What is the nature of the controller? Mach3 or Chinese special, the latter is known for almost zero documentation.
Most hobby machines use these sensors for home or over travel limits.
BTW most of my job is CNC retro-fits for a living.
M.
whoa, that's pretty cool that this touches into your day job!
It's a chinese special. The documentation seems fairly decent - but again, I think it is geared towards OEM usage where people do this every day. I'm hoping this machine is a step up from hobby when completed. It is a mix-and-match of components but the gear head is driven by a 3hp vfd-driven motor and although I'm waiting for the servo motors to arrive, the matching drives are already here. I'll have around $3500 into it (cross my fingers) when completed (before tooling), but am hoping for some serious precision capability as opposed to buying a worn-out machine for the same money. I had looked at Mach3 but by the time a person buys everything (forward compatible with mach4) plus software the $600 I spent on the controller seemed reasonable. I might have gone with mach4 had it been more developed and proven.
I've been a maintenance mechanic for maybe 15 years now. However, the system design has always been implemented long before I happen upon a machine. Years ago I remember changing out an optocoupler or two on an isolation board of sorts but now much of that experience is coming back in "Ah-ha" moments as I pick through this project. Hevans1944's last post caused another one as he talked about "(to the LED half) and (from the photo-transistor half)". Although kind of vague, the manual does show the optocoupler orientation to the controller reversed from input to output (photo-transistor leads hanging out over the cnc side for inputs as opposed to the output picture above).
Am working this weekend, but will throw the manual pdf on my web server space and provide a link in a day or two so more of what I'm referring to makes sense.
Thanks!