Supermax YCM-30 converted in the 90's to CNC with Centroid Controls

[swartlkk]

I recently purchased a Supermax YCM-30 milling machine from the son of the original owner who passed away. It was converted in the 90's to CNC by Centroid.

http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=17sztKIgjnDGcUdXQPa9Mjf7XAdHhi7B1

The control box has the following information on it:

PRODUCT CNC CONTROLLER
MODEL NO. CNC4E-B24-MD3-80V
SERIAL NO. 1653

http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=17jj5COmziBlCuSwf1w25OKC5quZkE6L4
http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=17_T3uJQktCpF4wmx8DqZUZWXRqiBptyx

The stepper motors have a MAE sticker on them as well as a Centroid Corp sticker. The Centroid Corp sticker shows MAE 1350 which I believe is the motor part number.

http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=17NYzad8MtdGzK0y4vI2VmBrgtBmATKw2

I am looking to upgrade this machine to the Acorn board for use with a modern PC and would like to know what else would be required along with the board to function as intended. If there are any optional recommendations for upgrade as well, I would like to hear them.

Thanks!
-Kyle

*EDIT* - Changed to links for the images. Google Drive is acting stupid again. I will upload to my photobucket when I have time and update here again.

[Houseman303]

DC Servo System?

[cncsnw]

No, not a DC servo system. The CNC4 is a stepper controller, and those are stepper motors.

[cnckeith]

those are old closed loop steppers!

best way forward would be

Acorn (budget) or Hickory (first class)

Acorn with Leadshine EL7's or Clearpath motor in hybrid closed loop mode

or Hickory and EL7's in full closed loop mode.

machine looks in great condition!

[swartlkk]

Thank you for the replies! And sorry for the lack of a response. I need to dig around in the forum settings and look for the notifications settings.

The machine is in VERY good condition! After I offloaded the machine in my shop I was a bit unhappy with myself for spending the money I had given that I couldn't really use the machine very well manually in its current configuration. It wasn't until I started unpacking everything that came with it and looking up new/used prices for it all that I realized how great of a deal I had come upon. The machine came with a very nice 6" Kurt vice, a two position 4" Kurt hydraulic vice with air/hydraulic intensifier, and 26 NMTB tool holders, very few of which are unbranded.

My current plan is to see what happens when I wire it all up. See if it will move with the current CNC4 controls and then try G-code motion from the original computer. See how far I can get. It's been almost 20 years since I last hand programmed a CNC, but I've done it.

Speaking of the Hickory board, can it be used with the current stepper motor driver boards & the encoders for closed loop operation?

The original MAE HY200-4270-710 motors seem to have vastly different mounting & shaft dimensions than any of the Leadshine motors I have looked into and the drive pulleys on the axis do not seem to be available in the shaft diameters of most motors I have looked at. I haven't looked into the Clearpath motors though so maybe there are some that offer an easier retrofit. Were these old steppers overkill for the machine? They spec out at 1350 oz-in holding torque.

Thanks again for your responses!

BTW, I just finished scanning all of the manuals & tutorials that came with the machine for easy reading as I travel or am not with the machine. If anyone is interested in these materials from the early to mid 90's, let me know. CNC4 op's manual, InterCON op's manual & training demo, CENCOMM user manual, and the YCM-30 op's manual (however I still need to get a good image of the large format blue-print copied drawings in this manual).

[swartlkk]

I hooked everything up and powered on the control box. Nothing moves. Checking some things and I found a blown 3A fuse on the Power-One SPL50-3200 power board that looks to have been blown quite a while ago.

I should have the replacement fuse tomorrow to give it a try. Hopefully it is just from something being hooked up wrong way back when this machine was last run.

I also noticed that my images above were not showing up. I've changed them to links for now, but will update them again after I upload the images to my Photobucket account.

I have photos of the power boards and some of the interface boards that push power to the other boards (CPU, drivers, & I/O).

I'll keep going with this to try and get it running on the original hardware for a bit more.

[centroid467]

It is a good idea to look into what conditions blew that fuse in the first place. The fuse on that power supply is on the AC side of things so either a short on the AC supply ran through it or there is something wrong with the power supply itself. I would inspect it for leaking electrolytic capacitors or anything that looks obviously wrong before applying power again.

[swartlkk]

I know that there is a reason for it to blow. There does not appear to be any blown caps or unidentified leakage anywhere on the board.

I'm planning on only plugging in the power to the two power boards and powering it up again. If it blows right away, then there is an internal fault in the power board and I have to decide whether it is worth it to either identify & repair the fault, swap out the board for a suitable replacement, or scrap the controls and try for something more modern.

Looking into the different boards, the Power-One SPL50-3200 is supplying only +12V, Ground, & +5V to the other control boards. I could possibly just replace this power supply with a Mean Well power supply for just that one set of outputs (+12V @ 2A w/ 4A-peak, ground, and +5V @ 6A). The Mean Well RD-65A should be an economical replacement for the SPL50-3200 board.

[swartlkk]

Sorry for the lack of updates. I have been putting a few hours every other Saturday into the machine between other jobs. Between that and waiting for parts, it has been slow going.

I ended up installing an RD-65A power supply only to find that the CNC4 control board was not sending any signals to the drives. In comes an Acorn board... Install went well and now I had drive motion signals to the drives (verified with a small NEMA 17 motor & A4988 drive), yet still no motion out of the machine. I decided to get a single StepperOnline DM860T drive to test the motors to see what, if anything that was on the machine would work and found that the motors worked fine with the DM860T drive. Ordered two more and now the machine is operational albeit without closed loop operation.

Long term, I will be machining up motor adapters and shaft extensions to go with a Clearpath NEMA 34 motor to replace the MAE NEMA 42 motors that are on the machine.

[cnckeith]

great, thanks for reporting back, please take photos of what you are doing along the way for others to benefit from in the future!