Hello all and apologies in advance for newbie questions!
I'm looking for advice on components to retrofit the controls on two Wysong 6 axis CNC hydraulic press brakes that have non-working Cybelec DNC 7000 controls, both circa 1987. The machines had relays and contactors for logic with the DNC controlling motion but the previous owners ripped them all out with no regard to any organization or retrofit. They left the servo drives, motors, encoders, tachometers, limit switches, linear scales, hydraulics, etc and all the wiring to everything intact so I don't want to redo any of these items if at all possible. The machine has four brushed DC servo motors with tachometers and encoders for X, R, Z1, Z2 and servo valves for Y1 and Y2 cylinders, along with limit switches, foot control, and ram pressure and bed crowning control by the CNC through (proportional?) valves that I believe are controlled by additional analog signals. I would like to re-use the servo drives (I believe they are analog +/-10v input), motors, valves and everything else that is already in place and seems to be in good condition. I need a HMI and would like to use a laptop with Mach4, maybe touchscreen, for programming and ops. I already bought a PoKeys57CNC - 8 axis board v1.3 and the Mach4 software, but it seems that the motor outputs are step and direction only, so I was thinking of converting those signals with DAC breakout boards for each relevant axis but I don't really know if that's correct or which boards to use, or if I can accomplish the analog outputs directly from Mach4 or some other method that is effective and more efficient. The tachometer outputs go directly to the servo drives and not the DNC, but are they even necessary considering the speed of current hardware and software? I don't understand what their function is in the first place. I considered replacing the drives with new ones but what (if anything) would I do with the tachometer inputs? Can they be eliminated/ignored completely? I haven't seen any boards that have a provision for them.
Can anyone tell me which combination of components would give me the best results?
Parts were able to be programmed on screen and the control would calculate positions for the back gauges and depth of the ram for the proper bend angle which I would like to be able to do on a new HMI or PC screen, but may not be entirely feasible. If anyone can help me with the on-screen part programming aspect of this project it would be greatly appreciated. I found the iControl Press Brake controller on ebay for $8500 which sounds perfect for the whole project but is un-affordable.
Marc