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Help with old okuma lathe & controller

I am looking for someone with experience with a early 80's okuma lathe with a GE mark century 550 controller. Here's some background info. The machine had been sitting in a corner unused for 15 years, owners said it had to be air conditioned to keep it from acting flakey. After power on for 30 min. the battery must be charged up and the low voltage light goes out. I can joy stick jog the carriage & cross slide. The position read out displays the jog movements. The display on the tape reader always showes an E?. I can push the home X button and the carriage will move to a position about half way down the bed. I was told that the tape reader didn't work . but it has a computer port, rs232? I have no previous experience with cnc but have been reading this news group and learning for 2 years.I have only $50 invested and I consider this lathe to be part of my learning experience. My questions are: Sitting with the battery dead, did it lose a bunch of machine specific parameters? Since it will home, is the controller at least partially alive? Any of you guys admit to actually running one of theese way back when or currently? I am also going to post this on re.crafts.metalworking Thanks Larry Reiss Omaha NE reiss snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com

Reply to
larry
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Your best bet would be to hit up the cnc newsgroup alt.machies.cnc

that, and try to locate tech manuals for your machine

Reply to
Jon Grimm

If the Mark Century 550 is what I am thinking of, it was made earleir than the

1980's, more like early 1970's (the control, that is). It is not CNC, but TNC, tape numeric control. It has a hardwired controller, no computer.

If it really has a battery, it must be newer that the unit I pulled some parts off, which was a Mark Century, but could have been earlier.

Yes, that requires a LOT of stuff to work right. But, to be truthful, all of these old GE controls are massively obsolete, and even if it works, it won't STAY working very long. I used a 1978-vintage Allen-Bradley control for a few months, and it kept breaking at just the wrong time. The performance was also pretty poor. I replaced it with a PC, some hardware and software, and I'm much happier with it. Also, it just works, I have only had the slightest of problems with it.

Jon

Reply to
Jon Elson

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