[hybidder]

I just bought an older MG electric eye tracer gantry (no table) with four torch stations (two with machine torches in them). My initial plan was to cannibalize (no offense to any practicing forum members) it for the rails, racks, pinion gears etc to build a small homebrew CNC plasma table.

The machine model is PC750 and has lots of functions I would have never thought of such as the auto-igniter, solenoids for high and low preheat oxygen and fuel gas as well as of course the cutting oxygen for each of the 4 torch stations and each station has a rack and pinion powered height adjustment (not auto, just toggle up/down)- all from the control panel. I plan to keep two torch stations and setup one for oxyaccetylene, the other for plasma and probably sell the other two. They would make a great Z axis since they have guide rails and servo motors already setup with the bearings already in place for the X axis to attach to a piece of .5" x 4" cold rolled flat.

My salvage plans might be changing. This afternoon I took a few minutes to look it over and dig through the two boxes of parts that came with it and found the control head and cables. I bolted it back on the machine and connected power, and you guessed it- It's Alive... The gearmotors for both axes run smoothly, the four torch heads power up and down and even the auto-igniters buzz (no spark plugs in them). It looks like this 18'-9" beast can be put back into operation with a little work to build a table and just a little more luck.

My thoughts are now running along the lines of either using a dual operating system, one original, the other CNC using the existing servos and addiing encoders in line with the existing tachs. Either that or figure out a way to interface the electric eye with the new CNC setup, if the eye proves to be fully functional which it seems to be.

My question is, how does the electric eye work? It lights up and when you hold a momentary switch in the up position the head spins. I drew a thick black line on a piece of paper and it will move the torch heads left or right and when I rotate the paper 90 degrees the other motor (what I would call the Y axis if it was a mill) runs. I guess I'm trying to figure out the actual starting procedure for lining up the torch head with the drawn pattern in order to initiate a cut?