This is my first time doing a retrofit of a Fanuc 10T control to Open Arcitecture using Mach3 software and a Galil Motion Controller and a PLC, I'm running into a few snags (as I suppose everyone does first time around) and thought I'd throw it out there for the more experienced members to offer their solutions.

First let me layout my thoughts about how I am going to do this, and I would appreciate any comments if someone see's something that I am doing that could or should be done another way (or a better way?)

The Mach3 Software will "talk" through an addon to the Galil Motion Controller (Model 2143 - may be Enet or Serially).
The Mach3 will "talk" to the PLC using the ModBus Protocol.
All Limit Switches for End of Travel and Homing are going back to the Galil
All other I/O is going to the PLC

First Question: The Galil outputs motor commands of -10 to +10 Analog voltage to the drives (Axes and Spindle) unfortunately I did not look close enough at the drives on the original control and they take a Digital PWM Command Signal, my thought is there really is no other way but to change out the drives to accomodate the Analog output of the Galil Controller, unless someone else is aware of a solution to circumvent a problem like this.

Second Question: How does the Mach3 software handle Tool Commands, do I need to write a PLC program for the tool turret?

I would appreciate any insight that anyone could give me with regards to these issues .

Regards;
Norm Pepe




 

Cant help withthe drives other than to say you will almost certainly have to get different ones.

Regarding the PLC, I usually do the toolchange routine in the PLC ladder and then just have a simple macro to send the tool request signal from Mach to PLC and wait for the signal back from the PLC saying its done and Mach can then continue.

Hood