Re: Converting a Centroid cnc 4 (cardinal) to Mach 2 Need drive board help

I've got two CNC4's. One has one dead axis drive board, and
Centroid wants either $600 or $800 for the board. Been a while
since I checked, but one of those numbers is accurate. If you
bypass the control, you'll basically be using 3 drive boards and the
power supply. The power supply is 50 volts, and the drive boards
are 8 amps max. The original power supply (these are on series II
Bridgeports) was 58 volts, according to the documentation with
mine. The dip switches on mine have always been set at 7 amps, and
I've never had a problem. Based on the above, I'd buy 3 Geckos and
a power supply. You're going to need a breakout board regardless of
which direction you go, so that cost is a given. By buying a power
supply, you can push the voltage up a little compared to the 50
volts of the centroid and increase your rapids a bit. I think the
geckos are rated at 70V. In any case, the CNC4 will probably bring
more $$ as a complete unit than you'll spend by going the gecko
route. When I talked to centroid about the board, they indicated
parts for the cnc4 are available if they still have them, but not
produced on an ongoing basis. You could smoke 3 geckos for the
price of one centroid drive board, and if they're out of stock at
that time, then you're back to square one anyway. Another factor
against using the remains of the centroid is the output board (for
spindle, coolant, etc., is controlled by the dedicated part of the
control, so you'd either have to figure out how to control this via
Mach or go the way everyone else does with PC based controls.
Finally, you can run the centroid while you put together a PC based
control, and not have the mill down for long when you do the
changeover. I'm going the PC route with the one and keeping the
remains of the control for spare parts. Once that's up and running,
I plan to do the same with the second machine, and sell the CNC4's
as a pair at that time. Note: there may be better alternatives
than Geckos for the larger motors. Better in that more amperage is
available. My steppers are the big finned ones, and the original
rating is 8.5 amps. If there are other reasonably priced stepper
drives available that will exceed the 7A of the Geckos, hopefully
someone on the list will let us know.

Cliff

--- In CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO@yahoogroups.com, "brunoian1127" <dr@d...>
wrote:

> Hi,
> I have a centroid cnc 4 with steppers. I want to bypass the

centroid

> controller section of the control and output from the computer

port

> using Mach 2. Does anyone have experience with just using the

driver

> boards from the CNC4? How hard is this to figure out? I have all

the

> turn data and step and direstion for the motors etc. I just need

to

> know what wires go where to the drive boards OR the way to bypass
> the centroid controller?
> My focus here is to update to g code that makes since fro my shop.
> The centroid is not fanuc based so I cannot use programming from

my

> other machines.