Centroid M-400 conversion to Mach 3?

[mauijosh]

 
Hello everyone I am new here and new to cnc in general (very green).  I have recently purchased 5HP MSC Vectrax 10X50 3 axis knee mill with a M400 centroid controller from 1999 with a 486 32MB ram motherboard and a whopping 4 gig harddrive.  The CNC7 software is very limiting and upgrades and add on options from centroid are rediculously priced. 
I was wondering if any of you would be kind enough to throw some knowledge my way.
Can I ditch centroid for Mach3 and still use all my hardware with the exception of a new computer?
This mill has 850 Watt Yaskawa servos and yaskawa driver boards.  The driver boards have one db9 connector each going to a card on the motherboard.  They also have one fiber optic connector each going to the same board.
I am a certified electronics technician so connecting the pots and estop etc should be simple. 
Thanks for your time and knowledge in advance.
Aloha from Maui

[HillBilly]

You can use the drives and motors. Every thing else is Centroid proprietary (Except the PC). What you want to see on the Yaskawa drives is a model# like SGDH or SGDM. These can be setup to accept the STEP/DIRECTION signal from Mach3. If your drives are CARR type you will need a STEP/DIRECTION to +/-10v conversion between them and Mach.

Darek

[mauijosh]

Thank you for your response Darek.
Here is some more info maybe you or someone else can help me figure out what electronics to use to interface to the servopacks.

Yaskawa Servopacks SGDB-10AD G
Yaskawa Varispeed 606PC3 Spindle motor controller
Yaskawa AC Servos SGMG-09A2AB   850 Watts 5.39 NM
Incremental encoders UTOPH-81AWF

Aloha