[Surgo]

I recently purchased an old Millport Rhino mill with a 3-axis Anilam 1100 controller. If I had realized that all involved companies would be out of business and manuals impossible to find I would have looked elsewhere...but I digress.

There's no manual control of the Z-axis outside of jog functionality. But, the 1100 accepts a handwheel. There's even a port in the back: it looks like a 25-pin setup, but it only has 4 exposed pins.

I know from the programming manual that came with the machine that the axis controlled by the handwheel is set through the controller and not the handwheel itself. My understanding from this thread https://www.practicalmachinist.com/v...l-test-293705/ is that the pins should be Power, Ground, A, and B.

I doubt I'll ever find an original handwheel for this sort of thing. So I'm wondering: could I get something like https://www.ebay.com/itm/Universal-C...r/312259374772 and only attach the Power, Ground, A (not A-bar) and B (not B-bar) pins? I have no idea how "universal" the quadrature logic is, and if the signals sent by such a handwheel would be compatible. I'd just love to know if this idea would work or not before I blow $100 on the wheel. There is supposedly an actual hardware manual for the 1100 controller that has details about the handwheel, but I can't find it online anywhere (and it obviously didn't come with the machine, that would be too useful).

So yeah -- anyone have any advice on this thing? I just want a Z-axis I can reasonably control.

[tpodgwaite]

You are spot on as far as it is a 5v TTL input. Just have to dig up an Anilam diagram that shows hookups.

[Jim Dawson]

You could use one of these, same encoder without the box, cable, and switches. It will work fine with the Anilam as will the one you linked to.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Silver-6-Te...bQd:rk:18:pf:0