Some of the operations that are "within" the Centroid controller are things like a circle drilling program, circle milling program, pocket milling program, face milling program, letter/number engraving. All called up on a single one line of code. It will also do some simple macros as well.
And yes, the quill is fed off the rack, but the only backlash issue I have ever had has been error on the side of not deep enough. However the natural tendency for the end mill to want to pull deeper into the part seems to balance things out very well. The only real challenge is running a 3-D program with a ball end mill. It must be sharp and if not, you will know it right away. It just bounces off the piece. Squareness has never been an issue. I was amazed to find the head swept in less than .0005. And even if the head is ever out, it's just a matter of four very large bolt which hold the column to the base. Just shim to adjust. Simple. When I checked the X and Y for squareness, I cut a square block and then check the squareness of the product with a solid square. Ultra precision is not needed in steam locomotive manufacturing. Average tolerances is +/-.003 I like the round column because it allows me to swing out and machine on things outside the surface of the table. As for the electronics, the large diameter red and black wires carry 40V to power the steppers. The small red and black wires carry 12V for the front panel buttons and switches. There are three axis drive cards. The backs of the drive cards just has 8 power transistors mounted to the heat sink which also serves as a way to mount the cards in the main box. Andy, the 26 pin header pin out sheet is wrong. the Centroid guy saw a picture I took and told me I had a different board than what he initially thought should have been in this unit. Let me see if I can take a picture of the pin out schematic and post it on my blog. www.212steam.blogspot.com Kirk, (snip) *The top two board pictures look like a dual power supply with PWM voltage or current control(?). The SG3526's are listed as REGULATING PULSE WIDTH MODULATOR. These seem to control the nearby power FET's which push-pull the large inductors just above the FET's, creating a higher voltage AC. The AC is then converted to DC by the diode array, just above the inductors. At the top, are capacitors that smooth out any ripple that the diodes pass on. My guess is that the red and black wires at the bottom go to a power transformer? The upper red and black wires go to the motor drivers?* *The next board down looks like the CPU/logic board which won't be needed.* *The next board labeled INPUTG on the upper right corner, I'm guessing is for digital input from limit and home switches? There are four power switches that may control relays or solenoids.* *The last board looks like the, or an, axis motor driver. How many of these do you have? I bet those red and black wires come from the first board. The screw terminals on the middle left edge go to the motor or motors? It looks like there is a microprocessor on this board, so there may be a proprietary motion command input from the CPU/logic board which the microprocessor turns into step pulses that goes to the power side of the board on the left, but then how does your .pdf file fit in? It would take more employing the little gray cells to figure this out. I may concede to Jon and recommend using the Gecko's* ** Uhhh....yea....if you say so....??? (8-|) <-blank"deer in the headlights" look That would be my typical answer when we talk about something over my head...and as much as I really do appreciate your imput....that was over my head. Sorry... I was able to get a couple pics of the pin out header so they will be on my blog in just a couple of minutes. thanks again guys, I really do admire your knowledge with this stuff. ( more than willing to trade some steam engine and machining know how on *neruon card* for some knowledge on this stuff on *neuron card.* Martin ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Return on Information: Google Enterprise Search pays you back Get the facts. http://p.sf.net/sfu/google-dev2dev _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
