Old Wabeco CNC mill

Hi All.


I have done a lot of looking around but I cannot find the answers I am looking for, hopefully someone hare can help.

I have been tasked with getting an old Wabeco F1210E, with factory CNC working again. I would like to get it going as cheaply as possible to start with, and once I can justify its use in the future I will look into upgrading Drivers, possibly Motors, BOB etc,

The factory software is Nccad, I do not have a license for this and from what I have been able to tell is that its not the most user friendly software, the demo version does not allow machine connection at all. I have a StarTech PCIe card coming to give me a parallel port,( model PEX2S5531P) .

I am hoping I can connect straight to the factory control board and get some life out of it with LunixCNC, it currently powers up and holds the motors from moving, I am taking that as a good sign. has anyone been able to do this? if so any tips on the software setup would be great image missing /media/kunena/emoticons/smile.png

 

 

 

 

 
 

Pictures of the electronics and wiring?

It looks like NCCad uses a windows front-end and a microcontroller for the actual realtime control: www.max-computer.de/x5e/firmware.html

So we would need to have a bit more information about the system to work out where LinuxCNC would be inserted.

(EDIT) That looks to be parallel-port compatible, this could be an easy conversion. 

Looks like all that is needed is to figure out the pinout of your step driver card
and then run stepconf using that info.

It does seem to be parallel port compatible, you could verify this by seeing if
pins 18..25 on the DB25 are grounded.

I will have a look tonight when I get home and let you know, to test this do I test them all to pin 25 and check for continuity with a multimeter? or is it best to do it using 'parallel port tester' when get my PCIe card? 

thank you

Checking with a multimeter was what was being suggested, I think. Mainly to get some confidence that it is actually a parallel port interface before you risk plugging in the PCI card.

While you have the multimeter out, make sure that the parallel port cable is a true 1:1 fully-wired cable.