[Tooljunkie]

Hi, I'm fairly new here. I bought a Series 1 Bridgeport 3-axis CNC machine at a Hardinge auction a while ago. It seems that the machine itself is unused, but it was robbed of its CNC control. It has the SEC AC Servos and Bijur pump, but no cables, no power supplies, no control, no and no electrics/electronics enclosure. My plan was to outfit it with a retrofit control.

Outfitting a plug-n-play Centroid control is way over my budget, and right now, I don't have the time to tinker with building a setup and getting it running. Since I need the machine to be able to run and make parts right now, I decided to just outfit it with a 3-axis DRO and use it as a manual machine. I can tinker with returning it to its CNC glory at a later time when I have more time to work on it.

So, I bought an Acu-rite 300S DRO kit with 35", 13", and 4" SENC-150 scales. I mounted and hooked up the X and Y axes with no issues. When I opened up the quill enclosure to mount the Z-axis, I noticed that the 4" SENC scale was too long to fit within the enclosure. There's 1.75" of over-travel on the SENCs, so what I'd really need is a 3", but they only make a 2", which would be too short.

There's already a scale mounted on the quill with a cable coming off of it. The brand is Fagor. I would love to just hook up the Fagor scale to the Acu-rite DRO and have everything work. Unfortunately, the connections are different. The fagor uses a 15-pin connection (3 rows of 5, but only positions 1,2,3,4,5,6,9,11 and 15 are used) and the SENC/Acu-rite uses a 9-pin connection (2 rows - 5/4).

A) Will the Fagor scale work with the Acu-rite DRO if I can connect the two?
B) If so, are there commercially available adapters for this?
C) If not, could one be rigged up if I had the wiring schematics (which I think are the ones attached)?

I just don't want to fry my new DRO by hooking up wires that weren't meant to be hooked up!

Thanks!

TJ

[Al_The_Man]

They both appear to use differential signals so you should be OK hooking up to the relative signals, the original looks like a heidenhain.
The problem you may have is if the resolution is compatible?
Al

[Tooljunkie]

Just wanted to make sure that I didn't blow up my DRO if I hooked the Fagor scale up to it. I'm thinking that I'd match up the following wires. If someone with experience in this area disagrees, please chime in.

Fagor => Acurite/SENC
Pin 1 (A) => Pin 2 (A+)
Pin 2 (/A) => Pin 3 (A-)
Pin 3 (B) => Pin 4 (B+)
Pin 4 (/B) => Pin 5 (B-)
Pin 5 (Io) => Pin 8 (R+, +Reference Mark)
Pin 6 (/Io) => Pin 9 (R-, -Reference Mark)
Pin 9 (+5V) => Pin 7 (Supply Voltage)
Pin 11 (0V) => Pin 6 (Ground, Power supply and Signal Return)
Pin 15 (Shield) => Shell (Shield)

Also, any ideas where to locate the Connectors to make an adapter?

Thanks! TJ

[gridley51]

I`m running a Fagor dro with Accurite scales.

[Tooljunkie]

I`m running a Fagor dro with Accurite scales.

That's promising news for me since you'd think that if it works in that way, then it should work in the other. Do you know how your machine handles the difference between the 9-pin Acu-rite and the 15-pin Fagor connections?

TJ

[gridley51]

That's promising news for me since you'd think that if it works in that way, then it should work in the other. Do you know how your machine handles the difference between the 9-pin Acu-rite and the 15-pin Fagor connections?

TJ

Was just a matter of changing plugs.Also got an Accurite running with a mixture of Accurite and Chinese scales.The Chinese were compatible to Fagor and needed the plug changing for the Accurite.
As long as they are both the same outputs/inputs I don`t see a problem.

[Tooljunkie]

Just an update in case anyone in the future has the same problem and comes across this thread using the search function. I bought a couple of cables (DB9 and DB15) and planned on cutting 6 inches off each one and splicing them together using the connections that I mentioned above. Just for a little assurance that I wouldn't fry anything expensive, I called Acu-Rite to see if what I was going to do was okay. They said something to the effect of "we don't know anything about Fagor stuff, so we can't help you"...<click>. Note to self... customer service at Acu-Rite = ZERO!

I called Fagor and presented the same question. They, on the other hand, were MORE than helpful. They asked me the model numbers of both the DRO and the scale, and said they'd call me back after they did some research. Five minutes later, I got a return call to verify a couple of things with me. I might add that I was in a hotel room in a foreign country at the time, and they still called me back. Five minutes after that, another return call to tell me that it was possible, and that they could supply an adapter cable. They just happened to be out of stock of that cable, but they said that they could put together a custom one for me that day.

I figured that, although I had already purchased the stuff to make up my own cable, I might as well let them do it, since it will be a more professional job than I could do with a couple of different-colored computer cables. Since I was arriving at Chicago O'Hare airport in a couple of days, and would be driving right by their address, I asked if I could pick it up. When I arrived, the cable was waiting for me, and everybody there knew what was going on. It was about 8 inches long, and was very professionally made using a shielded cable. Note to self... Fagor customer service = TEN!

When I got to the shop, I used the continuity feature on my multimeter to check the pin outs to see if the wires were connected as I had figured. They were exactly as I had suspected. I hooked up the cable and fired up the DRO. The Z-axis came to life when I moved the quill and seems to work flawlessly.