Re: [CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO] Fitch's Mill Anilam Crusader II milling machine control.

Marty Escarcega wrote:

> Ok, newbie question here, from what I understand and see in
> Fitch's posts, he is trying to learn some proprietary Anilam G
> codes. I know he has a perfectly good control, but for my
> information, would it be better to convert the control over to PC
> based if only to have more standard G code? I guess what I'm
> saying is, knowing Fiitch, he'll nail it down. If the Anilam ever gives
> him trouble, he may have to resort to converting it over, then would
> he not have to relearn some things?

It depends on your resources and intended uses. I used an ancient
Allen-Bradley control for about 6 months before I got EMC running well
enough to trust it with real hardware. The conversion was not a big
deal. EMC was a vast improvement over the AB control, in terms of
reliability, servo performance, ease of use, etc. Also, having everything
on one computer, instead of having to load the executive every once
in a while, and then load the part program from a PC, was a big step
ahead.

>
> For future reference, are there any reuseable components in the
> Anilam control that could be re used? Power supply perhaps, but
> wondering about the drives....Fitch is in the learning mode now, but
> perhaps some advice for the future IF it ever presents itself to him
> or others in his position would be in order?

Many controls have servo amps that can be reused. A few have
proprietary interfaces to the servo amps, rather than +/- 10 V
signals. If it is stepper, the stepper drives might be reusable, although
some are so bad you wouldn't WANT to reuse them!

Jon