CNC Bridgeport with Heidenhein control

MPG = Manual Pulse Generator, the manual hand wheel input to the CNC control. You select the axis you want to move, usually with a rotary selector switch, and the step per MPG wheel click usually with another rotary switch.

MDI a.k.a. CLI is the way to go generally for manual operations beyond edge finding.

After the move and before even applying power, go through and unplug and reseat every single connector and plugable card in the machine. When cards are unplugged look for any socketed chips and press them to ensure they are seated. Tighten every terminal strip or similar connection. This whole thing should take perhaps an hour, but can save a lot of headaches.

I had a computer system (big old VAX) that was moved and stored unpowered for about six months. When I powered it up and got it booted it had all kinds of strange issues for a couple weeks. I then powered it down and did the plug and reseat thing on every component (took me about

Assuming that the monitor supports the scan rates (and thus the resolution) that the EGA connector produces. I think that pretty much any multisync monitor can go down that far. Double check for LCD monitors, as not all will support all lower rates.

If you can find a LCD screen which will handle the proper rates, that strikes me as the one which makes sense to use in a shop environment -- less surface area of ventilation holes for chips to fall into -- and less power consumption as well.

The pinouts for the two interfaces are:

Note that the EGA output is at TTL levels, while the VGA is 0.7 V P-P at 75 Ohm impedance, so a voltage divider on each color signal will be needed -- and perhaps another divider for the secondary color outputs on EGA to give differing intensities. I haven't bothered to check whether there will also need to be inversion of sync signals. For that -- if needed -- you would need some active circuits and thus a power source.

But since the converters are available for not much money, that strikes me as the way to go.

Good Luck, DoN.

I like the apparent mechanical design -- though the ones which I have seen in service did not have (or need) a keyboard.

The X15-250-5 looks like a better match for your needs, as it is designed to work with analog servos.

Note that they all are based on Windows to run Mach3, and *you* might prefer EMC2 (linux based) for various reasons. Also -- the prices scare me. :-)

Good Luck, DoN.

Don, so, if I can get a NEC MultiSync monitor and that EGA to VGA cable, I could then see the EGA image? Did I get that right?

No, nothing to do with NEC Multisync monitors, they just happen to use that name. Pretty much all current monitors are multisync, the days of monitors that only handled one specific scan rate are long gone.

Intesting. I see that it expects to be driven by a parallel port, and is not on cards which plug directly into the system bus, which suggests that I could use it with on of my Sun workstations instead of requiring an Intel based system. This I would like. I should be able to compile EMC2 to run under Solaris 10 (which has a real-time feature).

I am curious about the power supply shown. The voltages are specified, but I see no current capacity to suggest whether it would serve better than the many other power supplies which I already have.

Is there anyplace where I can download the communication protocols being used with the parallel port?

Thanks, DoN.

Most of these systems send step and direction signals from the parallel port, not any sort of protocol. They rely on low level drivers to control the parallel port and generate the pulses.

I think that it expands (in this use) to "Manual Pulse Generator". Think of a knob or handwheel connected to a quadrature encoder so it produces the pulses to move the table and quill. Ideally, set up three of them on a box to represent the three axes in an intuitive way.

As am I -- but I think that a MPG is a nice extension to the keyboard for feeding the mill's motions.

Enjoy, DoN.

te:

Just as I remembered from waaay back, there's a 9-pin to 15 pin adapter:

Can get one to go either way, EGA card to VGA monitor or the reverse. Fairly cheap, too. Back in the stone age, the VGA monitors used to come with EGA video card plug adapters. Used to have to do this when the Navy was too cheap to pony up for a VGA card after an EGA monitor burned out.

Basically, EGA was digital and VGA was analog, but the digital video signals could be represented on the analog monitor. An LCD might work with the adapter. Cheap enough to test out if you can scrounge a spare monitor and get the adapter.

Stan

I have experience with Heide's recently & with B-Port series II's eon's ago. The old original seriesII NC (early 70's) had cog belt drive stepper moters for XYZ. The Z (knee) was air assisted. Also an pneumatic quill with a "spindle wizard" (stops for depths) The one I used back when,had a Bridgeport control, remex tape reader that I converted to a BTR floppy disk reader, had what they called "tab sequential" code to run it. But no handles to run it manually. I know some series II's did, but not the NC models.

Being that the Heide control is on yours, seems alot newer & most likely has servo's.. Fixing the Heide control is the way to go if possible. IMO their conversational input is only second to Hurco. But even easier on some things Hurco can't do.

looks like a fun project.

Good luck

Iggy has one huge advantage. He likely knows the *nix world and is a programmer.

I look forward to an interesting set of progress postings.

Wes

-- "Additionally as a security officer, I carry a gun to protect government officials but my life isn't worth protecting at home in their eyes." Dick Anthony Heller

I think it will beat the heck out of a Sieg X? conversion. Go for it!

Wes

-- "Additionally as a security officer, I carry a gun to protect government officials but my life isn't worth protecting at home in their eyes." Dick Anthony Heller

Unix is definitely the easiest part of this undertaking.

I think that it will be a great machine if I do not screw it up.

I finally retired my cobbled-together VAX Station II that had run for about 20 years! The disk drive seems to have croaked, and I don't need it anymore. It needed the reset boards routine every 6 months or so after it got to about 15 years old.

Jon

OOps, sorry, jargon. Manual Pulse Generator, ie. a hand-cranked encoder, usually with 100 detent positions. Many CNC controls have them. Some people hate them, some people love them. Very handy for use with edge finders, for instance. Get close, turn the rate selector to .0001 then every full crank of the dial is .01"

You will not find zig-zagging across a piece of stock to clean up the face all that much fun to do with MDI (uhh, there goes that jargon again) MDI = Manual Data Input So, you would enter : G01 F10 X5 G01 F10 Y0.5 G01 F10 X0

and so forth. MUCH easier to do with jog buttons. There are places where MDI is just perfect, like keying in a fixture offset before starting a program or something like that.

Jon

Well, the other problem is it was designed for the EPP mode (IEEE-1284) of data transfer. Not all other parallel ports support this natively. On the other hand, you could probably make any bidirectional parallel port that even loosely follows the old PC-style ports do it in software, either doing a software handshake or just skipping the handshake and assuming the controller board is always faster than the Sun CPU.

Which power supply? For the PPMC? It is a commodity +5, +/- 12 V supply, not much current at all. About 300 mA on +5 and

Well, Jan Axelson's book kind of goes over it, there are some docs on SMSC's web site for the FDC37C665GT chip that I worked from 9 years ago. That was one of the popular ISA multi-IO chips when motherboards still used an internal ISA bus to handle serial, parallel and floppy devices. Basically, you have a bidirectional data bus, an address strobe, a data strobe, a direction signal and an acknowledge signal back from the device. There's also a well-hidden Intel/Microsoft document on the IEEE-1284 but that was more aimed at a standard register-level description of the port on the PC.

Anyway, due to the disappearing of the PC's parallel port, and the fact that real time performance of PCs is going down the tubes, I am working on porting EMC to the Beagle Board, a $149

EMC2 does need "hard" real-time performance, I don't know what level of RT support Solaris 10 offers. The software-generated step guys have the step generator dispatched every 10 us or so, which is really tough on the system. For the interfaces I do, a 1 ms interrupt rate works fine, which is a little less demanding.

Jon

Right, a lot of people do that. But, EMC also supports real servo systems where the CPU is in the middle of the servo loop. That is the kind of interface I make. The computer sends a velocity command to the interface, it generates either steps, a DC voltage or a PWM pulse train where pulse width is proportional to desired velocity. Encoders feed back position to encoder counters which are read periodically by the CPU. If you choose the PWM or analog interface, then there are NO steps anywhere in the system. With these systems, you can hit E-stop, move the machine manually while EMC2 acts as a DRO, then clear the E-stop and go back to CNC, while the system maintains the coordinate system all the time.

With my boards, the parallel port is a communications channel, and the CPU can read and write banks of registers, representing position and velocity.

Jon