D&M 4 machining center Documentation?

[cthomas]

I am running EMC2 on a D&M 4 cnc vertical mill. I have bypassed the onboard control card and I am connecting step and direction directly from my computer parallel port to the drive cards for each axis. I am presently turning the spindle on and off manually. Everything seems to work great but I don't have CNC control of the spindle.
Question??? Could anyone share with me the schematic or the block diagram of the main control card so that I can figure out how to connect spindle commands to the machine from my computer??? If anyone has the docs for this machine I will gladly pay for the expense of copying or scanning. I have reverse engineered the individual axis driver cards and will share the schematics of those with anyone who needs them.

Thanks,
Cecil

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[Cocotmm]

Cecil,

I'm not sure if I can be of any help, but I'll give it a shot. I have a D&M 5 CNC lathe, which has a main control board, individual stepper drivers, and a separate motor control board. I too bypassed the control board and wired directly from a breakout board to the stepper drivers, which seems to be working. If your unit happens to be set up in this way, then the motor control board probably uses a DC 0-10V input signal to control spindle speed. I haven't done it yet, but I plan on controlling speed using a nifty board sold by CNC4PC that converts step and direction signals into DC 0-10V. It requires 12V DC, which I'm using an old laptop power supply to provide.

I had another thought on controlling spindle speed, but i have no idea if it would work or not. I'd like to try it, but I'd like to get my machine back together and get some workbench space back even more. Mach3 outputs a PWM signal that can be used to control spindle speed, and I had thought about running this 0-5 V PWM signal through an inductor to get a DC signal, then running this through an op-amp to boost it to 10V. I haven't ever tried using EMC, so this may not be an option for you, if it even works. Good Luck.

Adam

[cthomas]

Thanks for the reply Adam. I had found the 0-10V input on the spindle control board but could not come up with a way to get from G-code to 0-10. Most likely if we had the schematic or logic or block diagram of the Main board and the little spindle interface board we could utilize the stuff that's already there much like we are using the stepper drivers.
Upon further investigation it looks like ECM2 might give me a way of coming up with the 0-10V using the Hardware Abstraction Layer "HAL". I'll also look at the CNC4PC board you mentioned.
Keep me posted on your progress and I'll do the same.

Cecil

[vmax549]

DOes anyone have any info on the step / direction pinout for the D&M drives?? There are four wires. (;-)

Thanks (:-) TP

[zoppen]

Hi, I purchased a D & M 4 mill a number of years ago... It has sat idle though for the most part. However, I have a lot of documentation that came with the mill so I will see if there is any info about step / direction pinout for the D&M drives. I'm wondering what was your primary reason for upgrading to EMC2. Did you not have the original controller software, or was it to be able to run larger part files?

I'm also curious to know if it would be advisable to also upgrade to the anti-backlash X & Y leadscrews from "A2Zcnc.com". I've I have been considering a number of small part projects that this mill could handle, somehow I think this upgrade would be very helpful as well.

Best regards...

Greg

[boatlover]

Yes, I'm looking for the info too. I want to add a breakout board to the system and ditch the original mother board. The problem is the original stepper drives use four wires to hook up instead of the common three wire hook up.

Dale P.

dpynenberg@new.rr.com

[boatlover]

I just got a private E-Mail from Cecil. He said the site wouldn't allow him to post so I'm going to relay the message.

"The inputs are D(direction), C(clock or step) and +5v. The fourth wire is the negative side of the 5 v supply or ground."

Looking at the stepper driver board the connections are +5, -5, step, and direction.

The power supply in the D&M machine has a second output on the transformer. (Two small yellow wires.) It use to hook up to the mother board, which is now being replaced with a breakout board. I plan to add a five volt, voltage regulator and bridge rectifier to this secondary output so it can power the stepper motor drivers. These parts can be pulled from the old mother board and reused.

Now I just have to figure out what breakout board I want to go with.

Dale P.

dpynenberg@new.rr.com

[zerochance]

I just acquired one of these from a trade school that was pitching it out. Is there any path to getting its CNC functions running that doesn't require either lots of $$$ or a degree in electronics? I don't mind a litte soldering and wiring, or the installation of a few boards but I'm not skilled enough to build my own boards or anything very sophisticated.

I got a manual with a schematic of the wiring in it, but it is just a basic overall schematic of the entire system. Doesn't tell much. Glad to copy it if someone needs it.

[vlmarshall]

Reading the above posts, it sounds like you can wire straight from a breakout board or parallel cable, to the little stepper driver cards' Step and Direction pins, and drive it with EMC. When I got mine, the Z-axis card looked a bit burnt, so I replaced everything with a Xylotex system.(Edit: Not everything, I kept the excellent Puma spindle motor controller card, until I burned it out a few months ago by incorrectly wiring a CNC4PC spindle speed controller card) If I were doing it over now I'd go with a Gecko 540; the resonance dampening and bigger power supply make a LOT of difference in performance.

I started out with Mach 3, but last year I switched to the free Linux-based EMC, and I love it.

[vlmarshall]

I just acquired one of these from a trade school that was pitching it out.

Wow, I just realized you got it for free. Amazing find, congrats!

[zerochance]

Wow, I just realized you got it for free. Amazing find, congrats!

I can't complain about the price. The school actually has a heart-wrenching array of servicable CNC equipment that is setting idle. Either for want of simple repairs or because none of the instructors know how to operate it.

The D&M is in pretty rough shape, missing parts, and a lot of table divots, etc. Came with a box of parts that turned out to be from another machine (A Dyna Myte 3K CNC lathe- which the school sold years ago) I'll probably open up the back tomorrow and see what it is going to take electronically. Right now no signs of life when powered up, but I think it is just fuses.

[vlmarshall]

Post some photos! My table had a bunch of little marks in it, and some dummy had scratched his name in the front glass. I made a larger table that hides the table dings, a few clamps, and a bunch of t-nuts. Sherline parts are great quality, easily available, and low-priced... so you won't have trouble there.
You will be a lot happier if you change out the stepper motors and drivers, though. The old round-style steppers can't compete with the new square stuff.

[ibuildstuff4u]

I have helped several others in retrofitting there D&M Machines for very little money. It can be done for as little as $25.00 but most people end up spending about two hundred in the end. I would be more than happy to send you some information on how it can be done, all I need is an E-mail address to send it to. As a bonus I have off from work for the next 30 days so I you can even call me if you need more help.

Dale P.

[zerochance]

Ibuildstuff4u, Your machine is a beauty. Did you refinish? First blue one I have seen.

Here are some pics of mine. Forgive the ugly background. It is currently in 'the boneyard', I'll move it to the shop once I'm sure it can be saved.

Here's a pic of the front of the unit.



Here are the internals. Great shape. Firmware disk was still in the drive. Not visible in pic but there is a trail of brown goo inside the bottom of the case leading away from the power supply. Probably not a good sign for the motherboard, but I'm scrapping that anyway.



Last pic is the mystery tool holders that came with the machine. Don't think they go to this machine unless I haven't figured out the tool holder yet. Pretty cool tool holders, look like miniature versions of CAT40 stuff. Anyone know what machine they go to?

[zerochance]

Pretty certain that I will rebuild the D&M. I don't mind spending a couple of hundred on it. I read over a bit on CNC4PC's site and I think I have a bit better understanding of what I need to do.

Ibuildstuff4u, I'll send you my email.

If I understand it all correctly it goes something like this.

1: An older PC with a serial bus will be used instead of the onboard CPU. I've got one that just needs a little TLC to get it running again. Need to run a configurable CAM software. I keep reading linux here, hope I don't have to learn linux to use this thing.

2: Old PC will connect to a breakout board installed in the chassis of the D&M. Anywhere from $25 to $200 on CNC4PC's site.

3: The breakout board will connect to the stepper motor boards. A little elbow grease and solder. . .

That really sounds WAY too simple so I'm sure that isn't all of it. And I don't expect that wiring the breakout board to the stepper motor boards is a picnic.

[ibuildstuff4u]

I sent you an E-mail containing picts and a complete description on how to retrofit your machine. Please feel free to ask if you have any questions. I have off from work for the next few weeks due to a surgery so I have plenty of time on my hands to help you out.

My machine came blue and I didn't re-paint it. You have the newer version and contains it's own PC which gets removed during the retrofit. It's an old 386 and is quite useless for your needs. Your correct about the manner to retrofit the machine. The breakout board hooks up to the stepper drives and a new computer hooks up to the breakout board via the parallel port. You can use Linux software which is free, or you can use Windows software and run programs such as Mach 3 to run the machine. Mach offers a free demo which I'm still using and will get you going for quite a while.

I tried three boards from CNC 4 PC and all of them had different problems so I can't suggest using their products. I have a breakout board from Sound Logic and I'm really happy with it. I also suggest looking at PMDX as they offer some nice products for a reasonable cost.

You can have your machine up and running quite easily with just the breakout board install which will cost you around $200.00 for all the parts, or you can go all the way and replace the stepper drives with something such as the Gecko G540. The G540 contains four stepper drives and it's own breakout board for $300.00 and some new stepper motors for around $150.00 to $200.00

Dale P.

[micyek]

Hi there,

Another D&M 4 Mill owner here. I'm in the middle of a conversion that Dale P. has been helping me out a ton with. I'm going to use the Linux based EMC2, even if it kills me. I'm completely new to Linux so this is a real challenge. Between getting a computer running good on Linux and then learning EMC2, and then working all the bugs out of the conversion I have a very steep learning curve. Plus I have the hurdle of being complete lazy and not having much time this time of year. I hope to be making chips sometime soon though.

I decided to use this breakout board:

http://www.probotix.com/breakout_boa...reakout_board/

If anyone has any setup tips for EMC2, such as the micro stepping setting I would really like to here it!

Pics coming soon!

-kent-

[vlmarshall]

Welcome to the forum! I made the switch to Linux and EMC a year ago, ( on new year's day 2009) and I'm glad I did it. I've been using it quite regularly all year, and I've made more parts with it this year than I did in three years with that Windows-based program.

[micyek]

Hi vlmarshall,

can you tell me what your Driver timing settings are?

Step Time ns
Step Space
Direction Hold
Direction Setup

Also your driver microstepping

That is if you are using the original D&M driver boards.

Thanks for yout time.

-kent-

[ibuildstuff4u]

Kent, is there a way to switch the drives from micro stepping to standard? If so how do you do it? Guess I don't even know what mode my drives are in.

Thanks, Dale P.