Re: [CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO] Re: Denford Orac retrofit

Hi David,

If your machine is the same as mine, I've got a Harrison 280 CNC, then the
computer is not a BBC but came from the mother company Acorn with a
re-written bios and an operating system on EPROM written for the particular
machine. Mine is still going with the only trouble coming from an expired
stepper driver, which I repaired. Every now and again the whole thing throws
up weird faults and this is usually tracked down to dirty connections
between some of the many boards. I'm sure the day will come, halfway through
that job that had to be finished yesterday, when I'll have to convert it to
PC.

Regards,

Terry

| >
| > I recently purchased a Denford orac cnc lathe. While it does work, it
| > is a bear to program and operate. I want to upgrade the electonics to
| > facilitate using Mach2 or EMC as a pc based controler. I would like
| to
| > use as much of the old electronics as possible.
| > Has any body "been there and done that"?
| >
| I have a Denford Easimill and I have been involved with an early Orac
| lathe. In both cases we left the power supplies and motor controllers
| intact and replaced the stepper drivers with Geckos. In both cases the
| 40V stepper supply was good enough so there was no point in changing
| it. Both machines have been driven with Turbo CNC and DeskCNC with no
| problems. Denford support is cr*p. Quite simply they don't want to know
| about old machines.
|
| The general quality of engineering is good so it is worth the effort.
| Our lathe was missing the toolchanger; if you have one then you are
| lucky. Early machines used the BBC micro and later ones had a PC
| interface (possibly serial). My mill also had a tape drive in it. If
| anyone wants an old BBC micro I have one gathering dust...
|
| David