Vectrac CNC Knee mill refit from Fanuc 0M to Camsoft

Karl_T

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I've had a really nice Vectrac CNC knee mill with a Fanuc 0M control for quite some time. Great machine, but the old control is kludgy and impossible to maintain. Time to upgrade it.

This will be my fifth machine refit to Camsoft controls. My goal is to make this one the best yet. The real strength of the Camsoft control is open sourcing of hardware and the ability to fully configure virtually an unlimited amount of I/O. (I have heard it said the biggest strength of Camsoft is everything is configurable. And the biggest weakness is everything is configurable) Camsoft is NOT a control that a person without a lot of machine control refit experience should attempt.

The plan will be to first get the machine running with a default control setup, then add a great many upgrades one at a time. The first and most important one will be a complete operator panel like seen on professional machines. This is the biggest difference between a hobby grade control and a pro control. Anther will be encoder feedback on the spindle to allow features like rigid tapping. A fourth axis will be added. This is a knee mill, a feature will be added to use the knee to do all the tool length offsets. This concept has already been accomplished on my Excello knee mill and really eliminates the big weakness of a knee mill - too small a Z travel. Got a few other things planned.


OK, here's before pics




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looking forward to your rebuild
 
Day one was rip all the old control out. had it down to an empty cabinet with only sixteen bundles of connectors. See pic.

I then spent time figuring out what they all are. See the second pic for results.

I had marked five cable bunches with letter labels for function as I tore things down. THEN I lost the notes on these.
frown.gif
so I got more wires to trace someday.

I did find all the limit and home switches, Learned something, Fanuc combines forward and reverse limits into one input. camsoft splits them out. Going to be a problem on the Z axis as On one wire pair was run up to the head. So, I got to pull a new wire pair here.. See pic of Z axis

Found the wires for the spindle - it has five wires plus ground. That's two more than need for a three phase motor. I will have to take the motor cover off to find what's going on here. Also got knee and coolant pump motor wires IDed.

I do have one question. there is a pair of wires that is the spindle brake. How do I determine what voltage is needed to energize this? something I should have checked before having the whole Fanuc control out of there.

Anyway, found everything needed to run the new control, the other things can be done later.


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WOW, on rare occasion I am truly amazed. This is one of those times.

The Camsoft vendor contacted me by email late the same day I started this thread asking for details on what all is planned for this refit. I was happy to supply this, glad they were interested.

Today, I got an EXTREMELY COMPLETE outline of how to do the installation. It even included details of how to wire the I/O to work with a default (.cbk) file to run the machine. this was no small task for them. TOTALLY unexpected and much appreciated on my part.

I only bought this software back in 2002, guess its still warranty work
smile.gif


pic of all the files attached.

information packet.JPG
 
OK, got to work on the power wiring. Installed a fuse bank, motor contactors, and three VFDs - spindle, power knee, and flood coolant.


I took the connector cover off the Spindle motor and do not know how it should be connected. Its is a two speed 220 volts motor with six wires. Here is the data from the name plate and wiring terminals

JIN SHIN Motor
3phase induction

Type AEVF
Poles 2/4
5 HP
3.7 KW
Volts 220
Hertz 60
Amps 6/5.6
RPM 3400
RPM 1700
Design CNS - C4088
Bearings 6205 6206
SN# 501306


6 terminals on motor and wire color

Z6-black X4-red Y5-white

??-brown V2-blue W? - orange

(note terminals VERY hard to read, some guessing here)


I would like to connect this motor at low speed to the VFD. How should it be done?


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No pics today, forgot the camera :(

Got a lot of power wiring completed, traced out the rest of the I/O from the old control. wired up all the 110 and 220 devices to 24 V DC relays, put in several extra for future upgrades. Got the computer and opto 22 boards mounted in the door. Got a real challenge putting two pound of stuff in a one pound cabinet so I am using the door, both sides and the bottom of the cabinet. It does make the wiring harder and its a challenge to mount components so they don't hit the computer with the door closed.


Set up an E-stop circuit and powered the contactors. THEY BUZZ SO BAD! I can't work around that. I seem to remember reading about a simple mod to stop buzzing in 110 VAC contactor coils. Anybody point it out to me?
 
Pics or it didn't happen :grin: I have used the door and the cabinet sides when needed. It seems there is never enough panel real estate.

Normally if you clean them so the armature firmly seats on the iron core they will quit buzzing.
 
Ok here's pics of the current state of things.

2 steps forward 1 back. Thanks to Jim, I researched rebuilding contactors. Took them all out and went through every one. Then put them all back in. At the end of the day its in the same spot with one IMPORTANT difference. Can hardly tell if the contactors are energized. I am also now a contactor refurbish expert.

I did have time to check out the spindle. As Jim suspected, the first three wires run the motor slow - 4 pole. the second three run it fast - 2 pole. I will leave it on 4 pole for more low end torque. Can get the same max speed by just running the VFD at 120 Hz. In fact, experience has taught me 10% overspeed is not a problem so I'll set max Hz to 135. In operation there will be no need to ever adjust the variable speed belt. On rare occasion when doing something like drilling with large bits, the machine can be switched to back gear. With this concept S codes can be used to set spindle RPM

Also checked out the knee - The VFD runs it up/down just fine. Did not get to the coolant pump. First on the list tomorrow. In fact got to spend a bit of time running it. the sump has a nice layer of dirty oil. The wires for the Servos lay too near this to avoid dragging them through it during installation. I'm going to find a way to jury rig the belt skimmer from the CNC lathe to get all the oil out. After its cleaned as much as possible, put a whole jug dawn or similar in there with a bunch of water. FUN job. NOT


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Got all the devices installed so far checked out and running. Not much to show, but a fair bit of labor. learned I still have the capacity for stupid mistakes. Could NOT get the optos to fire the coils - they would latch on after first energize. I looked for all sorts of complex problems. gave up and went to bed. In the morning I noticed I had installed AC optos and I now know they will not work with DC 24 volt. DOH!

Got computer software installed and running. used it to checkout the 12 outputs installed so far. See the pic. The control has a dignostic screen with all the I/O. I labeled each output. I had to fake in a mouse but when its hovered over an output the label pops up. Click on the out and it will energize or turn off - toggle. this screen is HUGE for maintenance and debug.

I build my own controls with a major emphasis on future easy maintenance. Wire # on all wires, each device labeled. Instead of keeping an electrical print, I find a spreadsheet of wires and function to be most helpful. See the pic. For each wire, the connection on each end is noted along with its function. I just write it down as it is installed. I just brought up the spread sheet from the excello install in 2004 and could see immediately how something was wired.

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This is a direct question to Jim Dawson. I'll put it here for future records.

I have little confidence that I'm wiring the SSR for amp enable correctly. So I quick dummied one connection up. See the pic.

Red wire ampenX pin 40 to +3A1 on Cydrom
green ground to 4/A2 on Cydrom

green Pin1 DYN4 to +1/L1 on Cydrom
white Pin15 DYN4 to 2/T1 on Cydrom

Amo enable relay.jpg

DDM servo amp to Gall   Dawson controls .jpg
 
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