Sharp CNC Knee Mill Refurb Project

rpseguin · May 20, 2018

I just picked up a Sharp-HCV turret milling machine, AKA knee mill.

It has a Mitutoyo Millstar CNC control with Mitutoyo linear scales on X, Y and on the quill. I don’t know what generation of Millstar this is. 1, 2 or 3? Anybody? Anybody have manuals and documentation for the control?
The Millstar controller, an old Pentium S PC with a whopping 4 megabytes of RAM in a case with monitor, does power on, but apparently there’s a problem with the IDE drive, so it is failing to boot.
The PC has PCI (but I think no PCIe) slots.

Also, it looks like they replaced the head with a 3HP Gromax variable speed head. I don’t know anything about Gromax.

My kids have been helping me clean off some of the grit and dirt and rust with Scotchbrite and WD-40. The Y axis definitely shows some wear and a bit of scoring on the ways, but the overall machine is pretty solid.

Anyone have manuals for the Sharp mill?
Docs for Mitutoyo Millstar?
Docs for Gromax 3HP variable speed head?
Recommendations for way oil? Spindle oil? ...
Anybody have a Millstar hard drive that I could clone?

rpseguin · May 21, 2018

I just opened up the servo drive box and it is clean and neat inside. Has what looks to be Glentek servo drives for X and Y axes.

Has anyone replaced the Mitutoyo Millstar controller with Mach 3 CNC?
Using the existing Glentek brushed DC drives?
If so, what setup/hardware did you use or do you recommend?

MJPfin · May 22, 2018

You need to figure out what type input signals he drives want. Analog,10v perhaps.
After that it's just converting the control signal to the right form.

But what comes to mach 3-4 or what ever, I would steer clear of any windblows based control.
Nice to see machine doing it's thing and suddenly windows thinks about something more important task to run.

Marko

lakeweb · May 22, 2018

I agree with MJPfin, I've seen it. I helped my son build a mach3 plasma table. It is ok as long as he never switches apps. And at that, there are always glitches. I build my mill on linuxcnc(7i92/7i77). Could not be happier with it. Never a glitch. With a preemptive RTOS you can change apps all day long and the CNC will always get first priority.

rpseguin · May 22, 2018

MJPfin said:
You need to figure out what type input signals he drives want. Analog,10v perhaps.
After that it's just converting the control signal to the right form.

But what comes to mach 3-4 or what ever, I would steer clear of any windblows based control.
Nice to see machine doing it's thing and suddenly windows thinks about something more important task to run.

Marko

I think the Glentek drives are probably analog 0-10V input.

Shared album - Ralph Seguin - Google Photos

Shared album - Ralph Seguin - Google Photos

(I'll try to get a better pictures)

The other question being how to interface the Mitutoyo linear scales to Mach 3 or whatever control.

Is it worth it to try to fix the existing Mitutoyo Millstar (so far I know the IDE drive isn't booting)? How good was the control?
I don't have much money to spend, so I don't want to go on a wild goose chase to get it up and running.

rpseguin · May 23, 2018

lakeweb said:
I agree with MJPfin, I've seen it. I helped my son build a mach3 plasma table. It is ok as long as he never switches apps. And at that, there are always glitches. I build my mill on linuxcnc(7i92/7i77). Could not be happier with it. Never a glitch. With a preemptive RTOS you can change apps all day long and the CNC will always get first priority.

Thanks for the input. I had (have?) a license for Mach 3 CNC from way long ago, so that's why I first thought of it. Honestly, I don't see myself switching apps much away from Mach 3 on a machine dedicated to be used for a CNC controller. Then again, I guess I could see CAD/CAM software on the same machine.

I've never tried linuxcnc. How's the UI?

In either case, do you have recommendations for interfacing the existing Glentek brushed DC servo drives and the Mitutoyo linear scales?

rpseguin · May 23, 2018

Pics of the Sharp CNC mill and the Mitutoyo control:

Sharp HCV CNC Knee Mill Mitutoyo Control - Google Photos

MJPfin · May 23, 2018

It could be that have a dead cmos battery on the control pc, try enterin bios and manually selecting the ide drive. Pc that old doesn't automatically detect the drives.
If that doesn't help there are disk repair services that could salvage the drive.

Marko

rpseguin · May 25, 2018

Thanks! Yeah. I was thinking the same thing.
Been so long since I’ve used IDE drives... :-)
Now I get to play with 8 petabyte SANs

MJPfin · May 26, 2018

If get the drive running, first thing to do is to take a complete Ghost image from the drive.
So you can clone it on to a new drive.

Marko

rpseguin · May 29, 2018

MJPfin said:
If get the drive running, first thing to do is to take a complete Ghost image from the drive.
So you can clone it on to a new drive.

Marko

Roger that!
I think I have a 300GB IDE drive laying around.
I may have an IDE to USB interface.
I took the drive out last night:

Shared album - Ralph Seguin - Google Photos

1.7GB!! :-)

The keyboard interface is one of those ancient 5 pin round DIN connectors, so I need to find a way to adapt a USB keyboard to it:
Shared album - Ralph Seguin - Google Photos

They routed the DIN5 motherboard keyboard connector to an external DIN 5 keyboard port on their case:

Shared album - Ralph Seguin - Google Photos

Shared album - Ralph Seguin - Google Photos

rpseguin · May 29, 2018

Knee/Z before cleanup:
Shared album - Ralph Seguin - Google Photos

After cleanup:
Shared album - Ralph Seguin - Google Photos

MJPfin · May 31, 2018

Oh yeah, looking good. I pulled one old drive from my Emco, it was 2.5gb just managed to salvage machine data and software before the drive died. New drive and windows and she runs.

Much better to use the old electronics if everything works, no point on fucking around with mach or anything.
And if something brakes its usually a capacitor or something simple like a regulator on the old machines.
Limits, brakers and so on are consumables anyways, they all have their lifespans.

Marko

rpseguin · May 31, 2018

MJPfin said:
Oh yeah, looking good. I pulled one old drive from my Emco, it was 2.5gb just managed to salvage machine data and software before the drive died. New drive and windows and she runs.

Thanks!
What Windows did you install? What was already on it?

MJPfin said:
Much better to use the old electronics if everything works, no point on fucking around with mach or anything.
And if something brakes its usually a capacitor or something simple like a regulator on the old machines.
Limits, brakers and so on are consumables anyways, they all have their lifespans.

Marko

I agree.

MJPfin · May 31, 2018

I installed XP, that was the system that was on the old drive.
Forgot to say that if you have a working system and you have disk image make a clone and play with that, no point on messing with a working system.

I had trouble with the software license after the new windows installation, but I had no choice the drive was dead. The moment I first started the machine I knew I was in trouble, the drive sounded lika circular saw.

Marko

rpseguin · Jun 3, 2018

MJPfin said:
I installed XP, that was the system that was on the old drive.
Forgot to say that if you have a working system and you have disk image make a clone and play with that, no point on messing with a working system.

I had trouble with the software license after the new windows installation, but I had no choice the drive was dead. The moment I first started the machine I knew I was in trouble, the drive sounded lika circular saw.

Marko

Progress! I got it to boot (Windows 95) after some finagling.

Now I’m stuck at X axis at limit alarm, but I think that’s probably because I don’t have it connected to the servo drive box/scales/encoders.
I don’t have a PS2 mouse yet.

Now I need to find a PS2 mouse and a way to clone this drive onto another IDE drive.
I’ll try again with everything connected.

Last night I tried a USB keyboard —> USB/PS2 adapter —> PS2/AT DIN adapter last night but it didn’t work.
Then I unplugged their keyboard remote cabling to put a DIN5/AT keyboard connect on the outside of their case and tried plugging in directly in case there was a cabling problem. Still no go.

Then I stopped at a garage sale this morning and he had 2 PS2 keyboards, so I bought them ($3 total). Garage sale guy said he might have some PS2 mice.

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rpseguin · Jun 3, 2018

And apparently it is a Mitutoyo Millstar II

MJPfin · Jun 4, 2018

Take that drive and plug it in to another working PC with IDE bus, then use acronis trueimage or Ghost drive image to save a complete backup.
Clone on to a new drive and try that it works.

Marko

rpseguin · Jun 4, 2018

MJPfin said:
Take that drive and plug it in to another working PC with IDE bus, then use acronis trueimage or Ghost drive image to save a complete backup.
Clone on to a new drive and try that it works.

Marko

I looked around and I have a 160GB and a 200GB IDE drive.
And I found an external USB enclosure with and IDE connector, so I’m wondering if I can do this on my Mac.

I don’t have any old PCs lying around, but I’ll be looking around.
I wonder if the recycling center would let me take one...

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rpseguin · Jun 4, 2018

rpseguin said:
I looked around and I have a 160GB and a 200GB IDE drive.
And I found an external USB enclosure with and IDE connector, so I’m wondering if I can do this on my Mac.

I don’t have any old PCs lying around, but I’ll be looking around.
I wonder if the recycling center would let me take one...

So, I hooked up the servo drive box and the scales and I no longer get the X axis limit alarm and the DRO works:

However, I’m getting a more difficult to track down fault now:

ALARM 104: Amplifier over voltage.

So, I watched the servo drive LEDs when I powered on and on each servo drive (X and Y), I initially see a green light and a red light on and then the red light goes away and the green light stays on until the Millstar software is running. Then the green LED turns off and no LEDs are lit on either servo drive.

I used a voltage tester and it is about 124V DC coming out of the transformer/rectifier/capacitor into both of the servo drives.

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Sharp CNC Knee Mill Refurb Project

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