Someday I'll Be Trained

I just returned from Precision Southwest in Tuscon. They had me working on their G&L four axis VTL that has been retrofitted with a OTT-C control. The sidehead axes have Heidenahain scales for feedback. The Z2 scale was defective and caused the axis to leap over what apparently was a bad spot in the glass. I was asked to disconnect the scale and just run the axis on the motor's feedback until the scale could be repaired. They just wanted to park the axis out of the way, so I didn't have to concern myself with zero return, reference counted scaling or exact encoder count.

I struggled for a day figuring out how this worked and it was NOT as easy as switching a couple of parameters like it is with a 16i control. The information was in the book for me to see, but was not obvious. Here's the main trick: The position feedback being used MUST always be connected to the same plug! So, one must UNPLUG the scale feedback and plug in the motor feedback to THAT connector where the scale was. This is an older 0-C, so things might be different now. This was the older incremental 2500 line encoder on a Red Cap motor. After swapping the motor feedback to the connector where the scale was, it was a simple matter of changing parameter 37.1 to a 0 to turn off the dual feedback to semi closed loop and all was well.

On another matter, check out this link:
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-11-12/no-sign-of-u-s-manufacturing-slump-as-machine-makers-outperform.html

Manufacturing seems to be picking up. That can't hurt our business.