I have begun tearing down my Langmuir control box and will be wiring up an Acorn CNC Controller. I cannot continue to experience these issues with Cutcontrol:
Random stopping, then moving, then starting, destroying parts
Losing Z zero at the worse possible time
Tool setter bugs
Random crashes mid cycle, and after restarting cutcontrol complete loss of original Zero values
I wish Langmuir would do what’s right, and either:
Open Source Cutcontrol
Sell a version of the MR1 where you could choose the controller type
Unfortunately, having been on both sides of Private Equity for the better part of 20 years, I know what happens to good companies after they take the almighty dollar. It is unfortunate. I am still a fan of Langmuir, but it’s sad to watch what has transpired with such a good company.
Only took about 5 hours total work following thr github guide. Only tricky part was the limit switches, but once I figured out the stock splice wiring was real simple.
For anyone contemplating, its not hard at all if you have basic electronic knowledge and can follow instructions and read documentation.
I’ve been contemplating the Acorn swap for a little while. Now this last week I’ve been having some odd issues that I think are stemming from the USB connection between the mini pc and control board.
CC basically “refreshes" is the best way I can put it. The program pane blinks and the machine stops moving completely. Have to home everything out and attempt to run it again. Sometimes it goes for hours without a hiccup and others it won’t run for 2 seconds without dropping. All status lights in the cabinet are good, so I’m leaning toward the USB. The last thing I tried was taking the isolator out of the connection and the machine ran to completion on a 45 minute program.
Between that headache and the lack of updates, again, on CC I’m starting to look for other options to get more out of the mill and hopefully avoid more problems going forward.
Yeah, after it took me a whopping 3-4 hours (most of which was me trying to find the files since I’m not super used to mac) to update the mac version of CC to the current Windows version and disable the soft limit alarm (who in their right mind thought that was a good idea???) with Claude, I’ve pretty much given up on Langmuir working on it.
I haven’t had the issues that Y’all are talking about with CC but, I defintely agree that there are things that I would like to see changed for the better. My interest is piqued and I’m looking at the Centroid website to see what all the talk is about. A few questions to those whom have crossed over…
-What version of the software are you using?
-Is it worth it to purchase the “Pro” version?
- Do the Centroid electronics fit easily into the Langmuir enclosure or are mods required to get everything to interface well (pics of your install would be EXTREMELY enlightening here!)
-Have you experienced any issues bringing in your Tool path files from Fusion?
-Website says that a SHIELDED Ethernet cable must be used to connect. Personally I never knew that there was a shielded version available- They give you one with the kit but if it fails, is a replacement hard to find?
I finished my complete Centroid retrofit today and cut my first chips.
I got the Pro Version.
Yes, but you have to reposition a few things around. I also 3d printed a bracket for the Acorn and it’s relay board
No, they are cheap on amazon
Note: I am planning to do a full write up on the conversion. The online guides found here in this forum are helpful but I wouldnt say they are completely fool proof. I got hung up on some programming of the Stock Spindle parameters and Acorn UI configuration options, but with ChatGPT I was able to get it sorted out.
The wiring of the acorn is simple. I bought some terminal style DB44’s to make it easier as I am not great with a soldering iron. The limit switch wiring on the MR1 need to be completely redone, but it’s simple. I also replaced the stock tool setter with one I found on amazon for 35$ and it works great.
I’ll post the guide when I get a chance but I would say if you are comfortable with electronics and reading somewhat clunky (Centroid) documentation, the conversion is not difficult.
I will say that I originally did my conversion using the stock control box.
Two years later I upgraded to a new control box, and I wish I had just done that in the beginning. The stock control box is not special and has approximately 8 billion screws holding it together. The mounting location on the leg is also super annoying if you want to do a quick/experimental change. It also has a pretty poor cooling design.
My new box is wall mounted next to the machine at eye level and has a hinged door so that I can make quick changes without uncabling anything. This is very helpful when you are making modifications to the machine, and one of the advantages to changing control systems is that you are free to make all sorts of modifications.
I used this box, which Amazon doesn’t list anymore but you can at least see the concept:
The awesome thing about this box is that there is a removable panel at the bottom for ports. I 3D printed a replacement with clear labels for everything as well as an air intake:
Another nice feature is that there is a removable interior panel, so you can do initial layout and wiring on your workbench without reaching into the box.
I did drill one hole at the top of the enclosure for an exhaust fan and a second small hole on the side for the power switch. I otherwise didn’t need to modify it.
Redoing the enclosure from scratch also gave me a chance to make a safer electrical design. For instance both legs of the 220V supply are switched, and all high voltage power is controlled through a contactor. My last to-do is to make it so that the e-stop circuit is in serial with that contactor control, so that e-stop powers down all of the drives (but not the 5V electronics).
One regret is that I should have gone up one size from this box. A taller box would have given me more working space inside. This is a lesson that I’ve learned dozens of times in my life, but I never seem to remember it when placing an order.
Here is a photo of my full box wired up. Electronics are at the bottom, power supplies and VFD are at the top, and the middle has bus bars with DC on the left and AC on the right. Everything is DIN-rail mounted. I’m using servos with integrated drivers, so I don’t have servo/stepper drives. If I were still using the stock steppers the drives would have been mounted at the top. You can see why a slightly bigger box would have been nice.
The great thing about a project like this is that it gives you confidence to potentially do a complete retrofit of a large (old) VMC, with centroid and new steppers / drivers.
Find a cheap dead VMC from the 90’s that still has decent ball screws, etc; and rip it all out in lieu of this retrofit.
I did do such a retrofit once. There is a lot more to figure out on a VMC, but it is a budget way to get a very capable machine. I’ve spent as much on my MR-1 as my friend’s shop spent on a Hurco BMC30/M. We retrofit that machine to LinuxCNC including the ATC (which was a lot of work) and got 10+ years of prototype and production work out of it. We didn’t replace most of electronics and just interfaced to the existing drives since large servos and spindles are expensive.
This machine is roughly the height and width of a minivan, though a little shorter in length. This is what it looked like on purchase day:
Here is some of the wiring when we were part of the way through figuring out the retrofit. That is a LinuxCNC-compatible MESA board mounted to the wall.
I would say it was easily 5x (probably more like 10x) as much work as doing the MR-1 conversion to LinuxCNC, but I used the same skills in both projects.
If I had a suburban garage or large shop with good forklift access I would absolutely have gone in this direction. ~20 year old CNC machines are being scrapped every day that are still in very good mechanical shape, but don’t have the capabilities of modern machines.
I haven’t done much digging yet, but I am just about done with CC as well and I just got my machine. I do have a Centroid controller already built for another machine (the machine itself isn’t done yet) and I have considered just changing out the necessary stuff in it to use it on the langmuir. I’d need to chang out the drivers and the steppers on the machine so i can get rid of the lousy open loop steppers. The VFD in the Langmuir, I’m assuming it operates on a 0-10v input from the BOB?
I have also decided to join the conversion group. The question for me then was which way to go. I don’t think I am alone, when I say I dreamed of modifying the MR1 to where it had a BT30-ISO20 spindle and some form of ATC. At the end of the day, I felt that if I really wanted to go that far I would simply move up to a next level machine where these are all standard aspects. I went with a Masso G3 Touch Core level. I realize that it is not the best value proposition compared to an Acorn or Linux conversion. I do not have the background knowledge of many of you. The time I spend gaining that knowledge is more costly to me than the difference in the cost of the other options. I also realize that I am locking myself out of any customization, or additional features. With the Masso I know that they will keep a continuous focus on maintaining the product. Even though the Core level only has manual tool changes It has a much-improved workflow relative to Cut Control. Essentially the attention to detail that is lacking from Langmuir at this point in time. I will build a new panel while I am at it. I will document my efforts and pass them along to the forum.
The hardest part on the conversion is just learning the Acorn software and configuring it to work with the stock mr1 spindles. There are some calibration things that are needed (spindle speed, encoder, travel distances). I still have not got around to doing a write up, but i plan on doing that soon
