I got rid of the old controller, swapped out for DMM 400w 57n servos and used a 7i76e because of the analog pots on the operator panel. I could've used g320x drivers and amt102 encoders, but it was a complete retrofit because i wanted to do a full build with the students as a learning experience. I have the old dc servos, have installed amt102 encoders, acquired some dc drives and will be putting those into an emco compact 5 that was given to me.
Phil T. The Feral Engineer Check out my LinuxCNC tutorials, machine builds and other antics at www.youtube.com/c/theferalengineer Help support my channel efforts and coffee addiction: www.patreon.com/theferalengineer Order one of the coolest label makers on the market at http://labelworks.epson.com, use coupon code "theferalengineer" and receive 20% off of your order 🙂 On Fri, Jun 24, 2022, 5:29 PM Gregg Eshelman via Emc-users < emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net> wrote: > Did you keep the original Animatics servo controller? I have one of these > mills but the only software I know of that works with it is the MS-DOS > software from Light Machines. > It's so antique it needs LIM EMS memory to load gcode into. Newer PCs with > a lot of integrated IO have their high memory area so fragmented that even > if they have a total of 64K free there's no pieces large enough for LIM EMS > 4.0 (or any other EMS manager) to remap into a single piece. > > > One of the Calumet universities had a CAD-LAB program that developed CAM > software specifically for the ProLight 2000. They had Windows, Mac, and > Linux versions. (That would be Windows 9x and Mac OS 8 or 9.) There's an > archive of the site but whomever grabbed it all failed to get the contents > of their FTP server so unless someone out there who was involved in the > CAD-LAB kept a copy, that software is *poof* gone. > > But CAM was all it was. It didn't directly control the PLM2000, it made > gcode to feed through the crusty old DOS software. > > I did get a copy of a bunch of information and software for those > Animatics servo controllers from a guy at Moog-Animatics. He worked for > Animatics and stayed on after the merger. He found it all on an old backup > drive. > Let me know if you want a copy of it. > > One trick the controller can do, which wasn't exploited by Light Machines, > is it can have gcode loaded into its internal RAM to run headless and > continually repeat it. Could setup up a fixture to hold parts and a cycle > start button to have the mill crank out a lot of duplicates. But Light > Machines did their software so a constant serial connection is required to > the control PC. If the connection is interrupted it's just like hitting the > e-stop. > > If you've made the PLM2000 work with the Animatic controller and Linux CNC > or something else, I'm very interested. I'd love to get mine working > because I've not been able to find a PC old enough to be able to run EMS. > > Would be nice to have my old 80286 with 12 megabytes of RAM. 512K on the > mainboard and three full length ISA cards. The first one backfilled the > main RAM to 640K and all the rest on the three was divided between hardware > EMS and XMS. Something like that, with all the extra RAM as EMS, could run > some very large gcode to a PLM2000. > > On Friday, June 24, 2022 at 12:58:02 PM MDT, Feral Engineer < > theferalengin...@gmail.com> wrote: > > How funny, I did a prolight 2000 with some students at my old high school. > I'll be putting up a little montage video on my YouTube channel pretty soon > > Phil T. > The Feral Engineer > > Check out my LinuxCNC tutorials, machine builds and other antics at > www.youtube.com/c/theferalengineer > > Help support my channel efforts and coffee addiction: > www.patreon.com/theferalengineer > > Order one of the coolest label makers on the market at > http://labelworks.epson.com, use coupon code "theferalengineer" and > receive > 20% off of your order 🙂 > > On Fri, Jun 24, 2022, 1:45 PM Ralph Stirling < > ralph.stirl...@wallawalla.edu> > wrote: > > > Anybody have a spare 6i25 they would be willing to sell? Helping a > friend > > set up his Prolight 1000 mill, and discovered his SFF Dell computer > doesn't > > have pci slots, so the 5i25 we got won't work. Mesaus and Mesanet are > out > > of stock. > > > _______________________________________________ > Emc-users mailing list > Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users > _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
