Hello,
I picked up a 1991 Hurco KM5P and set it up in my garage a few months ago. It has Ultimax II control with Yaskawa servos and controllers and I have been happy with it so far. It's my first mill, and my first CNC. Prior to this my only experience was with retrofitted Bridgeport's in college. Compared to those this thing seems much more robust, more so than I need. And the electronic enclosure takes up more real estate than I hoped - crazy how far electronics have come. But, hey, it seemed like a good deal that I couldn't pass up. I have been using it with conversational programming on the screens. I know it's an old machine, but it has some issue that I want to see if can be fixed. None of them are really detrimental though. My real goal is to get to be able to N/C program. I'm guessing my best way to N/C program is to save to a floppy on my computer and then load it into the machine to download. As I understand, RS232 is another option, but I dont even know where to start with that.
Here are the issue I've noticed using the machine.
1. The floppy drive doesn't seem to work. The light on the drive comes on, but I am unable to read any floppys or hear it spinning. The Hurco just says it's empty when I try to read. I tried connecting the drive to my computer with a floppy to USB adapter, and I can hear it spin, but I am unable to read any of the floppys. Not sure if this means a bad floppy and/or drive. Any suggestion to try here? Is it possible to use one of those digital floppy drives to replace the Sony it has?
2. The machine always boots to a start screen (shown in image) that I must type 999 to reboot and then have to relearn the axis defaults. Also, any program/tools in memory is lost. I am fairly sure this has to due with the battery back up. But the place I bought the mill from mentioned it was an external battery that plugs into the board and not the CMOS battery like I've read about. Do I just need to buy a battery and plug it into the "TB11 BATT" plug on the board?
3. The cooling (mist and flood) buttons do not work. When I click the button, the associated light next to the button does come on. I know the MAC valve for the mist cooling is fine, and I can manually trip the relay for the flood pump, so its like the board isn't seeing the button as pressed. Also, I noticed there is a relay board in the main enclosure that lists mist and flood, but the associated light with the relay never comes on with the button. Not sure if there is some configuration wrong within the machine?
4. The "Back" button doesn't seem to work. Not sure if this it tied to any other issue, so thought I'd just mention it. I haven't tried taking apart the board to see, but all other buttons seem to work.
Any help on what to check or where to look on these issues would be really helpful. Also, any insight or suggestion on how to get N/C working on Ultimax II with a Win 10 laptop would be great!