How are lubricants classified & graded?

After reading the manula of the emco F1P CNC Mill and learning that it recommends 4 different lubricants for different parts of the machine I have attained a genuine interest in learning more about lubricants, so I have now asked a question on the chemistry stack site, asking exactly how they are classified and graded.

You can find it here.

EMCO F1P Step motor specs

After my last post I have learned alot about step motors. I have also manged to figure out the specs of the step motors found in the EMCO F1P, and as always the quality of this machine turns out to be stellar.

My sources are:

Article on oriental motor. Explains the inner workings of stepper motors beautifully.

Article on stepper motors courtesy Douglas Jones of the University of Iowa.


The step motors in the EMCO F1P have 10 wires coming out of them. The wires are connected in consecutive pairs, one pair per two oppositely facing windings inside the motor (10 windings). The motor has almost no resistance when turning the shaft in un-powered state. The stator inside the motor has 50 teeth.

From this, I have gathered that this is a bi-polar, uni-filar, 5-phase motor design with 50 * 10 = 500 steps and 360 / 500 = 0.72° rotation per step.

This kind of motor is less common, and requires a more complex/expensive driving circuit. It offers higher precision, less vibration and noise and more torque at mid to high speeds than the more traditional 2-phase designs. Also there are more ways in which the driving circuit can drive it.

This has made me determined to keep the motors and find a new controller for them during my retrofit-project.

Anatomy of a step motor

I decided in the beginning of 2015 to stop spending time on my EMCO F1P CNC machines instead of the main goal of the proejct. Ironically that made me spend more time on the CNC,because I need to get them out of the way quickly.

Long story short, I want to convert one to use a new control board but without sacrificing the step motors. So I have now carefully removed one step motor (Z-axiz) and opened it up to see what's inside it.

Based on what I have gathered from searching around and posting a question on stack exchangel, this motor is most likely a bipolar motor with 10 windings.

Some pictures:

10 coils

Coil wiring

5 Screws

Removed connector housing.

10 wires + ground.

Motor removed from belt

Belt drive with tacho generator

Heat-sink with thermal paste.

Reading Emcotronic M1 roms

I have sucessfully read the roms from the M1 mainboard using the TOP853 rom programmer.

The process was surprisingly smooth. I was prepared for all sorts of problems along the way, but it just worked. Uncanny...

I ran the TOP853 software from virtualbox to read the roms into .bin files and then i used bokken from the ubuntu repos to parse and look at the files. This is how I did it:

Open the chip select dialog in TOP853.

Type in 27256 and select EPROM.

Select a long delay for reliable reading.

Start reading the chip into the buffer.

Save the buffer to .bin file.

 

Open bokken and select the .bin file.

You can browse the dis-assembled code.

 

You can view the strings table.

The plan ahead now is to buy a few replacement roms (modern variants with identical pin-out) and copy the images over and see if they work. Once they work I can start modifying the code slightly.

Figuring out what to change in the code and where might seem harder than it is. I thought about ho to do it and I came up with the idea that the strings tell me something about what the code does, so all I have to do is to follow the strings and see which code pushes the strings around. Next I just identify which strings relate to which functions (such as loading/saving MSD data) and hijack those routines by jumping to an unused location where I have some space for my own code.

Well in theory at least.

TOP853 rom writer under Ubuntu

The TOP853 rom programmer arrived a few days ago and I just had the chance to check it out.

Since I run Ubuntu as my primary desktop OS, I thought it would be nice to see if I could get it working there somehow. Unfortunately the programmer is married to a proprietary windows-only software, and installing that under wine was a futile endeavour.

I ended up installing a small XP 32bit image under virtualbox. I had to install guest additions, add my user to vboxuser group and reboot to have USB working. I identified the USB device by detaching it and reattaching it and seeing which entry in the list of devices changed in the vbox USB filter settings.

TOP853 running in XP 32bit in virtualbox under Ubuntu.

Mor on this soon.

Emcotronic M1 EPROM + Static RAM + CPU

Small update on the EMCO.

After posting a few inquisitions on practicalmachinist.com and cnczone.com (major cnc related forums), without a single response at all I felt a bit discouraged. But to quote someone special; "When I get sad, I stop being sad and be awesome instead".

So now I have dragged out all the cards from the M1 computer and started probing them for intel (pun intended). It looks as though the card with the reset button at the back, called "R3D415000", or "Datacontroller" is the culprit.

Unfortunately none of my cameras are operational at the moment, so only a stolen picture.

It features among other things the following IC chips:

• 1 x Intel P8088 L6100335 <-- CPU
• 1 x Intel D8259A L4057497 <-- PIC for 8080 architecture
• 4 x Hitachi HM6264LP-15 <-- 64Kbit Static RAM (battery backed)
• 4 x Intel D27256 <-- 256Kbit UV Erasible NMOS EPROM
• 1 x YUASA Sealed Ni-Cd battery 3-51FT-C 3-5V 50mAh

I haven't bothered listing the rest of the chips as they seem to have lower level functions.

I have also ordered a cheap eprom programmer that supposedly handles the 27256 chips on this card. The plan is to read them in and look at the code (should be in x86 machine code, which there are lots of tools for). If I want to fiddle with it, I can probably write the possibly updated changes to more modern eeprom chips of the same spec that go into the sockets on the card. If I get anywhere with this, I will try to patch the code so that I can run my own subroutines attached to button clicks on one of the inert buttons in the display (there are at least two buttons with no symbol on them, that I guess are just legacy/future-proofing).

EMCO M1 update

I now have no less than 3(!!) EMCO controllers in my workshop. And most importantly, I have all 3 axes working in my original F1P!



After determining that my EMCO F1P CNC machine had some issues with the controller (more specifically a fried step-motor controller board), I was feeling the despair creeping in. I started googling frantically for spare parts and repair options online without finding anything reasonable. The very next day I struck gold. A full F1P system for sale at a resonable price and in "promised ok state". A few days later I suddenly had TWO CNC mahcines in my workshop. But I had bought a dead system, and the guy I bought it from just repeated his original lie when I called him.

Two EMCO M1 controllers side by side

Despair was yet creeping in. Then, by another happy coincidence I found a controller for one of the EMCO lathes (T1) which is based on the same technology as the F1P for sale at a bargain price (Thanks Torgeir G.)! After verifying that it contained the same step-motor board i was pleased to buy it.

R3D413000 Step motor driver board in EMCO M1 controller

And after some fiddling about I finally have a working controller! The idea now is to put the original machine back in order using parts from the second and perhaps sell it.  The rest second will the be retrofitted with new drives and a modern PC based control. So far, my searches have turned up the following parts that may be of interrest:

Control board

Motor drivers

This has become a bigger detour than expected for my original project, but really I had to protect my initial investment which was substantial. Now that it works it will at least maintain its price if not go a little up.

First impressions EMCO

Just a quick note on the EMCO CNC machine.

It looks kind of cheap the first time one lays ones eyes on it, but after tinkering with it for only a short period of time it has become apparent that is is of extraordinary quality.

Some of the engineering choices made during its design are truely free of comprimise.

For one, the computer has a sealed chassis cooled via a huge air-to-air heat exchanger that prevents dust to enter the electronics.

The electronics are spaced out with lots of clear to read maintenance instructions and lights to signify problems.

All the parts are of highest quality brand and make, such as the kraus & naimer switch with KABA lock system.

In the CNC machine itself, all the parts are made of quality steel, machined to perfection. Many clever solutions prevent dust and dirt to reach the contact points and ball-bearings.

The steppers have additional metal optical encoders to keep them in check, so does the spindle motor.

All cabling is masterfully arranged.

I could go on and on. In conclusion, this is a magnificent piece of equipment that I am looking forward to getting up to par.

EMCO in the workshop

Just a quick update.

I FINALLY got my EMCO CNC machine into the workshop. I have already started the work on cleaning it up and troubleshooting it. And here are some pictures:

EMCO F1P - being cleaned

EMCO Tronic M1 - without front panel

Moving 200kg alone takes time

In my car

My assistant working