Here is an off topic (not Linuxcnc related) general milling machine question.
About 10 months ago we (our company) bought our first real metal working cnc machine. It is a Lagunmatic VMC 3516 with a 4th axis, and Dynapath Delta 40 control, built in 1998. We bought the machine hoping to use it as is, but with retrofitting to Linuxcnc as the plan B. At first we weren't sure if it would run. Some other people here hooked it up and played with it bit to see if it was working. But they were stumped by it, and didn't have a lot of time to put into figuring it out. Well this week I finally had a little time to look into it. After a bit of fiddling it seems it is fully functional. Once I figured out how to home it, and command tool changes and start the spindle. I have no experience with metal working machines, but lots of CNC experience working with wood routers (large industrial wood routers, not just home hobby machines.) While the basic CNC principals and are the same, the actual hardware is very different. For example there are worlds of difference between a 15hp hi speed wood working router spindle and this VMC's low speed multi gear milling spindle (5 or 6,000 rmp max speed I think.) For starters I was amazed by how much mass seems to be in the spindle to turn it by hand. I have no basis for comparison as to how this spindle and it's gearbox should sound, to try to judge it's condition. The control seems to automatically shift the gearbox dependent on the commanded spindle speed. I can hear air cylinders shifting things, and the sound of the spindle is very different when commanded at S1000 vs S5000. At the lower speed it obviously has a lot more gear noise. At the high speed there isn't the gear noise, but it has sort of a "loose" sound. But it doesn't ever seem to have any really objectionable bad bearing sounds, at least to my untrained ear. How should it sound? Any hints for assessing it's condition? We don't have much for manuals for the machine. Looking at the option page display on the control, shows that the rigid tapping option is enabled. Unfortunately it looks like the only way to get code into the old control is by RS232 DNC, or floppy disk. Todd Zuercher P. Graham Dunn Inc.<http://www.pgrahamdunn.com/index.php> 630 Henry Street Dalton, Ohio 44618 Phone: (330)828-2105ext. 2031 _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
