Upgrading from an Anilam Crusader II control

Guys I have a small problem.

I have a 50" travel ACER mill with an Anilam Crusader II 2-ax control, and it has served me very well over 20 years or so.
Literally from the word go, it was used only as a 2 ax positional machine for boltholes, mill this, mill that kind of stuff.
I have full blown CNC machines to do all milling jobs so this is simply a toolroom machine, but I have grown to be pretty fond of it.

Anyhow, the control appears to be done for. I am still trying some board level troubleshooting, but not going to give it much of a financial effort.

So, my question is: Does any of you know of a retro manufacturer that would be capable of interfacing to a set of Anilam servo motors and
the Anilam .0005 resolution glass scales?
I know Accurite, Siemens, Fagor and a few other makers do provide complete or partial kits to retrofit, but none of them explicitly state that their
stuff can be configured to be a direct upgrade to an existing control.

I AM NOT!!! interested in Mach 2 or similar stuff!
What I AM interested in is if there is a "famous maker" full blown, soup-to-nuts manufacturer which has a soup-only offering.

I have the motors, motor mounts, motor cables, linear scales, scale cables, ballscrews/nuts, end stops and all else mounted, ready to go.
All I'd like to do is yank out the old Anilam stuff from the enclosure, put in the new stuff, hook up the motor and scale cables,
mount the pendant in place of the old one, configure motor and scale parameters and hit GO.

I will try to call Accurite and Siemens ( perhaps Heidenhain ) next week if they have something along those lines, but asking around if ....

Oh, about budget ... I'd like something around $6K-ish, give or take a couple grand.

I retroed a CII lathe years ago for a special purpose. Won't tell you what I used as it probably falls into your don't want to hear it category.

Anyhow, CII takes bog standard TTL quadrature input from the encoders, and AFAIK anilam linear glass scales output that directly without the need for any middleman hardware. It outputs bog standard +/-10v analogue command voltage to the servos.

It's about as basic and common as it gets, I'd expect practically anything to be interfaceable to it.

Back in the day I retroed a TNC 310 which came with an editable preinstalled PLC and was basically the size of the input panel on older CNC, pretty decent product with excellent support. Got a decade out of it and probably got a third of my money back when I parted it all out.

Problem is the economics have changed, you are looking at a project that will be hundreds of hours, cost 10 grand, and will still be old and slow

You can probably buy a used something or other for half the money and zero time

gustafson said:

Back in the day I retroed a TNC 310 which came with an editable preinstalled PLC and was basically the size of the input panel on older CNC, pretty decent product with excellent support. Got a decade out of it and probably got a third of my money back when I parted it all out.

Problem is the economics have changed, you are looking at a project that will be hundreds of hours, cost 10 grand, and will still be old and slow

You can probably buy a used something or other for half the money and zero time

Click to expand...

Yeah, well..
As it is though, all I have now is an overweight drillpress.

Spent the better half of the afternoon calling around, not much positive outcome tho.
Kinda-sorta got some info that the Anilam3200/3300 controls were a direct replacement for the older controls.
There is a decent documentation set on Acu-rite website for the more recent Anilam stuff, but there is absolutely no info on wiring or compatibility details.
My motors have no encoders or resolvers, all feedback is from the linear scales.
The 3000 docs say it can use either/or, but don't know how the motors are connected or if they are even compatible.

Curiously, even the Acu-Rite Millpwr docs are non existant when it comes to the integration part.

have you considerd Centroid controls? They make some that seem very reasonably priced, depends what you expect from your finished conversion. Not hobby grade stuff for sure.

Does not look like Centroid could use my motors, and not sure how it would handle the linear scales.

Oh, I don't expect anything special from the conversion, other than it be as accurate as teh Crusader was with the scales.
Not planning to mill with this for anything that counts, but hole locations were always within .0005.

Watching with interest. I had 3 mills with Anilam controls. Very friendly and easy to use. Reliable until age killed them. I'm sure lots of them out there. Would be very good for simple stuff like the work you describe. I've looked in the past, and didn't find a solution for the upgrade path. There was a guy in SoCal that had an unused new (later) Anilam control years ago, but wanted about double your budget for it.
Good luck!

I am watching this with interest as I have an Anilam 3000 control and hopefully it will last 20 years or so....

Have you tried the Anilam parts suppliers that are easily found with a quick search?
They didn't list exactly what you are looking for but if anyone knows some info regarding compatibility they would know?

You might try Dynapath. I don't know what they are doing now but in the past they were put on just about everything, and they sold complete retro kits for many common mills. It's a nice, no-frills control, if you could make it work I s'pect you'd be happy with it.

Or if you could find an Acc 220, it'd do your job and last forever, not much to break in there

SeymourDumore said:

Does not look like Centroid could use my motors, and not sure how it would handle the linear scales.

Oh, I don't expect anything special from the conversion, other than it be as accurate as teh Crusader was with the scales.
Not planning to mill with this for anything that counts, but hole locations were always within .0005.

Click to expand...

Had a quick scan over the Centroid offerings, it sure looks like the Oak should do everything you need it to do.

Unless your CII was significantly different to mine you need analogue voltage command (velocity mode) output to the servo amplifiers, and the Oak appears to be able to do that, and you need to be able to plug in 5v TTL quadrature encoders, and the Oak appears to be able to do that too.

All else fails, I can vouch for the Estun drives and servos that Centroid recommend alongside the more expensive Yaskawa option. I recently used Estun to replace an old proprietary DC servo amp and motor on the 4th of one of my Hurcos, and was very impressed with it for the price.

Instrumentation Services - Home

This guy Mario may be able to help you, he’s not far from you and he’s done work on my Fryer lathe. Knowledgeable at CNC controls but sometimes pretty busy.

gregormarwick said:

Had a quick scan over the Centroid offerings, it sure looks like the Oak should do everything you need it to do.

Unless your CII was significantly different to mine you need analogue voltage command (velocity mode) output to the servo amplifiers, and the Oak appears to be able to do that, and you need to be able to plug in 5v TTL quadrature encoders, and the Oak appears to be able to do that too.

All else fails, I can vouch for the Estun drives and servos that Centroid recommend alongside the more expensive Yaskawa option. I recently used Estun to replace an old proprietary DC servo amp and motor on the 4th of one of my Hurcos, and was very impressed with it for the price.

Click to expand...

Centroid also an ALL IN ONE control with DC servo drivers right on the board.

OK guys, thank you for the replies.

I was just truly amazed that there isn't a single "plug-in-configure-GO" solution for those with dead ancient controls but still functioning motors and scales.
Apparently there was Anilam back in the early 2000-s when they've offered a direct control upgrade to the Crusaders.
Then there was an attempt by Acu-Rite to make a fully configurable plug-and-play control ( I believe it was the 3500 series ) but that project was quickly abandoned.

I get it. It's 2020 now, and most people either opt for a Real McCoy machining center, or pick from the few choices ( Milltronics, Fryer, Prototrak ) of toolroom machines.
Then there are those who have a knee or bed mill and upgrade it ( for anywhere $10K to 20K ) with all new stuff.
Those however with orphaned controls but still functioning hardware are left looking at either $10K+ full-on retro or a substantial amount of labor and piece mail to adopt
a new control to the existing hardware. That too could amount to near the price of an all-new solution.
Fine if you are an integrator and that is what you decide to do ( sounds like not a bad attempt at a business venture for someone ... ), but if all we want is a once in a lifetime resurrection
of an otherwise well working machine, then the cost just isn't worth it.

In any case, I've managed to nurse this thing back to life.
The primary cause was that the battery leaked, the acid ate part of the CPU board ( fairly large part actually ), which then shorted out the 5V supply line
along with part of the control bus. That then cascaded down to one of the other boards where another voltage regulator fried.

After about 10 hours of hacking away at replacing components ( thankfully all simply available stuff, caps, regulators diodes etc) and desoldering a couple bus-connectors
(which are also still available off-the-shelf from DigiKey), the control is back up and running.
BTW, I've made a typo in the original post, it was a Crusader-M, which is newer than the II.
So, all in all 10 hours + $80 in components I'm sailing again with this control.
Will however be on the lookout for other options in case it's needed in the future.

e-fishin-c said:

Instrumentation Services - Home

This guy Mario may be able to help you, he’s not far from you and he’s done work on my Fryer lathe. Knowledgeable at CNC controls but sometimes pretty busy.

Click to expand...

Yes, I've talked with Mario back in the summer.
Nice, honest guy. My power supply was fried then ( probably caused by the same issue ) and he managed to find me one from one of his contacts.
Anyway, I did not think of calling him this time as I was looking for a replacement and not a repair.

SeymourDumore said:

So, my question is: Does any of you know of a retro manufacturer that would be capable of interfacing to a set of Anilam servo motors and
the Anilam .0005 resolution glass scales?

Click to expand...

Have a look at the Dynomotion Kflop controller. Would work well for you if your willing to put the time into setting it up, but theres a little more involved then just plugging everything in and hit go.

Good work in getting it back running. Also thanks for posting clearly what you had to do to resurrect the machine.

Also thanks to those posting suggestions for what might work as a retrofit control.

I just went and looked in the top of the big toolbox. I still have a Anilam board. Unfortunately I tossed a couple of them years ago, thinking they were no longer useful This one could likely be repaired by someone that knows what they are doing. I think it's out of either a G control or M control. If someone wants to pay postage and insurance, it's yours.

Dang Mike!
While my control is ready for social security checks, that board is old enough for a nursing home!

What I can tell you is that it is not out of an M series.

The date on it is 1988. I'm pretty sure the M was out by then. I bought my G control new in 1990, so it's likely out of a G. I had 2 of those, just one M, but I thought some of the pars were shared. Maybe not.

Also had a Crud II on a lathe, but never put any parts on it.

SeymourDumore said:

Dang Mike!
While my control is ready for social security checks, that board is old enough for a nursing home!

What I can tell you is that it is not out of an M series.

Click to expand...

eaglemike said:

The date on it is 1988. I'm pretty sure the M was out by then. I bought my G control new in 1990, so it's likely out of a G. I had 2 of those, just one M, but I thought some of the pars were shared. Maybe not.

Also had a Crud II on a lathe, but never put any parts on it.

Click to expand...

Could well be from an M series machine, but those are servo amps, which were specified by the MTB, not Anilam. TBH Seymour I didn't know Anilam even made their own servo amps until you spoke about yours ITT. My Anilam used Indramat servos and amps.

I believe Hurco used those Westamp amps for a short time too.