January Bob Wright. 1 P age Bob Wright

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1 The upgrade is completed using the 401 control board and three Step1 driver boards supplied as a kit by Conqueror Design and Engineering Ltd. The kit includes all cable terminators for connections to the boards, EaziCNC control software (Vista compatible) and all necessary documentation. This guide has been produced solely by me. I am in no way affiliated with Conqueror Design other than as a customer, nor does this guide form any part of official Conqueror documentation for either their boards or their software. Also, this guide cannot be considered a stand-alone document; rather, it should be used with reference to the official product manuals. Any errors or omissions in this guide are mine and mine alone. This guide is intended as exactly that...a guide. It is not a substitute for the appropriate level of electrical/mechanical skills anyone undertaking such an upgrade should possess. The Conect machine tool operates using potentially lethal voltages. All electrical and mechanical safety precautions must be followed. January 2010 Bob Wright seahog@btinternet.com 1 P age Bob Wright

2 Unplug the mains lead from the rear panel. Remove the communications cable. Remove the two rear panel retaining screws (3mm Allen key) and open the rear panel. To the left is the Conect stepper driver and control boards. These boards will be removed and replaced by the Conqueror 401 control board and three Step1 motor driver boards. The silver box (top left) will be disconnected. The box itself can be left in place if you like. I chose to remove it since I had a use for it in another project. In the top right of the panel is the power supply and the guts of the power distribution system. The power supply will provide 36Vdc to drive the new boards, 12Vdc to drive the existing cooling fans and 24Vac to operate the coolant solenoid (hidden away in the back right side of the machine rear casing). The power supply remains essentially unchanged but the distribution system will be somewhat simplified. The red board (bottom right) is the Ashe spindle control board. This board remains in place although some of the wiring connections to it will change. 2 P age Bob Wright

3 Just to the left of the Ashe Board is the power supply filter capacitor. This capacitor can retain sufficient charge after the machine is shut down to do some serious damage should you accidentally short it to ground. You will need to be especially careful when working around this area or you can discharge the capacitor before you start any other work (recommended). To safely discharge the capacitor I used an old car battery load tester but any relatively high current device (say about 3 to 5 amps) should work fine. Connect the load across the cap for a few seconds then verify with a multimeter (volts) that there s little or no charge remaining. 3 P age Bob Wright

4 While it s not difficult to trace the stepper cable back to its respective motor, I find it easier to mark each connector right from the start. Identify each stepper connector whatever way you see fit...a black marker pen works fine. Unplug all the power and motor connectors. Do not remove the stepper motor wires from the orange connectors. These connectors are wired correctly and plug directly into the Step1 boards. Undo the board retaining screws and remove the boards Unplug the wiring connectors to the middle board. Undo the retaining screws and remove the board. Finally, unplug the wiring connections to the last board. Undo the retaining screws and remove the board 4 P age Bob Wright

5 Remove the wiring from the terminal block (the block is located on the outer face of the inner machine back panel). From this wiring identify the three limit/home switch cables. The X axis is green and blue; the Y axis is yellow and blue; and the Z axis is red and blue. Again, like the stepper connectors, they re not hard to trace but labelling them now will make things simpler a bit later. Disconnect the wiring to the silver box you don t need to remove this box. 5 P age Bob Wright

6 Remove the communications port panel and cable. You can either leave this off to provide access to the 401 board serial port or you can make up an intermediate cable to bring the 401 port connection to the outside of the back panel. Remove the signal wires from the Ashe board. Work at the rear panel is now finished for the moment. It s now time to modify the front panel wiring. Undo the six front panel retaining screws (3mm Allen key) and remove the front panel. You might have to pry the panel out of the machine...gently...it s easily damaged! 6 P age Bob Wright

7 From left to right: mains switch (fused live & neutral to the right, switched live and neutral to the left); ammeter (spindle load indicator); Emergency Stop switch (E-stop); keyed guard override switch (directly above the E-stop); jog button control box (X- button is inside this box); and the remaining jog buttons. You will be rewiring the jog buttons, the keyed switch and the door guard switch. You will also be rewiring the E-stop switch in series with the mains live. Disconnect the jog button wires and remove the plastic box. Disconnect all but the AC earth wire from the E-stop switch. Disconnect the wires to the keyed switch. Undo the retaining screws and remove the front door guard switch. Undo the throughpanel plastic conduit retaining nut and withdraw the wiring loom (there are several looms feeding into and out of this switch) from within the mill housing body. 7 P age Bob Wright

8 The door guard safety switch has three sets of contacts two normally closed-nc- (terminals 11,12 and 21,22) and one normally open-no- (33,34). Only one set of NC contacts is needed. The switch will be rewired to use terminals 11 and 12. Open the switch cover and remove all the existing wires. Use the old two wire cable (black) and reconnect across terminals 11 and 12. Reinstall the switch on the mill and feed the cable through to the rear of the front panel. Make up another two wire cable for the key switch. The key switch and the door guard switch will be wired together and connected to the safety terminals (STP) on the 401 board. Make the cable long enough to reach to the rear panel. The switches are essentially OR d meaning that either the key switch OR the door guard switch OR both must be closed before the spindle motor will run. Clean the old solder from the key switch terminals and connect the four wires across the normally open (NO) contacts of the switch. You ll probably need to use an ohmmeter to identify the terminals. 8 P age Bob Wright

9 Clean the solder from each of the jog button terminals. Wire one side of each jog button switch as common. Using part of the harness removed from the door switch make up a new cable (8-wire) that will reach from the front panel through to the rear panel. Connect each of the jog buttons to the new cable and make a note of which wire colour connects to which jog button. Push the mains switch out of the front panel to gain access to the wiring. Remove the live feed into the switch (brown wire) and bring it back behind the panel. You ll need to extend the wire to connect to one side of the normally closed (NC) E-stop switch. Run the wire to one side of the E-stop switch and, from the other side of the E-stop run another wire back to the mains switch connection. Make sure both connections are to the normally closed side of the E- stop switch as shown on the next page. The E-stop is now wired in series with the live AC feed to the mains switch. Hitting the E-stop switch will kill all power to the machine. 9 P age Bob Wright

10 E-stop switch wired in series with live AC feed to the mains switch. This completes the modifications to the front panel controls. Now it s time to return to the rear panel to modify the power supply. The power supply uses a transformer with two 12Vac secondary outputs. The transformer is wired as shown. The 24Vac feeds the coolant solenoid through one of the original Schrack relays. 10 P age Bob Wright

11 Adopt whatever approach to simplifying this section you feel most comfortable with. I found it easier to disconnect virtually everything and start again but this may not be for you. Removing the three Schrack relays is a good place to start since this will give you a better view of the wiring. I would suggest you study the wiring carefully before starting to strip bits out. The live and neutral wires returning from the mains switch are, unfortunately, both black which makes it impossible to distinguish between them. If you can you re probably better to leave these wires connected. If you must remove them, label them for identification otherwise you ll have to use your ohmmeter to identify them. 11 P age Bob Wright

12 I disconnected and removed all three relay bases which allowed me to move all the Din rail connectors to the right. Doing so meant that the grey wires (AC outputs from the transformer to both rectifiers) were simply too short to reach. I didn t have any grey, so green is the replacement. You should note that while, clearly, the wiring must be correct, how you physically lay out the Din rail is a matter of personal preference you certainly don t have to bunch all the connectors together at one end as I ve done. The coolant solenoid operates on 24Vac. The live to the solenoid is switched through the normally open contacts of the Schrack relay while the relay coil is switched via the relay connector on the 401 board (REL). So pin 1 on REL to T2 on relay base. Pin 3 on REL to T7 on relay base. Run two wires from the relay coil into the left side of the rear panel where the 401 board will eventually be mounted. Run a wire from the yellow wire on the transformer to T6 on the relay base and connect the live feed to the solenoid (brown wire) to T8 on the relay base. Connect the neutral (blue wire) from the solenoid to the transformer black wire NOT to the 240Vac blue neutral connection. The earth (yellow/green) connects as normal. 12 P age Bob Wright

13 The photo shows the coolant relay base mounted on the Din rail and wired for operation. Be especially careful when inserting multiple wires into the Din rail wiring connectors...it s easy for a wire to insert above or below the terminal block rather than actually in it, so that what looks like a good connection is, in fact, no connection at all. Give each wire a gentle tug with a pair of needle nose pliers; if the wire is connected correctly it won t pull out of the block. At this stage you ll need to make a decision as to how to proceed. The 401 board is quite capable of switching the spindle on/off through the Ashe board without the need for a relay. This is the way I initially wired the system up. I discovered to my surprise, however, that the Ashe board is also quite capable of switching the spindle on/off at random without regard to what the 401 board is requesting. Needless to say an unexpected spindle start could well be a disaster. To be on the safe side I re-wired the spindle through a relay (Interrupting the live feed). I strongly recommend you adopt the same approach. Barring an act-of-god there is no way the spindle can start accidentally using this method. Wiring the spindle relay is much the same as that for the coolant solenoid. Daisy chain the connection at T2 on the coolant relay base to T2 on the spindle relay base. Run a wire to the approximate position of the 401 board from T7 on the spindle relay base. This wire will eventually connect to the 401 REL pin 2. Connect a 240Vac live feed to T8 on the relay base (it s probably easiest to get this from the transformer brown wire where it connects to the Din rail wiring block). Connect the brown live wire from the Ashe board supply terminal to T6. 13 P age Bob Wright

14 Spindle relay base added and wired for operation. Note the noise suppression capacitor wired across the AC line Spindle and coolant relays in place The DC voltage supply for both the rear panel and spindle motor cooling fans comes directly off the DC side of the 12Vac rectifier. I ve connected the DC output of the rectifier to a terminal block as shown, but you can just as easily connect both fans directly to the DC output terminals of the rectifier. The 36Vdc for the 401 and Step1 boards is available across the red and black wires shown. I ran both these wires along the wiring conduit located on the inside of the outer edge of the front panel. At this stage it s not a bad idea to plug the machine in and check that the correct voltages are obtained from the power supply. When you are satisfied the power supply is behaving as it should switch the machine off and discharge the capacitor again before proceeding. 14 P age Bob Wright

15 Lay out the 401 and the Step1 boards in the back panel and mark the mounting holes. Drill the mounting holes (4mm). Mount the boards such that the stepper motor connectors will reach and, if you decide to bring the communications cable through the hole in the panel left by the old cable, make sure to leave enough room from the panel edge to connect the cable to the back of the 401 board. Decide which Step1 board will control which axis and set the board jumper accordingly. Set the board Dip switches as follows: Boards X and Y on on off on on on off off This is the normal board default setting and configures the boards for 400 steps/rev. Board Z on off on on on on on off This configures the board for 800 steps/rev Install the boards I used #6 self tapping screws. 15 P age Bob Wright

16 Connect 36V DC to each of the boards being careful to observe the correct polarity. Plug the stepper motor connectors into the appropriate Step1 card. If you choose to, make up and install an rs232 intermediate cable to connect the 401 board communications port to the outside of the rear panel. Use the ferrite bead and wiring cable from the old connection. 16 P age Bob Wright

17 Make up a 3 wire cable (5 wire if not using a relay to turn spindle on/off) to connect the Ashe board to the 401. Note: number 1 pin on the 401 is to the left while number 1 on the Ashe board is to the top. Also pins 2 & 3 on the 401 are reversed on the Ashe board. In addition, for relay control, you ll need to add a shorting link between pins 4 & 5 on the Ashe board. If you ve opted not to control the spindle via a relay then pins 4 & 5 on the Ashe board are connected directly to pins 4 & 5 on the 401. Connect the limit/home switch cables to one side of the terminal block. Make up three two wire cables to extend the wiring from the terminal block to the 401 board as shown. Note that to find home the X & Y axis move in the negative direction whereas the Z axis moves in the positive direction. Make the connections to the 401 board to reflect this difference. 17 P age Bob Wright

18 Connect the jog button cable to the 401 board. Note that on the 401 board one side of each switch shares a common board connection. This means that only one common connection from the jog button cable is required. Looking at the photo above you can see that the button common (the black wire) connects to the 401 board at only one point. I ve chosen the common side of the X+ connector for convenience but the common side of any of the button connectors is fine. Connect the two wire cable from the door guard and the guard override switches to the STP (safety) connection on the 401 board (the yellow and white wire connector at the left of the photo). Connect the coolant solenoid and spindle on/off relay to the 401 REL connector. Install the bus cable. 18 P age Bob Wright

19 Double check all connections and fire the machine up. The green and red leds on each of the new boards should be on and the red led on the Ashe board should be off (relay interrupts the supply). Try moving the axis using the jog buttons (see the 401 guide for operating in manual mode). If all is well at this point, load the EaziCNC software and connect the machine to the computer using a null modem cable. Note that the communications cable used with the original Conect electronics will not work with the new boards. Set up the machine parameters in EaziCNC and you are ready to cut metal! 19 P age Bob Wright