Hello all, I have some questions and thoughts regarding EMC2 and the Anilam 1100 controller on a Sharp, series one universal type milling machine I have here in the shop. I want to make some upgrades to the machine, but I'm quickly finding out that Anilam makes it pretty hard to do this. One of the things I would really like to do is add a third axis of motion control to the quill. The Anilam 1100 controller I have now is only two axis.
The Anilam controller is also really dated. It is powered by a 386 SX 25mhz computer running Dos 3.x something. It does not have a real hard drive, but a simple flash ram drive that has one meg of memory. The whole machine is very old, and I would love to update the computer system to something more modern. But... Anilam did such a good job of protecting their proprietary system, you can't even add ram or a hard drive to it, not without it complaining. Forget about using a faster more modern computer, the system somehow knows when changes are made, and it will not function. It's technically just a pc for the main computer, but it's not upgradeable, not without using Anilam parts. Anilam wants about $1,800 dollars just to update the computer to something like a Pentium II that will run from a hard drive. For that kind of money, I think something else can be done. That is where EMC2 comes in, I hope. The motors are Baldor brush servos with dc tachs for velocity feedback, and quadrature encoders for position. The servo amps are ancient Glentek units that receive a +/- 10v command for motor control. I'm hoping that I can somehow save the servo drivers and motors, and just use a much more modern computer running EMC2 for the brains of this thing. I'll need to use some kind of black box to convert the pulses coming from the EMC output to a +/- 10v signal for the servo amplifiers. I'm still not sure if the dc tachs are even usable, but maybe someone can chime in about that. Worse case scenario, if I'm not able to even use the old Glentek servo motor amps, I would maybe buy some Gecko amplifiers for the motors, and use a good pc I have hear for running EMC2 for control. What appeals to me so much about using EMC2 is then I could easily add control for a second axis, or more. I just figured for the $1,800 smackers that Anilam wants to update the system to basically another ancient machine, and the fact I still wouldn't get my third axis from Anilams upgrade either, I could spend that money really bringing her up to date using something like EMC for control. It would make a really cool first project for me using EMC2. Anyone have some thoughts? Ideas? Has anyone done an EMC conversion on a machine that used to be powered by an Anilam CNC controller? Sorry if this post seems like a ramble. I'm still in the information gathering mode. Take care all! David ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Come build with us! The BlackBerry® Developer Conference in SF, CA is the only developer event you need to attend this year. Jumpstart your developing skills, take BlackBerry mobile applications to market and stay ahead of the curve. Join us from November 9-12, 2009. Register now! http://p.sf.net/sfu/devconf _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
