[cfordyce05]

Hello all,

I recently picked up a 425 for scrap value that is in mechanically excellent condition. There are several control boards missing. Would anyone be able to suggest some various components to use in the retrofit? It has 40in/lb DC servo motors. Is there a Gecko product that would work well with these? I've been thinking about Mach3 or Camsoft. Camsoft seems to be a little expensive. I think I'm going to end up with a $4-5000 budget for this conversion. That would need to include:

VFD for a 5HP motor, maybe a de-rated one for use on single phase
I/O boards?
Servo drivers or can use the ones that came with it with one of those Controllers?
I'll find out in the next few weeks as I get a chance to look it over what other electronics I'd be looking at. Thanks for your input.

Casey

[cfordyce05]

Well, it has officially begun. After some saggy trailer moments and I neighbor with a 11000 lb forklift, the mill is in the garage ready to be cleaned up a bit. Not a bad haul at roughly $400 for the mill and transportation.

[TOTALLYRC]

Well, it has officially begun. After some saggy trailer moments and I neighbor with a 11000 lb forklift, the mill is in the garage ready to be cleaned up a bit. Not a bad haul at roughly $400 for the mill and transportation.

Congrats on getting it home safely. Nothing worse than getting hurt trying to save money.
Depending on the motors, power supply and how fast you want to go, the general answer is yes, the G320x will most likely work, even if you have to put in a lower voltage power supply.
How about a few pics?

If you have analog servo amps on the machine and they are in good working condition, take a look at the DSPMC/ip from Vital systems. It is more expensive than the smooth stepper but you get encoder feedback into Mach3 and a ton of I/O. Plus it has user settable pid and a bunch of cool features.
I use it on my mill and I am very happy with it. The Hitachi sj200?series is a nice VFD. I use a 3 hp one and once you get the parameters set, it is rock solid.
My build log is here.

http://www.cnczone.com/forums/showthread.php?t=66994

Mike

[Michael M]

I put a Centroid/Ajax control on a J325 Tree a few years ago, and I've just sold that machine to a friend because I lucked into a NEVER BEEN USED mid-90s J425 that someone was doing a weird DIY control project on. They'd put on smaller and slower Yaskawa AC servos and had an assortment of Pentium 1 PC/PLC board, desktop CRT stuffed into the console, etc etc. You can see some photos on my website:

http://www.eurospares.com/graphics/metalwork/tree425/

I'm putting another Centroid/Ajax on the J425. The new Yaskawa AC drives and motors are coming off and I'm going back to DC motors of an appropriate size.

Things to watch for depending on the age/specification of your machine:

The J325 had a lot of 120v contactors/relays in the cabinet. The Centroid wanted 24v and I think that is a lot more common voltage on more modern controls. Make sure all your stuff is compatible.

The Yaskawa spindle motor in the J325 revs to 8000 RPM. Some 425s use that same motor (my new one has a Mez (Czech) motor with the OEM Yaskawa drive). I tried a Hitachi SJ1100 VFD on it and it was hoooorrrrrrible. Gutless, no torque, accel/decel faster than 2 minutes from one end of the range to the other would cause a fault. Putting a CT-Emerson drive that used the spindle motor encoder for feedback fixed all those issues and with braking resistors it takes under two seconds to come to a full stop from top speed.

Does your machine still have the OEM spindle drive? If it looks like it is complete and might work see if you can get it to run before trying to fit an alternate drive.

The J325 had two cabinets and I was able to eliminate one with the new control. I suspect the J425 cabinet is going to look noticably emptier when I get done with this control swap as there are lots of little boxes and panels and boards that were put in by the prior owner. Here's what it looked like when I bought it:



I'm not an electronics person. I can manage basic wiring. I found the Centroid conversion to be reasonably straight forward and I didn't have to do a lot of mixing/matching/tuning of breakout boards and drivers, or wondering if major parts were going to work with other components from a different manufacturer.

There are no doubt a number of different controls/parts that can be made to work. Another friend of mine is just getting his J325 going and he went with more of a mix and match conversion. But I didn't want to have control conversion as a hobby, I just wanted to get the machine working so I could use it.

Your mileage may vary.

FYI, the 425s were made by TOS in the Czech Republic and are still a current model, the FV30.



cheers,
Michael

[cfordyce05]

That is one clean machine! Mine is covered in production remains. I saw that you have the same spindle motor as I do. I would like to put a timing belt on mine for rigid tapping.

The OEM Yaskawa VFD is shot. That is one of the reasons this machine has been out of production for a few years. Management didn't want to fix it.

I wonder if the Czech parts fit the 425...It sounds like the spindle might have some bearing noise, but I haven't felt any Tree spindles, so I don't know what they normally sound like.

[Michael M]

That photo of the FV30 is a brochure shot from TOS. But if you were looking at the photos of my machine on my website you can see that there's not a mark on it. There was some way lube on the base, but the table is perfect, the paint is perfect, and it is a mystery to everyone why a brand-new machine was going through this odd control/servo motor conversion. Since the person who was doing that has died we'll probably never know the story.

After I got it I dug a couple gallons of chips out of the inside of the knee on the J325. That stuff gets everywhere! I'm glad I don't have to deal with that on the J425.

I had no intentions of ever replacing my 325 or doing another control conversion. But the J425 was just too good of a deal to pass up. Besides, the J325 is going to one of my motorcycle vintage racing pals so I'll have someone else that I can talk with about making stuff for our old bikes.

You can see the OEM Yaskawa drive is still in the J425 cabinet on my machine and I'm hoping that since it is "new old stock" it is going to be serviceable as that would save a good chunk of money (none of which was budgeted for CNC conversions). If it gives me trouble I'll put another CT-Emerson drive in as I know that works and I get good support from the dealer. The CT-E was also a LOT less expensive than what Yaskawa wanted to sell me as a replacement for the old drive on the J325. The NOS Yaskawa drives I've seen on eBay haven't been much less money than the current CT-E was.

TOS made the J425 (and as far as I know the J325 too) and you'll find lots of metric fasteners. In the early days they must have been mainly selling the iron to Tree, who'd then put on the Dynapath control and Baldor servos and US-made DC power supplies and contactors/relays. I haven't gotten very far into the cabinet on the J425 (the machine won't arrive home until next week) but I've found more Czech parts - the spindle motor, a 240/120/24 transformer, and probably some other small stuff once I get into it. The TOS mills sold in Europe look to be equipped with Heidenhain controls.

Zoran at 3S should be able to sort out your spindle if it needs repairs. 3S did a spindle rebuild for another J425 owner I know and he was happy with the results.

I think you'll like the 325/425 machines. They are pretty beefy but still reasonably compact. It would be nice to have more than 6" of controlled Z travel (I saw a photo of a new TOS machine which is the 425 base/knee/table with a VMC style "floating head", which is something I'd never seen before) but if it did I probably couldn't squeeze it into the garage.

Chip control is an issue, especially in a crowded garage. I made a steel framework that bolted to t-nuts in the table of the 325 and had removeable galvanized steel panels for acess. I also put a 3' wide sheet of neoprene on the back of the carriage and attached under the ram and used some ropes and pulleys and weights to keep that taut as the carriage/knee moved so it wouldn't pinch. It is pretty Rube Goldberg, but it works. I really don't like chips getting on the ways.

Rigid tapping would be cool to have but I've got a self-reversing Tapmatic and that seems to work really well and doesn't require the motor to stop and start in reverse. The one drawback to the Tapmatic is it is pretty long once you get it in a tool holder with a 1/2" tap installed, so there's not a lot of free Z left.

Did you get any documentation with your J425? Parameter sheets for the Yaskawa drive etc? I called Ted at Eagle Machine yesterday (they bought the rights to Tree as well as Dan Thorsen's business) and he had the file on my machine and is sending me a copy of the spindle drive parameter sheet. If you got a sheet with yours I'd be interested in getting a good scan of it so I can compare the settings with what Ted is sending me.

cheers,
Michael

[cfordyce05]

I got I think three different 425 manuals and I Dynapath 40-60M manual. I don't know if I got any datasheets on the spindle drive. Is Eagle machine separate from 3S? Do you know how much the spindle rebuild was?

[Michael M]

I've got a J325 manual that shows the type 3 spindle as used in my J425 and I'll pass the other J325 manual along to the new owner of my machine (why so many different manual versions?). If you decide you've got more J425 manuals than you need let me know as there may be some info in one that would be worth having.

On the J325 the spindle params sheet was inside the cabinet in the holder for the manual, just a single sheet of paper separate from everything else.

http://www.eaglemachinetool.com/

http://www.3sincorporated.com/

I don't know how much the spindle rebuild was but I'd expect it will be at least $1500-2000 depending on how much work/parts go into it. Figure new bearings at minimum, and those aren't cheap. Give Zoran a call and he can give you some ball-park estimates.

cheers,
Michael

[cfordyce05]

I took a look at the servos and they are indeed 40lb/in Baldor DC servos. They have a 180V max, 4200 or 4500 rpm, 13.4A continuous and 70A peak. Is the Gecko 320X still going to cut the mustard on these? They have a 20A peak. I couldn't quite read all of the encoder details. All I could get was 500(maybe a slash?) 1. What does this mean?
Thanks

[Michael M]

That should be 500L for 500 lines on the encoder. That was the standard one on my 325 Baldor motors. I don't know anything about the Geckos so someone else will have to help you on their suitability.

ETA: FYI I've attached a photo of the dataplate from one of the motors on my J325.

cheers,
Michael

[cfordyce05]

I was looking through the Dynapath manual and found that I have Baldor UM4 servo drives. http://www.baldor.com/products/motioncontrol/um.asp Hopefully they work, because they look like they're decent drives.

Also, I was reading through the EMC2 manual and I'm starting to lean that way. It looks like it is a fairly powerful control system.

[samco]

emc2 with expensive hardware will run +/-10v style drives.

Mesa and pico off the top of my head.

http://wiki.linuxcnc.org/cgi-bin/emc...orted_Hardware

sam

[Michael M]

Casey, I've been gutting the cabinet from my J425 today. Just in case you lack complete documentation (as I do) the louvered box on the back of the cabinet (the spindle drive side) is where the braking resistors live.

You probably have two transformers on the floor of the cabinet with a silver box labeled Z1 between them. Z1 is your electromagnetic interference filter. I was able to find a reference (Word) document on Google and get it translated from the Czech. Until then I didn't have any idea what it was. Let me know if you want me to send that to you. You probably won't have any use for the information but you never know . . .

I sure wish the big DC power supply transformer was sitting in the T1 spot on the floor of the cabinet. I left a message with the friend that I got the machine from to see if he saw a big transformer lurking in a corner of the deceased's shop, but I suspect I'm going to have to buy a replacement. It was surplus once they decided to go with AC servos.

cheers,
Michael

[lavrgs]

I am in the process of retrofitting a Tree 325. If you watch ebay and various other auction sites you can stay way below your $5000 budget. I used Gecko G320s but I would consider Viper drives to to get full speed out of the servo motors. I used a Campbell design brak out board and run the machine with Mach 3. I was able to get a 10 year old brand new VFD for less than $300 and have just under 2200 invested with 975 of that being shipping aqnd rigging.
I just got all three axes working and cut a few chips, now I am trying to get Mach 3 to control the spindle. I still need to make a panel for my control box to mount the monitor, estop and jog wheel...probably a few other items as well... but I will need more i/o.
The Trees seem to be extremely solid machine but there is limited support for doing things cheap.

I'd be glad to answer any questions but I know from personal experience that the G320x may be hit or miss depending on your encoders. My 325 does not have digital encoders and since the G320x is set up to detect encoder failure any voltage between 0-5 will make it think the encoders are failing. I bought a single CUI AMT-102 to test but I need to make a bracket to mount it. My flexible coupler ran out too much so that caused drive faults. In fact I'd like to borrow a dead motor to make a proper support

Bill

[Michael M]

Bill, it sounds like you and Casey are not too far away from each other.

Just how much is available in "hobby" conversion parts for a higher-power machine like the J425? The servo motors are roughly 30% more powerful than those on the J325 which are certainly more powerful than the typical mill-drill conversion is going to use.

There is of course the trade-off between "take my money and give me some workable parts that are known to play together well right now" vs "I'll spend less money sometime between now and someday depending on if I see what I think I need offered for less money and beat out the other guy trying to buy it."

There's nothing wrong or better about being at either end of that continuum. Everyone has a budget, it just usually isn't the same budget. I'm at a point where spending reasonable sums of money to save me time and aggro seems like a worthwhile tradeoff. I don't want my challenges to be very challenging, and if I'm trying to get tools going so I can make parts for my bikes I'd prefer to avoid any challenges that I possibly can. Making the parts is often way more challenging than I prefer, I don't need to add to it.

The amount of expertise you have can also play a big part in the decision. If you are a skilled electronics person then scrounging for super deals that you are sure you can make work may be just fine. If you haven't got much of a clue and you don't like imposing too much on the kindness of those who do then you may tend to go for more of a turn-key solution.

The process of doing a conversion is probably not terribly difficult. But gaining the knowledge to be able to accurately pick some obscure part off of eBay and be sure that it WILL work can be quite a different story. Even if you are sure that it will work, making it work can be an additional source of aggro.

cheers,
Michael

[lavrgs]

At a base level you are supplying a servo with voltage. My Baldors are 100vdc motors but the Gecko can only use 80vdc max. I lose 20% of top speed right off the bat...but it's still plenty fast...If I'd known earlier that I wouldn't have to pay $1400 for a VFD I probably would have bought the Viper drives to get more volts to the motors. Running with a PC and parallel port gives you 9 i/os which get used pretty quick- 3 servos, 3 limit switches, spindle, and spindle drive...1 left but with modbus I can get 128 more pretty quick. Since I haven't run anything but manual machines having the 1x 10x 100x, spindle override, feed override...etc controlled with switches hasn't spoiled me. Mach 3 does all of that, maybe a bit cumbersome but functional.
Trade offs are the name of the game. I trade my time to save money and I enjoy the challenge. So far in my limited time making parts I've found ProE to Mastercam to Mach 3 is a very simple way to make complex parts. I now need to work on making my mill do some turning because I don't have a lathe and I need some turned parts..sounds like a lathe tool in the vise and controlling x and z but what else do I need to know?


Hillsboro Oregon...I'm in Tualatin

[Michael M]

Bill, you may be surprised how quickly you start thinking "man, I wish these rapids were a bit faster." At first it is "astounding that the bear dances at all" but if you sit there and babysit the machine (either tool changes or just don't trust things to not go wrong) the slow rapids may start to add up to where they seem significant.

When I made that stamp for embossing a logo and "pat pend" in foam for a local guy I didn't have the CT-E on the J325 and so it was limited in both top RPM and in having lengthy ramp up/down times. Rerunning some of that afterwards when things were working properly saw a 20-30% reduction in run time, and since that was a 3-4 hour job with me being there to blow off chips, squirt lube and change tools, that seemed a significant time savings.

I guess it is like tires for me. I may not be able to use all the capability of a premium/sticky tire, but I'd like to have the extra performance available to me in case I either get better or do something that pushes me briefly into that higher part of the performance envelope. It doesn't mean slicks on the street bike, but sport compound is nice.

Different strokes for different folks.

ETA: I'd definitely trade off slower table speeds for more spindle speed if the money could only go for one or the other. On our relatively slow speed machines a lot of the cutters have the spindle maxed out, and they would actually benefit from a 3-4X spindle speeder to run at a more optimum speed.

cheers,
Michael

[lavrgs]

Michael I know what you mean, after riding my MV F4 750 for awhile I felt like I needed more...(wrong)

[cfordyce05]

Well, I scored a VFD yesterday from work that I think may have previously been on the machine. It is a Yaskawa G3 series: CIMR-G3U27P5. It is a 10HP, so it may work for my derating that I needed for single phase. Michael, is this the drive the parameters sheet you have would go to?

[Michael M]

Casey, this is the sheet I got that looks to be for the G3 series:

http://www.eurospares.com/graphics/m...aParams001.pdf

The Mez motor in mine says 4KW so you may have enough room for the derating. 7.5KW is 10 hp, and 4KW is 5.3hp. Even if you are a little on the low side to get full power how often do you imagine you'll be burying a big cutter deep enough to stall the motor? I seem to mostly run 1/2 EMs and they don't seem to tax the J325 at all.

I don't know what motor an "MT3 06" is. Those G3 freq params are different from what are in my G5 inverter. If you've got the same motor Mez motor I'd suggest you look at the numbers in the sheets for the G5 that are in that same folder on my website.

cheers,
Michael