ATC and VFDEnable

[Bhouin]

I have an Acorn and running 4.64 lathe. I am still in the bench testing phase of everything. My goal is to fully retrofit a cnc lathe where the controller stopped working properly. Anyway, It has a 4 position tool turret. I am using the documentation provided for ATC "Acorn Gray-Code with 1 Motor Output Tool Turret Instructions". I have extracted the files into the c:\cnct directory (after backup) and am in the process of resetting the inputs and outputs. One interesting thing that has come up is that I can no longer see the canned PLC item VFDEnable in the output list. I am not sure why. I am hoping that the collective here might have some insights. Note: I haven't yet tried to start over with the backup and reset everything.

[carbuthn]

A screen shot of the output page might help. I do know that you select the group of items at the top of the selelection box, that may be the problem. I am not at the same location as my lathe at the moment.

[Bhouin]

I checked in each selection. I will get screenshots tomorrow

[Bhouin]

Here are the screen shots. I have taken them from each drop down. Given that they are sorted in alpha order I only showed the area where the V's would show up.

[cnckeith]

when you use a custom PLC program such as the Lathe turret programs and follow the instructions to choose custom plc program in the wizard, the input and output selections in the Wizard are not available. (otherwise they would overwrite the custom plc program) but you can use the wizard to set up all the other settings needed for the machine.

[Bhouin]

Thanks cnckeith. Where I suppose I was confused is in the instructions number 4 it states “start cnc12 and open the Acorn Wizard. Assign drive type and required I/o for your system and atc”

[Bhouin]

Any recommendations on where to go to get information on how Vfdenable can be replicated in this scenario?

[Bhouin]

Does the Functions.xml file in the PLC Default directory drive what input/output items show up in the wizard list? Trying to piece my options back together here.

[cnckeith]

post a fresh report.zip, photos of the machine and turret and explain what you are trying to accomplish. thanks, k

[Bhouin]

Thanks for any help here. It is much appreciated.

I am enclosing a fresh reports.zip, photos of the machine and turret.

Here is the full details of what I am trying to accomplish. I purchased this lathe several years ago and it started to act up with the spindle (servo/drive combination ELESY brand). It would fault out on stop. Through much searching it was found that it is difficult at best to find any information regarding the drives especially repairs. It was also using a GSK928te as the controls. I decided that I wanted to move away from this setup and purchased the acorn cnc, closed loop steppers and drivers (automation technologies KL23-31N-1000/KL-5080D4), and a dyn4/servo (880-DST-A6HKB/DYN4-H01A2-00). I have the steppers working fine. I had the start of the spindle working prior to adding the turret gray code. I say start of as I still needed to sort out the drift at 0. When I followed the instructions for adding the turret code to the system is when I saw an issue. The dyn4 was setup using a VFD enable and VFD Direction signal. However, I was unable to add the VFDEnable as an output signal as it was not a part of the list of options. What is interesting is that the VFDEnable is in the functions.xml and the src code. So my first thing is to get the spindle back to where I had it (and then fix the drift). Then I want to continue with the enablement of the turret.

I hope this helps. If there is any more information needed, please let me know.