Centroid Community CNC Support Forum

Hi folks,

I recently bought a lathe with an Acorn setup. It's an Emco with servos and an 8 position turret. I haven't cut anything yet as I'm still setting it up and working out some electrical kinks. It's all working at this point.

My question is:

I'd like to buy an MPG pendant (not doing very well jogging via the touch screen, among other things) but the version of CNC12 that is installed is 4.13 and it needs to be updated. What are the gotchas and risks updating from an old version? Do I risk breaking some custom config and finding myself with a non functioning turret, lose servo/encoder configuration or anything else that might render my setup inoperable?

Trying to be careful.

I do have backups.

Thanks,
David

LeChuck wrote: ↑Wed Apr 14, 2021 10:00 am Hi folks,

I recently bought a lathe with an Acorn setup. It's an Emco with servos and an 8 position turret. I haven't cut anything yet as I'm still setting it up and working out some electrical kinks. It's all working at this point.

My question is:

I'd like to buy an MPG pendant (not doing very well jogging via the touch screen, among other things) but the version of CNC12 that is installed is 4.13 and it needs to be updated. What are the gotchas and risks updating from an old version? Do I risk breaking some custom config and finding myself with a non functioning turret, lose servo/encoder configuration or anything else that might render my setup inoperable?

Trying to be careful.

I do have backups.

Thanks,
David

David, can you post pictures of the machine, of the control cabinet and please post a report here.
F7 Utilities, F7 Create report
We can then see what version software you are running.

First thing you should do is get a USB stick and copy the CNCT directory to it as a back up.

Hi Marty. Here are some files.

Also, the machine is being backed up to a USB stick. I also did a full copy yesterday to store it on my main PC, which is backed up live to the cloud, just in case.

Actually I'm seeing now that the page for the MPG pendant says it requires CNC12 4.12+ so it should work with mine, but it says 4.20 in the PDF.

hi. good that you made a fresh report.zip, i also always copy the entire cnct directory onto a usb stick and save on another computer/hd as an additional back up.

next i would make windows screen shots of all the Wizard set screens and save them in same folder as the backup cnct directory.

then rename the cnct directory to cnct_413

then install the latest version of cnc12 for lathes

use the Wizard to setup the machine tool configuration (use the basic info you have from the screen shots from the older version, steps per rev, turns ratios , etc..etc..)

install the new ATC lathe turret PLC program. compare the current configuration and wiring of the turret to the ATC turret plc program and make any adjustments to the configuration to get it to match.

this will bring you up to the latest version with all the latest features and bug fixes.

All Acorn documentation is here. viewtopic.php?f=60&t=3397
(including the ATC plc programs)
and install/upgrade instructions

the machine is running on beta software! definitely update to the latest version here..
https://www.centroidcnc.com/centroid_di ... loads.html

videos here.
viewtopic.php?f=60&t=5313

Thanks Keith. I'd like to update, just don't want to break a working precision system. The turret in particular worries me. If something doesn't work, I can just restore the original cnct folder, right? Unless there is also a firmware update involved...

yes, but you don't' want to go back to 4.13 dev test software or even 4.13.. so many improvements have been made since then.
short term pain for long term gains. we are here to help. along those lines....free support for v4.13 has ended and there is no factory support at all for running old betas ) and most any issue you run into with v4.13 the answer is going to be update to the latest version so we are all using the same software and can help you.

firmware is handled automatically by cnc12 each time you start a different (new or old) cnc12.exe the correct Acorn firmware will automatically be loaded.

Yeah...the turret thing worries me though. I don't understand how that works and how to get it to work with the new software version. It's my understanding that this is custom. I'm seeing a turret files folder but I don't know where those files go. I see some of them inside the cnct folder but not all of them. Do they just get overwritten? The name of the PDF inside that folder is ACORN_rev3 CUSTOM 4 BIT GRAY CODE TOOL TURRET. It's got a tool settings files, I'm just not seeing any of that in the main cnct folder. How are those turret files used?