Centroid Community CNC Support Forum

I've got a turret tool changer that is driven by an ancient stepper motor that runs at at 150v. I've tried various other drives and voltages but it's never very happy and heats up enough to melt the insulation (happened to one of the old drives on the z. The old driver still works but it's using CW CCW instead of step and dir. Would be nice to set up ACORN to do CW CCW to avoid the Arduino I'm currently using. so my.question is it possible to set 2 of the outputs to be CW CCW or any other ideas?

The original motor is NEMA 34 with a 9.5mm shaft and the shaft fits into the worm drive. It's 5.5v 9.5 omhs measured with the multimeter.

I've also thought to stick an encoder on the back of the turret and wire a program an Arduino
To run tool changes but no idea how ACORN and Arduino might be able to talk to each other for that.

With some minor machining aside, I would opt for a more modern motor and drive that accepts step & direction.

Agreed, too often I see people try to salvage their 70's era electronics thinking it'll be easier than swapping out components with modern ones. The Acorn can handle all your needs using modern drives and equipment. Why complicate things more with 3rd party microcontrollers and other gadgets cobbled together just to try and get it to work. In the end you'll save time and money (and headaches) by simply updating the machine components to one that came after the dinosaurs.

So what your all saying so far is no ACORN can not be modified.in the PLC to use CW/CCW type driving? This means I will use an Arduino for now as I already made one do tool.changes and when the lathe can cut material I can machine a new shaft adapted for a more modern drive for ACORN. Though I could make a professional tool changer with an encoder an a stm32.

Easiest thing would to find a modern NEMA 34 size with a 9.5mm shaft....but they don't exist and I am sure having one machined is rather costly(normally 14mm)

You can run an motor with outputs in CW and CCW direction, but not as an axis as far as I know.

Uwe

so if i understand correctly,
step/dir = pulse the step for movement, power dir for direction
CW/CCW = pulse CW for fwd, pulse CCW for rev

why couldnt you just use the dir output from acorn to switch an icecube relay to send the step pulses to either the CW or CCW inputs?