New Build: Axiom AR16 Elite 4x4 Router to Acorn

[MiPilot]

Bought a used Axiom AR16 router from an school auction that had been in storage for a bunch of years. The back story (as told by the selling dealer) is that they bought the AR16 and the following year bought two AR8. The 16 was equipped with a HUST controller and the 8's had Richauto controllers. The 16 was initially powered up and had issues from the start. It was even sent back to Ohio and it checked out fine. The end result was it was being powered up with a single phase 220v circuit from a three phase delta service. One of the legs was from the wild leg and was not playing nice. Long story short...they ditched the AR16 and now running three AR8's.

Anyways, the Hust controller's battery was dead and lost its programming. I replaced the battery, reprogrammed the machine, and used it for the last couple of months. But I am done with the glitches, limited control, and dealing with a thumb drive for file transfer.





Current equipment:
1 - Teco L510s VFD with a 2.2Kw water cooled spindle.
3 - Shihlin SDE 400w servo drives and 60mm servos with 22bit encoders
1 - Troy TR22GC-D drive and stepper - 4th Axis rotary
PMT-24V100W1AA power supplies
DA-1805NO NPN NO Prox sensors. Two on X axis, two on Y axis, and one on Z axis.

The Plan:

Acorn controller kit.
WMPG-6 CNC Control Pendant

I thought I'd be good to go with just the Acorn board, but its looking more like I'll need the Ether1616 I/O Expansion Kit as well.

I plan to keep the servo drives at least for now.

Files are here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... sp=sharing

Pictures are here:

Steve

[MiPilot]

Previous question on the drives. Thank you centroid467 for your answer.

viewtopic.php?t=10498

Steve

[RaindeerGames]

Wow that is a big boy.
Can these do aluminium work aswell?

[MiPilot]

Wow that is a big boy.
Can these do aluminium work aswell?

Yes, it can.

[MiPilot]

First. I'm considering adding the Ether1616 for more inputs. but before I do.

1st question....... Currently the Hust controller is wired using alarm outputs from the drives to separate inputs. Is there any advantage to keeping it this way over wiring them in series?

2nd question. The X,Y,and Z are AC servo drives. The 4th axis is stepper. Under the wizard - DB25 signal mapping. It looks like I can only choose step/direction on either the screw terminals or DB25. Can I not have both? Or can I run servos and a stepper on the screw terminals together?

As always....Thank you in advance. I appreciate any and all input.

Steve

[Gary Campbell]

1) No Only the fact that you can save IO. To me there is an advantage to using discreet inputs labeled for each alarm.

2) You can pull signal from the screw terminals for the servos and from the DB25 for the stepper. That said, the AXIOM 4th axis steppers are notoriously weak so you may want to add a servo there if you're going to do anything serious.

[MiPilot]

I've been busy getting things around and establishing a plan. So far, I've cut, drilled, and tapped the .25 acrylic back panel for the acorn, relay assembly, ether1616 and relay boards.

Mounted the boards.

Added the two relay boards to a second level above the expansion board

The backboard will go into the space now occupied by the Hust controller.

I am also cutting acrylic panels to cover everything but the Acorn as it has on provided. Does anyone know if Centroid has a file the is to scale with the input/output labels that I can use to engrave on the covers?

The system is being bench tested now.

I need to make up new CN1 servo cables as the existing cables are not wired to the needed pins. The Hust system is operating the drives in speed mode and I need to change to position mode. If anyone has a line on fair prices CN1 - MDR50 connector/cable assemblies please let me know.

That's it for today....

[cncsnw]

I need to make up new CN1 servo cables as the existing cables are not wired to the needed pins. The Hust system is operating the drives in speed mode and I need to change to position mode. If anyone has a line on fair prices CN1 - MDR50 connector/cable assemblies please let me know.

Digikey seemed reasonable enough:
https://www.digikey.com/en/products/det ... 0PE/773867
Back shells available as well, but you can probably just reuse the ones you have:
https://www.digikey.com/en/products/det ... 08/1091881

BTW, a metal (conductive, grounded) subpanel would be preferable.

[ShawnM]

The backplane NEEDS to be metal and unpainted to help eliminate ground loops and the myriad of other issues you will run into when not using a metal backplane. This is not an art project.

[suntravel]

Metal yes, but painted is ok also, every screw will have ground contact if drilled after painting.

In this case I would put a thin aluminum sheet on the acrylic.

Uwe