[aninventor]

First, I am a complete newbie to CNC. I am a physicist and mechanical engineer with considerable electronic and computer experience (designed computers at HP in the 70's), I own test equipment including oscilloscopes etc., and I have had a manual machine shop for over 45 years. I have a Wells Index 520CEN that I bought as bare iron - all the electricals had been removed. Otherwise it is as new. I have nearly completed converting it for dual use - both fully manual and fully CNC.

I have a Wells Index 700 CNC system - a very early Bandit step motor system. This system has one bad axis drive board and one bad stepper, but I have been able to get it up and running and I am using it to control the X and Z axes of the mill so that I can at least use it to do something requiring a mill. The interface from the computer to the step drive card directly controls the motor windings - it is not step and direction - so any replacements must be original or I have some circuit design to do. I think it is best to move on unless I can find some reasonably priced replacements. Ebay guys want about $800 for the two parts - not worth that much to me. If someone has a Bandit or parts they do not need contact me and we can try to work something out.

I also have a Dynapath System 10 with Siemens servos and a Siemens Simoreg servo amp that I removed form a Lagun mill. I have done preliminary bench tests on the Siemens DC servo motors and tachs and they all appear to be good.The tag on the computer says: Dynapath System 10 MDI Serial no. 50301 and model No. 10-3M00-01. I want to try and bring that system up for use on the Wells Index 520 mill. The last two board slots on the left side as viewed from the front are vacant. Are these two slots supposed to be occupied and if so what is missing, or are these two slots for expansion boards - possibly more axes or more memory. What are these two slots for and do they need to be filled?

There is nothing currently attached to the computer and I did not expect it to run on power up, but I did expect it to come up and do something - maybe. I applied power to the computer and switched from standby to operate and only four things happened. 1) the fans came on. 2) the first red LED toward the front of the computer on the second board from the right came on. 3) after about 4 seconds the second LED came on. 4) at some point the speaker chirped. When turning power off the screen flashed very lightly and a bright dot appeared in the center for a few seconds. I expected the display to come up and give some boot up or some error messages of some sort as a minimum. Should it? What should it display?

I am guessing the monitor may be good but not getting video signals. It appears that there are two power wires going from the monitor to the power supply and that there are another two wires going from the computer to the video monitor. Is that correct and what kind of video signals drive the monitor? Is it composite video, serial TTL, or something else? What are the video signals? I would like to check and see if the monitor is possibly good but lacks video drive signals or if the monitor itself is definitely bad.

What is the minimum that must be connected to the back connectors to get anything out of this unit so that I can begin to assess its condition?

What microprocessor chip and memory chips does this unit use - or is it a processor made from distributed discrete TTL or CMOS chips?

I have absolutely ZERO documentation. Are manuals and schematics etc. available for download or as copies anywhere? Does anyone have ROM firmware listings?

Is there a reasonable upgrade path from this unit to something much better - ie.... just replace a processor board with a later one or add memory or upgrade firmware? or does one pretty much have have to junk it and start over?

I now this is ancient technology but I like a challenge and a chance to learn about something new. I am not afraid of G and M code programming either. This vintage equipment is something I am familiar with (I still have vintage EPROMS and a Programmer) and it is like renewing an old acquaintance. I also want a path to move into CNC without breaking the bank as I am retired and cash is very precious. I want to learn as I go.

If someone has a later vintage Dynapath I might be interested.

The Simoreg servo amplifier (MLFB 6RB 2012-38A00 and D165 G200/12 MREQ Nr: A) that is probably not useful to me as it has a three phase input and I am guessing it will not run properly on anything but true 3 phase. Is that correct or are people running the Simoreg amps on RPCs or something else. I have looked over the power supply and there are two layers of true 3 phase transformers with multiple secondaries in the Simoreg. Redesigning the power supply for single phase does not seem very reasonable. I also have much newer Anilam (Glentek) servo amps that I can use with these Siemens servo motors so I will probably sell the Simoreg servo amp. It is extremely clean and looks nearly new appearance wise.

Any advice, help, or documentation would be greatly appreciated.


Lee

[islander261]

aninventor

I have an old system 10 on a Compumill 3000 mill (Shizouka ST-N iron). It works but I will replace it when it dies. The System 10 you have is older than mine and does not have CMOS memory so it requires a large external battery for retention of setup parameters and programs. The System 10 did not support RS-274 Gcode, only DynaPath conversational programming. The DynaPath conversational programming is good but not a standard so you will need a custom post for any CAM program. Others here have one for BobCAD and I have one for ProE NC. If I was in your shoes I would sell off the old System 10 parts and build up the machine with a more modern pc based control. The ones that come to my mind are KFLOP, UCC, Mach4 and Smooth Stepper. I am sure that you will be money and time ahead if you use modern equipment and software.

The only source that may be able to help with the System 10 control documentation is Parts and Smarts. DynaPath no longer offers any support for the System 10 line. It is rumored that others have copies of the documentation but I have never been able to get my hands on it. I have a System 10 Customer Information Manual (operator and programming) but it is a 2" thick three ring binder that I don't have the time to scan. There is a copy of the Delta 10/20 CIM on Scribd which is close if you ignore all the RS-274 sections for programming, the Delta hardware is not even close but the conversational programming is almost identical. You will also need a copy of wiring for the machine the control came off of because I/O assignments varied from maker to maker (MTB). Most machines also had a separate PLC to help with the safety interlocks, spindle control and initialization. Every MTB has custom EPROMs that hold the machines features and I/O assignments. I have tried to find this information in the past with no success.

The monitor should come on when the system is powered up. I believe the monitor interface is the old MDA standard used by early PCs for monochrome displays. There will be separate horizontal synch, vertical synch and video (dot) lines. There are interlock inputs that must be connected for the system to start without going into an error condition. As I recall the main processor is a '286 and the PIC board uses a 8088. There are several generations of System 10 hardware so you need to check board part numbers and REV levels when swapping cards. Most System 10 card racks had spare slots when used on a basic 3 axis machine. I think the card rack is minor variation of the old S-100 bus. The big difference being that the System 10 cards mostly don't use local voltage regulation.

Good Luck

John

[aninventor]

John

Very helpful response indeed, and I think your advice is right on target. I love a technical challenge and I tend to get sucked into these kinds of big effort and small return projects as I rise to the challenge of doing it. The research into how things used to be done is in itself interesting and a pleasure.

I am well familiar with 8088 and 80286 processors including hand compiling code for them and working with them again would indeed be a pleasure. I still have assemblers, compilers, disassemblers, and an e-prom programmer but without program source code listings it is a nearly impossible task to do anything with their firmware. I could easily dump the e-proms and disassemble the code in them but if there is a single corrupt line in even one I am pretty much dead meat. Same goes for I/O port and IRQ listings - I could grab them off the buss with a logic state analyzer but the boards have to be working to do that and they are not. I looked inside and some of the ICs on the boards do not have standard JEDEC device numbers on them - they have proprietary part numbers - so I can not tell what they are or what they are supposed to do making reverse engineering nearly impossible. Without schematics and part cross references component level troubleshooting and repair is not going to be successful either, unless the problems are simple and obvious - like no 5VDC supply. As this equipment is way past obsolete, I was hoping someone out there had the factory documentation, but that is evidently not the case either. Electronically, this is a dead horse going no where and I need to get off of it.

I was also expecting the system 10 to accept reasonably standard G & M code so that the time invested in learning to program it would not be a lost investment and so that building a post processor for it would be a somewhat doable project. The fact that is does not use standard code makes the System 10 a no-go for me. I want to be able to build CNC programming skills and a usable CNC machine - not run down dead end alleys for the fun of it. I will sell the System 10 if some one out there wants/needs it..

Thanks for helping me understand exactly why that is the best reasonable course.


Lee

[texaspyro]

Any time you spend learning Dynapath Conversational would be directly applicable and useful to your gcode skills. The languages are not all that different. If you learn one, it would probably take half and hour to become useful in the other.

With the help of a couple of forum members and a $20 Dynapath manual off of Ebay, I added Dynapath (EIA and Conversational) support to my gcode converter/swiss army knife program. It can read in the gcode dialects of around 100 different controls (plus numerous graphics and CAD formats) and convert between them. That would allow you to program in the gcode dialect of your choice and spit out a Dynapath Conversational program (or vice versa). I hope to get the program (90,000 lines of C code) onto Github soon.

[hmc710]

Hey All,
Been away for awhile and back to looking at upgrading my two Dynapath machines. In over simplified terms, the two controls, a 10 and a 20, no longer boot up so I would hope there would be a package out there that would allow me to keep the power supplies, motors, and possibly encoders and just feed them new info from the updated PC based control. Does KFLOP, UCC, Mach4 or Smooth Stepper allow this? I've been using Mach3 on the cutting table for years. While no where near aninventor's expertise, I can do a decent control panel. Any recommendations while I search through the 4 systems stated above?
Thanks
H

[islander261]

Hello

Your choices are limited if you want to keep your old analog servo motors and driver electronics. The two best for this case are KFLOP + Kanalog (will run MACH 3 front end) or using Linuxcnc with MESA or other external DAC cards. Both work well and both will require you to figure out the wiring and signal connections. Both have large user communities that have converted older mills (you will not be alone) using the existing servos. I will have to do this someday myself.

John

[hmc710]

Thanks islander,
I've been looking at both options and starting to dig into the old control to verify what's what. I've tried to load two computers with Linux in the past with zero success...... a little gun shy now, we'll see how it goes.

[islander261]

hmc710

You can go to the Linuxcnc web site and down load a live image that you can try from a DVD or USB drive without dedicating a machine to it for a try. All the instructions are there. I have never had any luck with an actual Linux install (ancient history) but have been able to try the live image out successfully. My old system still works (knock on wood) so I haven't had to venture down the control refit road yet myself.

John

[hmc710]

I'm going to see if one of the old towers I've got laying around will come back to life and try it again....Seems strange that two fairly capable people couldn't load it up....