ATC for The Shiz!

Last weekend I acquired an ancient automatic toolchanger (ATC) from "Steamwise" Mike who lives not far from me. He has a similar Shizuoka (he has the more commonplace AN-S, unlike my oddball AN-SB) which is 90% the same construction as mine. It was also a Matchmaker CNC machine with the Micon controller like mine. IRRC, he runs UCCNC software, which was developed by the same Czech company that developed the servo drives I used in my retrofit. Seems very happy with it.

The front of the ATC unit has a sticker that boasts US patent # 3872743A from Feb 1973, held by Fadal. It's expired now but still available for download and of course it explains the operating principles. Some patents are very general and don't go into specifics of actual examples but others may resemble descriptions of actual products. This one seems to resemble the device sitting in my garage, so could be pretty helpful.

It seems that the ATC was helpful in the early development of the Fadal company - the ATC design (and presumably patent) was sold to Dana Summit for a decent sum ($75k), which enabled them to further develop their core CNC technology. This became known as the Bandit Quickdraw. Fwooaaar.

Interestingly, the history says "The problem we had with the toolchanger is that we over marketed and then couldn't meet the demand," says Dave. "Because of that, the guy in England that we were marketing too, Matchmaker, copied our toolchanger. They apologized for doing it, but did it because we couldn't deliver to them." Doesn't say where this one was made - but judging by the imperial fittings and US compts, it seems to be an import, so probably a "genuine" example.

I haven't been able to find a pukka manual for this particular ATC. It seems to be a very early version, probably dating from before the sale to Dana, judging by the front panel (marked "Fadal"). There is a manual for a Dana Summit version but when you look at the electrical schematics, it becomes obvious that the later versions were more productionised, with stuff like PCB connectors for the interconnects (mine has wires soldered directly into the PCBs) and triacs instead of relays.

My machine came with the optional power drawbar and chip tray (and engraving software) but not the optional ATC. The brochure only shows the basic setup but mentions a "32 tool ATC":

Here's my machine in its current form, showing the side of the ram where an ATC would fit:

This is the ATC on Mike's machine (with the cover removed), before a couple of monkeys were set loose on it:

Now to remove it from the car....