Wild TA-10 Innards
Wild TA-10; Innards.
Overview of units
To simplify documentation, it's often handy to separate things in terms of functionality as much as possible and document these accordingly. In an effort to make a handy/useful overview; an effort to identify seperate functions is proposed here.
Units/functions
Mechanical
Base unit
Big and bulky and heavy; made of a brown-ish green plastic. Opens on two sides by partly undoing screws located there and pulling side-panels away. One side houses the PSU unit, the other side provides access to the control-unit, housed in a 19" frame with backplane for eurocards (?)
On the top , the Piston/Hinge unit supports the table on one side. The hinges on the other side provide routing for power and driving/sensing cabling.
Todo: find ways of easily separating base-unit and table for transport purposes.
Table unit
Table-unit can be tilted almost upright by use of piston/hinge unit, as well as made to be perfectly horizontal.
The table-unit has a control for turning on and dimming included TL-lighting housed inside.
The table-unit seems to have a perspex cutting/working surface on it and provides room to a number of buttons on the left side to operate functions of the machine.
A half-circular 'well' on the left side provides room for material to draw on or cut-through, as well as a pen/tool holder.
The control-pendulum can be hung from the side of the table by use of a supplied magnetic strip.
The table has an portal-arm that runs over the entire height of the table and can move horizontally. This arm is home to the Y-arm cutting head.
Arm unit
The arm unit has a cable routed through it, half-folded inside and sheathed in grey plastic mesh. It provides signals for the cutting-head unit.
Cutting Head
The cutting head is the 'business-end' of the device. It is home to 3 PCB's internally, a DB9 to provide signals to the tool-attachments as well as switches and connectors to control it. Take note that the 'handle' on the unit is not quite solid and cannot stand much force.
Piston/hinge unit
Nobody's really taken this apart yet, and we've got good reason to assume that this is a non-trivial thing to even attempt. More to the point, we've received warnings about leaving the spring-assembly intact as re-assembly could be problematic.
It should be noted that the Piston does not seem to have any wires routed through it and is a purely mechanical construction.
Electronics
Power Supply
Control Unit
An aluminium 19" frame that's host to a number of (euro?) cards, hooked together with cables as well as a common backplane that routes power and a number of common signals.
CPU board
I/O board
Servo amplifiers
Table unit
Wire-routing
Lighting system
Cutting-head unit
Cutting-head base-unit
The Y-arm has an actuator that moves along it in vertical direction. We shall refer to this as the 'base' unit.
This base-unit has mounting-holes for an 'cutting head option-unit' that attaches to it and is driven by signals carried over a female DB9. Among the signals available are a permanent voltage, 'light' voltage, two 'pen down' signals.
The base-unit has a number of switches and connectors on the top. 'Quality' is currently of unknown usefulness. 'Lighting' turns on the light-signal on the aforementioned DB9 (and is meant to provide light onto the work-surface, underneath the cutting-head option-unit). The complex-looking connector (2x7-pins) is employed to hook up the tangential cutting-attachment; most likely functioning as a stepper-motor with positional feedback for absolute-angle driving.
There is a small white connector available, seemingly shielded and possibly used for some kind of sensing application. Current use unknown.
The PCB (PCB-H1) close to the switches is responsible for hooking them up, as well as driving/reading the signals on the DB9 connector. The place that the HF-signal is hooked up to is not quite clear. The PCB has two identifiable IC's on it; a 7404 hex-invertor and an LM339 quad voltage-comperators. The PCB carries the designator '339 170d'
A wide rainbow-ribbon cable runs to a PCB on the right side (PCB-H2); mounted next to a servo-motor that's also hooked up to this PCB. A total of 6 wires run to the servo's backside, containing a small PCB (PCB-H3) with two trim-pots on it.
The PCB-H2 also has a connector for the incoming signals from the control-unit, as well as power for all of the functions of the cutting-head. This cable-tree is ensheathed in a grey protective mesh.
PCB-H2 also contains a number of IC's. Sadly, photographic documentation has too little detail to make out part-numbers.
DB 9 connector for cutting head option unit
Top of cutting head, overview of PCB-H1 and cables
Top of cutting head, detail of switches and PCB-H1. PCB-H3 on far right. Edge of PCB-H2 visible on left of PCB-H3.
Detail of back of servo-motor, PCB-H3
Detail of PCB-H3, showing rainbow-ribbon and servo-motor connections
