Replacing cnc controlers on older machine, can it be done?

I want to do one of these also. Assuming you have a good spindle, screws and ways, it should be feasible even if you cannot use the existing drive motors. Some of the older servos may be a problem to interface with the newer digital electronics. I forget the exact criteria the steppers/servos need to meet, but it has to do with the signals between the motors and the board. I would consider using a motion board, vs a break out board. The advantage here is you remove the "work" of pulse counting, etc from the computor and it is done on the motion board instead of by the computors processor. When the CNC is doing complex motions, it does a better job if no interruptions happen. I have a bench top that does well enough with a breakout board and stripped down Windows PC, but I make pretty simple parts. I use Mach because my machine came that way, but would probably choose Linux if were building a system. I am not an expert, but am just passing along info I've seen in blogs or white papers over the past year I've been interested.
 
If you have a Fagor, Centurian7, Fanuc, Siemens, or any other commercial controllers and drives, they all require specific logic to run and programming to match what it is installed on. The Geckos are good for a smaller machine but most industrial machine use 3 phase and need way more power to operate than the Gecko can put out. If the drives use serial inputs, then you maybe able to use it. Some of the machines I work on that are 20 years old use a fiber optic communication system to send the information from the control to the drives. This is just some things to consider...Tim
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top