I touched it, honorable matsuura, for the first time in a year!!!
I was waiting for some bike parts and decided I should connect the new motherboard
and check it out.
When I built the pc in this I added a pcb to connect the panel swithches and LEDs, so I could
run a second set inside the cabinet and as it made it neat. The original motherboard had a fault
and they replaced it with one without a parallel port. So I bought another larger[ATX] motherboard,
which meant altering the motherboard tray. I altered the motherboard tray last year but for some
strange reason ASUS don't comply with the intel standard for panel switches; ASUS have a 20 pin
header intel[and all the other old motherboards I have here] use a 10pin header.
I made the wiring from patch cable and used IDC sockets[like heard drive cables have]. I looked at the
cables and decided which one was obviously the one and replaced the socket with a 20 pin socket.
BUGGGGGER, I smoked some component near the power led terminal. I picked the wrong cable to alter.

I bought the spindle inverter on ebay on saturday. So I want to get the pc sorted so I can try the
inverter with mach.

So where are you at overall with this retrofit then? It seems like your project is starting to drag on almost as long as mine. I think you should upload some more photos of your progress

What spindle inverter did you buy ?

It's an Omron 4kw.
The spindle motor is rated 5hp continous,
so it should be OK. The original inverter was 36 KG
and the size of a small fridge. I sold it so it partly paid
for the Omron.

I have a copy of the smid cnc book, pdf copy, want a copy?

Sounds expensive, i've never seen anything with an Omron badge on it come cheap.

Yeh plz send me a copy of the pdf - dom at ukcnc dot org

Turns out you need the original drive to run the motor, it makes
VFDs fault at about 5Hz and the word from two sources, who didn't try and sell me
anything, was fit the original drive or another motor!

How good does your motor run at high speed and low speed?
The spindle motor was run between 40rpm and 6,000 rpm.

My motor runs fine at high and low speed though as the max speed is only 4000rpm which isnt a lot by todays standards most of the time i'm running close to flat out anyway.

I haven't had a reply from the places I mailed about motors yet but it does look like the very cheap
motors might not be the best buy, I have read lot's of motor spec sheets this evening.
I expect I will have to shell out one based on it's spec rather than any old motor, I am still going to
see one that is in the free ads for twenty quid;-) you never know it may be good.

I have no idea if I will need 4000rpm, I think I will want a low rpm but the higher one I don't need at the
moment but maybe with small carbide cutters even more rpms woudl be good, after all a ball nose cutter
just working with a small diam would probably want a lot more than 4000.

My spindle was 40-4,000rpm and the motor was 60-6,000rpm. There was an option of a 60-6,000 spindle and
looking at the parts manual it was just a larger motor pulley. There was also an optional 10,000 rpm, which
according to someone on CNC zone[gather he recently had it done to his machine] involved a bloke coming
along and punching in two new parameters, oh nearly forgot, the $1200 that had to change hands.

I am not looking forward to taking the motor off, I am going to have to invite my brother round one Sunday.

Don't suppose you know anything about PLC's. I was going to use some relay logic to control when the
spindle draw bar could be released, spindle could be run and so on. Asked my bro if there was any neat
din rail mounting logic devices, rather than use loads of relays. He sent me a PLC starter kit with software.
I read a few pages of the software manual and chucked it in the shed;-)

I've had a lot of experience with the siemens logo! plc's and can do pretty much anything with them but thats were my knowledge ends, other brands and models I have no idea about.

What is it youre trying to achieve? It might be easier/cheaper to use VBA scripting in mach3 or even brains

I originally was just looking for a timer, bought a few but they turned out to be on delay timers.
I mentioned I would be incorporating them into some relay logic. And my brother says he has
this starter kit he was given, so I have this thing. I wanted to do the stuff for the spindle
in hardware, after all I will use the manual switches untill[big long untilllll] I ever get the toolchanger
done. I would have had a play with it but I flogged my toughbook and don't have a floppy drive in
anything, well not one that's connected. It's a Klockener Moeller PS4 151.

If I had one in front of me to play with i'm sure I could work it out, however if you want results from PLC quickly without the steep learning curve I highly reccomend the siemens logo plcs which can be picked up on ebay for reasonable money. Using the logosoft software you do all the programming on your pc and then send accross via a usb cable. The programming environment itself is a real gem as there is no code, you do the whole thing with logic block diagrams. Its incredibly easy to pick up, you have blocks for on delay timers, off delay timers, latching relays, inputs , outputs etc and then you simply join wires between each block to make everything work. You can even simulate your program on the pc before transfering it to the PLC and you can also view the program in real time whilst it runs on the PLC to check inputs/outputs are working as they should as well as being able to read any counters or analouge values.