Early Christmas Presents

Christmas came early this year! The shop now holds a ~1972 Pratt &
Whitney tape'O'matic Triax 1520 vertical bed mill. I was told it worked
when it was last used, about 1995. Its complete with the monstrous tape
drive / electronics cabinet, wiring diagrams, tool holders, etc. The
cabinet was disconnected from the mill, but about 90% of the wires have
mil-spec connectors, which are labled! The remaining 10% will be a bit
tougher to reconnect...
Anyway, my challenge for Y2K will be to bring the mill back to life. I
now have much more sympathy for Andrew W. in the magnitude of
deciphering the 80 cubic feet of electronics! (even with the schematics,
I may be in too deep) The mill has (as far as I can tell) servos on all
three axis; The motors are not directly mounted to the ballscrews,
however, but drive cogged belts. The motors have tach's directly mounted
to them, and the ballsrews have quantizers (??) directly mounted to
them. I haven't yet found another way to get a program into the machine
other than the tape input, but haven't yet looked at all the schematics.
The electrical cabinet has 60A 220V 3phase breakers in it! Did machines
of that vintage/size really use that much power? If so, I may need to
reevaluate my shop supply ( and certainly my phase convertor).
My plans are to first see if I can wake it up as it sits, as I was
told it ran fine last time it was used. A few of the control buttons
were broken off the console in the last few years or the moves, which
might be tough to replace. After that, the potential to upgrade to emc
will have to be seriously evaluated. I do have emc running, just without
the servo-to go card, so nothing for it to talk to.
Please pass along any info on this type of project/ kind of machine/
etc... that you have. I'll appreciate it!

Brad Heuver
Mechanical Sub-Systems fax 734-523-6052
734-52-33480 bheuver@...