Lookie What I Just Got!!!!!! :o

[Marks256]

So yesterday i was getting ready to go into town (because a teacher owed a friend and I pizza for fixing the Highschool CNC mill), and i got a call from that friend. He sounded really excited, and told me to get over to the Middle School ASAP


Long story short, my friend and i got the middle school's CNC mill, CNC lathe, and robot arm!

Here are the pics (edit: had to attach them... imageshack is being dumb)

ROBOT ARM (got pic from Dan Kohn's Armdoid 1000 Project Page (too lazy to take my own pic))

There is nothing wrong with them Mill. It works 100% fine. We even got the computer and hasp for the mill.

The lathe has a broken chuck, or the thing that holds the chuck. We also have the computer and hasp for the lathe. The key for the safety switch is missing, but we just bypassed the safety switch...

The lathe and the mill were too big to fit in my car, so it is at my friends house right now.

The robot arm, i think, is dead. I did get the controller box, psu, turn table, and gravity feed for it as well, plus the manual terminal. When the arm is powered up, the terminal shows a bunch of gibberish. I have yet to try it via computer control, because we could not find the machine for the robot arm.


But yeah!

 

[Leftyretro]

My former employer (oil refinery) used Lab-Volt equipment in their apprentice training course. It's very expensive equipment, mostly because it's coupled with training material (study guides, tests, etc) and is a limited low volume market. However their hardware was mostly first class in design and construction. Good catch at a great price.

Lefty

 

[Clyd3]

it must be quite fun to try and reverse engineer that robotic arm - or at least the connection with it - to figger what's wrong.
Have fun guy, you have no idea how jealous i felt when...
That's some real useful stuff. Edit: check out reprap.org, maybe you can help with the project (your equipment lines up)

 

[jpanhalt]

You are indeed fortunate. I hope your school is not discontinuing the shop classes.

Many schools in my area are discontinuing the classes, because of liability fears, they say. I've got some good tools that way, but it is sad to see the classes disappear. John

 

[Marks256]

I don't think they are discontinuing shop, at least i hope not... They must be in the middle school, as we got their equipment, but shop at the high school is pretty strong. As a matter of fact, they just added on to our school, and we got a brand new shop. It is HUGE!

One more year of High School left, and those CNC machines are coming to our dorm rooms with us...


If anyone knows where we can get some documentation on these machines, that would be great!

 

[Hero999]

Bypassing the safety switch doesn't seem like a very bright idea - I think you should buy a new switch.

 

[jpanhalt]

The lathe has a broken chuck, or the thing that holds the chuck. We also have the computer and hasp for the lathe. The key for the safety switch is missing, but we just bypassed the safety switch...

Looks like a Sherline lathe. You might be able to get parts directly from them. New chucks or the "thing" that holds them (spindle?) are pretty expensive. Do you have a closeup of the part you think is broken? John

 

[gramo]

Nice score Mark

 

[Hank Fletcher]

I saw a pair of the exact same make of robot arm on eBay recently. They must be fairly popular within the education system then, I'm guessing. I think the eBay ad said something like the school acquiring them sometime around 1987. You might try contacting the tech heads at various school districts to see if they have an old manual they'll let you take a look at.

Congrats on the score. I'm green with envy!

 

[BaCaRdi]

Nice one!, I never get lucky like that..lol

-BaC

 

[Marks256]

I don't know how much longer my "luck" is going to last, but i just got a MASSIVE HP server. It is so big 2 people have to lift it, and it is on wheels. It is a dual processor PIII (1ghz) with 4GB of ram! AND IT WORKS!

There are no hard drives in it, but oh well.

I have no idea what i am going to do with it...

 

[microtexan]

Mark, Great score! I have an Arm I think is just like that, in storage with all the documents. I'll check it out and check the docs.. Maybe I can copy them for you.

 

[Marks256]

You don't need to go through that trouble. I will just hack it or something...


Here are some pics of the server i got...
**broken link removed**

 

[Hank Fletcher]

I don't know how much longer my "luck" is going to last, but i just got a MASSIVE HP server. It is so big 2 people have to lift it, and it is on wheels. It is a dual processor PIII (1ghz) with 4GB of ram! AND IT WORKS!

There are no hard drives in it, but oh well.

I have no idea what i am going to do with it...

Wire the server up to the arm, lathe and mill, and let me control them over the 'net. Get right on that, and PM me the url. ;-)

 

[Marks256]

That would actually be a pretty cool idea... too bad the lathe and mill are ~20 miles from here...