Centroid Acorn and Accelus Motion Control

[jasonGO]

Good day forum!
I have a legacy machine that is working fine running Supercam on Win 98- Obviously I dont want to run Win 98 for the next 20 years.
Question- would the Acorn work as a controller with my motion controllers- they are Accelus model # ASP-090-36 I have attached the specs from the mfg on the motion controllers.

I searched the forum for "Accelus" prior to this post- looks like I could be the only one in existence with these things.

Thank you in advance!

Jason

[Gary Campbell]

It appears they accept step/direction mode, so, yes they appear to be compatible with Acorn

[tblough]

Literature says they also have a fault output and index pulse output which will be helpful. Only thing I didn't see was a fault reset input.

[jasonGO]

Thank you to you both!
I am going to put an order in now.

[RonRindahl]

Curious if you came up with a schematic for this? I Have the same drives on an old Bridgeport I am starting to retrofit. Bought an Acorn over the weekend to replace the old motion controls from CNC Pro. Old system jogged around fine, but not sure where I need to land the wires onto the Acorn when I receive it. I have attached a map of the pins that the original cable was using for control as far as where they landed on the Accelus drive, don't have documentation on the CNC Pro side.
In looking closer at the old system, the software if actually CNC Pro, in use on a Navigator II NC-PC Control made by Enhanced Automation.

Thanks,
Ron

[centroid467]

I would connect the "PWM REF INPUT" (J3 pin 3) to the Step outputs on ACORN. The "DIRECTION INPUT" (J3 pin 4) then goes to ACORN Dir outputs. I think you can use either the DB25 or the open collector headers for these.

If you use the open collectors, check your drive serial number. jasonGO posted a nice datasheet that mentions that the STEP/PWM REF INPUT is different. If you have serial numbers in the mentioned range, you will need to put a pull up to 5V for the STEP input. A quick calculation suggests that a resistor in the range of 330 ohm to 1.1k ohm will do the job but I would keep it above 500 ohms to reduce current draw.

I'd also wire J3 pin 11 (default function is Fault Output) to an ACORN input assigned as a drive fault input.

I would look into reassigning an unused input drive input (IN1, IN3, IN4) as "Drive Reset" and wiring it to an ACORN relay output. That should let the ACORN clear drive faults. You'd connect the drive input to either the NO or NC contact of the relay and the COM to the ACORN or input power supply ground/negative.

J3 pin 1 is chassis ground and should go to protective earth bus in the cabinet. J3 pins 10, 12, 13, 15, and 16 are all signal ground. One of them should go to the ACORN power supply and another to the input power supply (if present).

[RonRindahl]

Thank you for the insight and direction. I'm looking forward to getting this project running with updated control system.

[centroid467]

You're welcome!

I suggest making a thread for your project and updating it with photos and so on so we can provide you with more assistance if needed. It'll also help out the next person doing a similar retrofit.