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K&T milwaukeematic IIIb

S

skunkworks

Aluminum
Joined
Aug 9, 2007
Location
Holmen, Wi
Here is a blast from the past. (and now in proccess of a EMC2 conversion)

To explain the K&T
http://www.electronicsam.com/images/...DSCCurrent.JPG
http://www.electronicsam.com/images/KandT/oldkandt.JPG

This is a kerney & trecker horizontal machining center. It is named the Milwaukee matic IIIb. We had gotten it for the price of scrap maybe 15 years ago. Thought we could make it work and did. It has a GE controller on it that is all discrete components. Yes discrete components: ). It worked quite well for the past 15 years but finally died. It had linear and circular inturp up to 9.9999 inches (which wasn't that great but worked)

It has a 60-tool chain. 38"X36"X24" travel. Table that indexes at 5 degree increments. It has Ball screws through-out and tikko(sp) ways (think re-circulating roller bearings for way bearings)

Emc2 will be a nice match - it has ladder logic built in to do some of the tedious things like pallet and tool changes.

Right now it has hydraulic servos but the plan is to replace them with these or similar
http://www.electronicsam.com/images/KandT/DSC_0242.JPG

The emc group has done something similar to a mazak
http://wiki.linuxcnc.org/cgi-bin/emc....pl?MazakRetro
also
http://webpages.charter.net/bengvall...onversion.html

sam
 
The pictures bring back my childhood. My dad was a repair guy for that stuff, he went to school at K&T for the EB with the GE 100S control. I still had parts for those machine, about ten years ago I ditched them all, new accupins ,new tape readers, tossed it all in the dumpster...

You know that K&T was rebuilding the EB, they were called Gemini after the refit.

Your machine looks like it uses taper tooling? The EB used a straight shank tool with a pin.

Does your tool changer have the ability to find a tool, alot of the old machines either used them in order, or had ID rings on them so they could be identified by the machine.

Good luck with the refit!
 
This uses strait shank tooling - with 'barcode' rings for ID. There is a 'barcode' reader mouted that reads each tool that goes by. You can see it here.

http://www.electronicsam.com/images/KandT/conversion/toolchangerspindle.JPG

We actaully have 2 identical ones.. one we are using for parts.

I would like to play with the acupins - they seem to be linear resolvers. Digikey sells a all in one chip that hooks to resolvers and outputs quadture signals. That will be after it is up and running with encoders on the servos ;)

What I can't wait for is actually having full 3 axis. The original controller used the same servo for x and z. (2.5 axis)

I really like this machine - very very solid.

sam
 
btw - what was the EB? (I really don't know the history of K&T.) These machines were delivered in 73 iirc (local factory) and where scrapped in the late 80's. Looking at the maintenence logs... They had a heck of a time keeping them running.

Funny story.. these where removed from the local factory with sawz-alls. All the hydaulic lines and electrical. After we picked them up from the junk yard - I spent a good part of my highschool senior summer splicing it back togather. Thousands of wires and quite a few hydaulic lines. (1990 or so) Ran great until about a year ago when the controller finally smoked and we descided that it wasn't worth fixing anymore :)

sam

edit - the very first link in the first post should have been http://www.electronicsam.com/images/KandT/DSCCurrent.JPG
 
Last edited:
Eb

The Milwaukeematic Eb was a small horizontal N/C machine. X=24", Y&Z = 24". It was a one piece structure with a separate hydraulic system 15 Tool storage magazine. All hydraulic servo's and hydraulic spindle motor (5hp).

It was introduced in 1965 at IMTS. The machine was manufactured for about 7 years. Over 400 machines were built.

Control was a GE 100s with linear feedback. It used descrete components the same as those posted. positioning accuracy + or - .0005"
 
The EB looks alot like your machine but, no pallets and the tool carousel was the unmistakable. It was round sat on top of the machine at a forty five degree angle the tools pointed up toward the sky! You could spot the machine a mile away :).

I had all the books for the EB, probably a dozen to the set. I ditched them to, I wish I still had a few of them. I would have liked to have the pictures.

The funny thing is that the early NC machine books were very comprehensive. The programming book was more like a college course in NC machine. Basically it started teaching you Boolean logic. Then went on from there.

How were you guys keeping that old control going? I know what GE used some proprietary components on the circuit boards, even back in the 1970's they couldn't be bought. When did GE stop supporting the 100s? The 100s didn't interpolate very well because (depending on the exact vintage) it had very little look ahead, basically executing the blocks as they were read, later generations of the 100s could read a few blocks ahead.

If my dad were still alive he could tell you all the tales of early NC machining and the 100s control.

Tom

Hey K&T old timer, I was told a story that Teddy Trecker had a special elevator put in the office building so that he could drive his car in it and lift it to his office? What about having a lounge set up for guests with an open bar... Old story's, myths and bunk :) They were the good old days for sure...

Old Timer, I tried to send you a private message for some reason it wont go through the system, drop me a note.
 
We never had 'offical' support from k&t. We kept it running mainly because we had all the manuals and dad was very good with electronics. The manuals are very good - we lucked out and got most all the manuals, board schematics and wiring diagrams. Also what helped was we had another identical machine we could rob parts from.

Yes - the circular and linear interp was not the greatest. It worked but the finish was pretty rough. It could only make arcs up to 9.9999R and same with linear. It was supposidly thier 'precision' version of the controller. 4 decmal places. it would go where you told it to :).

No read ahead - it would read in 1 block at a time and proccess it.. then read the next line and proccess it.. We ran the tape for about 2 jobs and decided that was a pain. I made a simple interface using the computer printer port that wired into the optos on the tape drive. I wrote a simple program that alowed for letting the computer drip the programs in. also allowed for 'manual' input which worked 1000 times better than the bcd thumb wheels :)

sam
 
Talking to dad - I was confused. they where delivered to the local factory in 69'. we have some cincinnati lathes that where new in 73'.

sam
 
I started my career at K & T in 1979 until 1994 (then G & L). I worked my way from a bench mechanic to field service.

I did see a few EB's, and correct me if I am wrong, but I believe the MM180 took the place of the EB around 1978. I also believe that they built about 800 + of the MM180.

I am now a co-owner of a CNC repair company, and even as recent as last year we still had 2 MM180's we were servicing.

It's neat to see that people still have and remember K & T!
 
Just an update.. (we are slow)

I have been working on an h-bridge drive to run these servos
http://www.electronicsam.com/images/KandT/DSC_0242.JPG
This is about the 5th design.. (I had issues between non-symetrical current limit and blowing the drive ic's) It now has blanking and a little better layout..
http://www.electronicsam.com/images/KandT/servostart/schem/latestcurrentlimit/latestboard.png
http://www.electronicsam.com/images/KandT/servostart/schem/latestcurrentlimit/right.JPG
But - I seem to have some success now. I have tested the h-bridge up to 160v 20a. No smoke yet. These servos will be replacing the hydaulic servos on the machine. they will run 1200rpm which will give us about 200ipm rapids (2:1 and 3tpi.)

That will give us 20ft-lbs of torque at 20a - and 8151 lbs of force (assuming 90% ball eff).

SO far so good.

These drives are PWMup/PwmDown. They are being tested thru the pluto fpga and emc. They will be run with a mesa card once all the bugs are worked out.

this is a video of one of the previous versions running open loop
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qY-FCN5ZXkg
sam
 
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