this issue has me worried that it'll happen later once I button the machine all up.

For now it's a lot of testing and tuning to dial it in. So far so good.