new mill

I happened on what I think was a good buy. A Pratt and Whitney plant was
retooling and for $800 I acquired a Shizuoka AN-S CNC mill with Allen
Bradley 8400B controller and DANA Summit Quickdraw Tool Changer. The
operator told me that it was in service running actual parts less than a
week ago and that it'd never been used for anything but fiberglass and
aluminum.

Well, to me the AB controller looks like a dinosaur and I'm pretty sure the
reason it was taken out was that it didn't fit into their shop network or
whatever factory system they were installing. The servos and drivers are all
in great shape, so I'm thinking all it really needs is a control system and
a pretty monitor and keyboard.

Thing is, I am hesitant to rip it apart yet because, well, there's nothing
functionally wrong with it. Unfortunately, manuals are missing, and I'm
having no luck finding anything online in pdf form. In fact, I don't even
have any information about the system at all other than what I've found on
Google.

This is what I have learned: The 8400B is a Bandit II or IV (depending on
the search) or something. This Bandit was designed by Summit Engineering out
of Bozeman, Montanna (same people who made the tool changer) which was
purchased by AB who was acquired by Rockwell Automation (yes, I have support
emails in to all of them). Summit isn't part of DANA any more and isn't
Summit anymore either, but I think Wheeler and Associates (guess).

Basically, I'm trying to find out if anyone thinks it's worthwhile to try to
keep the dinosaur running or to just hook in a new controller to the fairly
decent Baldor servos and servo drives (drives are obsolete too, I think). I
had some concerns about the servos because they direct drive the screws and
the encoders only have 1000 ticks, but I'm not sure what the screw pitch is
(yet) so it might not be a big deal.

If I replace it, it might make sense to buy a system, but for a mill that
cost me $800 it seems kind of stupid to put an $8000 CNC kit on it when I
have all kinds of computer stuff laying around.

I'm thinking a basic PC with an I/O card supported by Mach 3 is all I'd need
to make it run, once I get the parameters for the rotary table and tool
changer figured out. Trouble is, documentation -- I could easily burn up a
week figuring out how all the Summit, Baldor and AB stuff work together,
chewing into the money I'd save.

Dennis


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