Help Identifying Electronics System in Unknown Mill

If this does not belong here, please feel free to let me know and point me in the right location to post about this, or if my question is even valid and I should be asking a different question.

Also, please understand that I am not a machinist, so I really have no intimate knowledge about the mill itself, I merely want to find a wiring diagram or something of that nature and rewire this thing so that my friend can use it as a CNC mill.

My friend and I purchased this mill from a shop for $500 under the assumption that it was entirely manual in nature so that my buddy could make motorcycle parts. After the daunting task of getting it back to our shop, I started poking around inside of it and noticed what seems to be parrellel ports to hook the machine up to a computer, thus making me think that perhaps at some point this thing was computer controlled.

All of the date stickers point to the machine being manufactured in 1988
The transformer for the motherboards and the motherboards themselves are labeled as being "Axis Systems"
Model number is 29992-39

So again all I am looking for is some sort of wiring diagram or at least be pointed in the right direction of where I need to search in order to either rewire or refurbish this thing back into a CNC mill.

Thanks for your time.

Plainly speaking, "You done bought a pup".

What you want may not be available. It looks a bit "shop made", possibly "shop modified", possibly custom assembled. It is not a manual mill.... you probably wanted a Bridgeport or similar, and that ain't it. It appears to be a partly CNC "bed mill".

I see what looks like a PLC, plus the usual sorts of contactors etc. This leads me to think that the machine was made to do a specific task, which the PLC was then programmed for. The rest of the machine also appears to be "assembled out of parts". Possibly shop made. possibly assembled by a production equipment outfit for whatever company used it.

While it would definitely NOT be my idea of a mill for manual use, I suppose it is possible it "could be used", although it might be a lot of trouble. You would likely need to gut the controls and set it up to run manually. I do not see how the Z axis (up and down) could be manually controlled, so that might be a stopper.

However, if you "want out of the deal", and to buy a good mill, you can probably get rid of that XLO head for decent money, if it is stock (not modified for just one purpose).

Or, find a horizontal mill and put that head on the overarm.

I think that might be the original " Frankenmill ".

Regards Tyrone.

Agree with JST that its unlikely to be CNC. Probably an electronic version of the hydraulically operated production mills that were common before CNC got going. PLC would have been programmed with the moves needed to make the part in essentially the same way that the stops and hydraulic valves would have been set in a hydraulic system.

If the necessary motor are still there it may well be feasible to fit an economy range DRO box with scales on each axis and watch the outputs as you drive it manually with a joystick or hand pulse generator. Maybe MACH 3 could be configured to work in manual mode with suitable encoders on the screws. Or something could probably be written in LabView home edition. Whether its worth the effort of sorting something thats not totally frustrating to use is another matter.

I've written "drive a set distance or drive to a set point" stuff in LabView for scientific equipment control years ago and it can be got to work quite well. Drive me nuts to run a machine like that but it could well be made quite acceptable for someone who has no experience on conventional machines. Just tabulate your cuts and feed data in one at a time.

Clive

Tyrone Shoelaces said:

I think that might be the original " Frankenmill ".

Regards Tyrone.

Click to expand...

I think it's more like "Frankenmill's ugly sister".....

I really like that blue pillow block on the table crank....