Machsupport Forum
Mach Discussion => General Mach Discussion => Topic started by: DennisF on October 12, 2007, 04:22:15 PM
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Hi guy's
Need a little help i have a Lagunmatic milling machine with a dyna path control something is down in the controller and dyna path was less then helpful so now i want to remove the controller and run it with my MAch 3, question is can i use the same drivers that are in the machine as they seam to be ok also can i use an interface board such as CNC4PC to run the drives.
Next question how do I actuate the direction on the drives to test the servos out when i installed geckos on my lathe i did actuate the drives moving the steppers just can't remember which wire and i don't want to fry anything if i can help it.
Thanks
Dennis
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Your servo drives will probably use an analogue voltage (+-10v) to control the motors speed and direction, if this is the case then you will need to get a digital to analogue converter for each axis. The Skyko Pixies are for this, also the Tecknix drives CPU board can do this but I am not sure if they will sell the CPU board seperately. You may also find that your servos have resolvers on them, if so then you will need to get encoders.
Hood
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Hood Thanks for the reply
Sounds like it's going to be envolved and complicated to get the machine running, would the machine's servos have encoders already on them or somewhere in the machine ?
Dennis
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Shouldnt be too complicated as long as you can find out which terminals are for the analogue voltage. The motors may have encoders on them or as I said it may be resolvers, some machines have the encoders on the ballscrews or even use glass scales. If you have some pics of the motors etc it might help distinguish what you have.
Hood
ps there is a slim chance that your drives take a step and direction input in which case you could connect direct to the breakout/parallel port. This is unlikely though but you may be lucky.
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The servos are baldor and there are no scales on the screws can i'll try and look them up on the net and see what i can find for info
and again thanks for the reply
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well i found a schematic for the servos and it say's encoder's on encoder blue print it shows +5 then ground next the letter b with a - over it then b next the letter M with a - over the letter then the letter M then a with a - over it and the letter A and all the color codes for each.
Dennis
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Where do the encoders go to? is it to the control or the drives, I suspect the control.
Hood
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it looks like the encoders are on the end of the servo motors the wiring schmatic leads me to think the wires go to the drive's.
Dennis
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hood
when you say where do the encoders go do you mean the contol head with the screen because there are motor controls but i suspect they are just the tipicle jog control.
Dennis
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I am meaning do they go to the drives then from the drives to the control (computer) or do they just go direct to the control?
Hood
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don't know i will have to trace out the wiring to find out, if the drives control the motors which is my thinking then i should be able to give them a command for step and direction aren't they the same as stepper motor's is manner?
Dennis
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has anyone on the forum that may have done a retrofit for a servo machine? iam sure some where
some has done this
Dennis
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Dennis, the drives move the servos but the computer control sends the command to the drives to make them move to the desired position.
Your servos may take step and direction, the drives I have on the Lathe I am retrofitting can take +-10v(analogue), step/dir or master encoder inputs. Whether your drives are capable of this I dont know, have you any idea how old they are? Even if you cant send the drives a step and direction you can get a converter that will take the step and direction from Mach and convert it to an analogue voltage for the drives, all you have to do is identify how to wire them up :) Have a look at www.skyco.com for such a converter.
Hood
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Hood
the machine is a 1988 lagunmatic with a dynapath control right now i would be happy to just jog the tables so i can inspect and clean everything up the machine has just sat in a shop for about 2 years with out running there were no manuals for it, i tried to call dynapath for some info but as i said they were not to helpfull and stated it would cost about $2,500.00 just to replace one board or repair it i find that a lot of money for a few micro chip's.
i can look at the drives to see if there is any info on them if it helps thanks for the info on the skyco i will take a look this is why i asked if how to move the servo motor's can i take the 5V or ground to step and direction to get the motor's to run.
Dennis
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Hood
The skyco web site what come up i am just clicking on the link you posted.
Dennis
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The reason the link isnt working is because neither was my spelling ;)
skyko.com
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Also for your motors, if my memory is correct they are DC servos so if you just want to move them remove the wires from the drives and connect a 12V car battery up to the motor terminals with jump leads and they will move. To reverse the direction just reverse the leads. I am presuming your motors will be at least 12V, best make sure.
Hood
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Hood
Thanks that's exactly what i was looking for on the schematic i think it shows a 5V DC so i will look for a Battery around here in that voltage.
Dennis
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Dennis
doubt if the motors will be as low as 5V but you never know, the voltage should be on the motor plate. Maybe what you are seeing is the 5V for the encoders.
Hood
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Hood
The Pixe interface looks good would you need just one these or one for each axisis
Dennis
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Hood
on the motor it says transducer 10 would that mean its a 10 V motor the model # is Baldor Big mho MTE 4070 fl 5b, i tried to look it up on the web but i couldn't find any info on it.
Dennis
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one for each axis, but make sure first that your drives are definately not capable of step/dir. Do you know the make/type of drives you have?
Hood
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Hood
the drives are servo dynamics corp.
Dennis
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you know the model numbers?
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Hood
Yes,model # SD1525-10 15 amp i take it that the last number is the voltage 10.
Dennis
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hood i have been trying to find info on this drive but no luck so far even checked the company web site again no info and if hgte drive will accept step & direction
Dennis
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The 10 15 may well be 10Amp continuous 15Amp peak.
Will look and see if I can find any info
Hood
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Not found specifics yet but for a MTE-4070 it say rated 100V 6amp contin 24Amp peak
As for the drives again no specifics but its looking like they are analogue.
Do you have any pics of the drives?
Hood
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OK been doing a bit of reading and almost definite that these are analogue drives, you will need pixies.
Heres a thread I found at Skykos site. http://www.skyko.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1170520068
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Hood
I was hoping i would not have to change out the drive that the way it goes, why the pixes are they better then the gecko's, can you explain the difference between a step and direction drive and analogue drive i thought there was way to many connections on tese drives to work with Mach.
Dennis
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Dennis you DONT have to change the drives out. The drives you have are analogue drives, that means the control sends them a voltage between 0 and +10v for one direction and 0 to -10v for the other. What the pixies do is take the step and direction from Mach and pass it onto your drives as an analogue voltage, ie +-10v.
You really need to get schematics for your drives so that you know where you need to connect the pixies to.
Hood
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Hood
I have the schematics for the complete electrical system, the system dose come on then poops out i have been down this road before trying to repair the exisisting system only to find out down the road it's old technology and then have to gut it out.
Well it's good to hear that i can salvage some part of the system so the pixes take the place of the existing brain and control head is there a interperter board avaliable for the pixes so all i have to do is wire the pixes and plug the computor to it such as the CNC4PC boards.
Dennis
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Hood
Where are the pixes made are they in the USA.
Dennis
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Dennis
Hears a link to the Pixie boards. http://www.skyko.com/products/
Skyko Technologies
219 Skywall Drive
Sultan, WA 98294
Chip
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Dennis you can use any breakout board, the acustep from www.cncbuildingblocks.com and PMDX122 from www.pmdx.com are the two boards I have used. www.cnc4pc.com do them, www.campbelldesigns.com do them and there are more, choice is yours. The Acustep does Index homing so thats why I have that for the lathe. Some of the others have other functions on them such as spindle controller etc so depends on what features you want and which price looks good I suppose..
Hood
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Hi Chip
Thank's Hood well the first thing i need to figure out is if the drives function before spending a lot of money would you guy's no of a way to test them out.
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Can you power the drives up? If you can then you could probably put a battery onto the terminals that get the analogue voltage from the controls. If you get one of the PP3 9v batteries that are often in things like multimeters you can put it one way and the motor should move at near rapid speed. Reverse the polarity and it should move the other way.
Heres a pic of a PP3 just in case they are different named in the USA.
Hood
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Hood
This morning i took off the back's of the servo motor's and powered them directly and they all worked so at least i know they work don't know about the counter's though next i have been trying to get the drives up but i keep getting a voltage led coming on so something is going on there may just have to buy new drives for the system as well hope not so far other then the tech support at Lagun no one has been very helpfull Lagun dose not support the dyan path stuff only the machine.
Dennis
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Dennis
Have you checked all the power supply voltages ?
If you hold the reset button in (if it has one) do the drives Lockup ?
Can you identify the voltage led that's coming on ?
If your encoders have power on them, Check with a volt meter at the +_ 10 volt terminals for voltage, Between CPU and Servo control.
Then turn the servo motor by hand and look for a voltage change, One way - volts the other way + volts ?
Chip
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Hood & Chip
Chip and I had a good conversation this morning on the phone what i have decided is to gut the machine and start fresh going for the Geckos 302 and then i need an interface card to plug in the PC and run Mach i am going to look at the ones Hood you recommended thanks a Bunch you guy's it's great to have a place to go and get this kind of experience you just can't buy this.
Dennis
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Hood & Chip
Just got off the phone with Gecko tech support the 302 drives won't work with the servos on the machine Marisis Say's way to high amp and voltage for there little driver's any suggestion's will i have to go with the drives that are in the machine they are really expensive.
Dennis
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OK so what kind of Amps are you talking about?
Are the original drives dead?
Hood
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Hood
I don't know if the drives are dead or not as i can't get the system up and running who ever had the machine originally bypassed all kinds of stuff to the point it now only makes sense to him in order to get it to operate this is why i was hoping to gut all that out of the machine and switch it to geckos then go from there the motor's are 15 amp the encoders are Sumtak dc 5v 160 ma they are 8 wire opitical it says the no on them is lbl-007-500 dose that mean they are 500 line encoder? or half that at 250 can't find any info on the net for them.
Dennis
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Have a look at the Tek 10 drives, they are rated 25Amps but I think Pete said to me that they are meant for 15Amps continuous motors. They are a bit more expensive than the Geckos. Give Teknix's a mail with your motor specs and see what they say, they are in Australia but I think they have a dealer in the USA. www.cncteknix.com
Hood
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Hood
Have you used these drives or anyone else used them i don't see a USA dealer on there listed on there web site would i need to use there interface in order to use there drives.
How can i find out if these drives work suppose i could just call the company up.
Dennis
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Brian Barker has them, I actually had them but blew them up, then again my motors were 225Amp peak :D didnt realise that at the time LOL
They are nice boards, lots of adjustment on them and well made and thought out. I am keeping the top boards on mine (lower boards that blew) as they can be used for Step/dir to analogue converters and I may have a need for them ;)
Hood
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Hood
Since you already had a set of these boards can you tell me how to test them i would like to know if they work rather then buying new boards now that i know the geckos won't work.
Dennis
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Dennis
Think we are at crossed purposes here, I thought you were talking about anyone having the Tek10 drives but think you are meaning the drives in your mill. Sorry never had the ones that are in your mill. To test, if you can power the mill up you could apply a voltage to the drives analogue input from a 9V battery and the motors should rapid. If it wont power up then maybe you can remove the wiring from the drives and hook them up without the control and test them that way, should be easy enough if you have schematics, if you dont then :(
Hood
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Hood
We were talking about 2 different drives, and yes that's my problem the machines computer has a fault and it's such old technology i don't want to bother with it but in order to get some direction now that i know the geckos won't work i need to know if i will have to replace the drives or not thus the reason for asking about testing them i did get some info from servo dynamics just trying to make sense of it is always the curve of this stuff i will just have to work through it thanks.
Dennis
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I think you should be able to power up the drives by themself and then apply an analogue voltage (9V battery) and they will move. Obviously you will have to find out how to switch on the power to the drives as previously that was probably controlled by the computer.
Hood
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Hood
The drives have some kind of fault and have shut down from what servo dynamics says so i have to figure out what that is and get it fixed first what ever that is.
Dennis
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Would anyone know where i can get a used or new part other then from the manufacture i just need the bottom half of my spindle motor pulley for my lagunomatic 250.
Dennis
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Hi, Dennis
Have some info on your SD1525-10 servo boards, Lost your Phone # in a pile of paper's, what a Mess.
Thanks, Chip
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Chip
# 650-359-0406 trying to figure out how to fix the fault on the drives.
Dennis
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Well sat down today and figured out the current supply problem to the drives and it turned out badly the drives have a secondary power supply this provides the +15 & -15 volt's to the drives it's bad and may have damaged the drive's talking to servo dynamic drive corp they say to repair just one drive is $900.00 so i am not going to even play with them everything is coming out and i'll start from scratch.
In looking at the only other drives i have found so far that can handle the power of my servos which is 120 volt dc is the drives from AU do they have a US dealer?
Dennis
Dennis
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There are 2 drives fromm Ozz, the ones that can handle 120+Volts must be the Rutex ones. Heres the US site http://www.rutex.com/us
Hood
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Hood
Thanks for the info on rutex what other parts would i need in addition to these drives power supply pixes and an interface card?trying to figure what the cost for everything to get it to work correctly dose rutex have support the drives are pretty good price baldor and servo dynamics also make drives for these motor's but they are way more money.
Dennis
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You dont need pixies as these drives take step and direction inputs. You will need to build a power supply and you will need a breakout board. You may have all the nesecarry components in your cabinet for your power supply already so have a look and see before you discard everything.
Hood
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Hood
well for starters it's good news that all i need to buy is the rutex drive that would help in cost i have in the cabinet a power supply putting out 75- 100 Volts DC there are other taps on the transformer that i have not checked i don't plan to chuck the power supply just all the other electronics would any of the break out boards work on the rutex drives or would it be a special board just for those drives.
Dennis
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Hood
Also how is the feed back from the servos handled.
Dennis
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Any of the breakouts should work just fine, I have used the PMDX122 from www.pmdx.com and also the Acustep from www.cncbuildingblocks.com and both seem to be nice boards. The acustep has the index pulse homing feature which is good for accurate homing. I know others that have breakouts from www.cnc4pc.com and www.campbelldesigns.com and they seem to like them so really the choice is yours, price and features will be the best way to sort out what you should go for.
Hood
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Hood
Thanks so i can choose just any of the break out board well thing's are looking up.
Rg's
Dennis
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In reality you dont even need a breakout board, you could connect the parallel port cable directly to your drives, limits etc but a breakout has the advantage of easy connection and the biggest benefit is most breakouts are optically isolated thus your computer wont be at risk if anything goes astray on the higher voltage hardware side of your control
Hood
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Better check with rutex first I don't believe they are still in business from what I heard.
I run Servo Dynamics AC drives on my BP Boss conversion , they are the cats meow. Pricey but worth every penny. Smooth, quiet and fast(;-)
The feedback from the servos is handled by the drive itself not MACH. You can wire them up as a reference but as of yet there are no error corrections made by MACH .
(;-) TP
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Hood
And the fact i don't have to worry about frying anything hooking up the computer to the drives.
TP
The web site for rutex is still active and allows you to order parts but i did intend to call first and speak with them on the phonethe drives from servo dynamics are $350 each real pricey compared to the rutex or gecko drives i would love to buy US made but the geckos are to small and won't handle the servos and the servo dynamics are very expensive also Baldor offers drives i am checking the price on them but expect they are pricey as well.
Dennis
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So what do you guy's think is the story, called rutex today asking about there drives tech support says the drive won't handle my servo motor's looking for a direction here and don't really know what that direction is not going to plunk down hard earned cash until i understand it all.
Dennis
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That is interesting that Rutex say their drives wont do your motors. Did they give a reason? What is the current of your motors? You said they were 120V is that correct?
Hood
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Hood
That's correct they are rated at 120 volts dc max but the servo dynamics drives were running the servos at 100 actually dterreating them a little rutex said that the 220 were my only chance and he felt they would not do the job actually told me to try a larkin drive out of Canada or use the drives i currently had in the machine and mentioned the pixes boards to drive my servos like he didn't want to sell me anything tech guy said my drives were really heavy duty and i guess they are but so what if rutex advertise the drive at 200 volts man that should be way more then the motor's need shouldn't wow i don't know which way to go now.
Dennis
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Dennise you have several options. Is this for a HOBBY and do you plan on making money with the machine. There is nothoing worse than getting in a load of work and having margin drives go out. $$$$$
FInd a good electronic wizz to repair your existing drives. But make sure they are really dead before you chunk them.(;-)
Find some original used drives
Spring for a set of modern digital drives.
You machine is on the upper edge as far as volt and amp requirements for a DIY approach to drives.
Good NEW dependable drives in that range are not cheap by DIY standards but are cheap by high end cnc equipment standards.
You might be able to shop around and pick up a deal on older style but new analog drives that will do the job. BUt you normally have to ASK if they are available. They would rather sell you the other ones$$$$.
(;-) TP
Get on the net and shop around. Emails are cheap. Just have the specs of the motors ready for reference AND know what you are looking for..
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TP
I am shopping around for the drives it just amazing that none of these drives well run the servos now i am back looking at the original drives again.
Dennis
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Dennis there are a host of drives out there that will run your servos. BUT they are NOT the DIY type. Your servos are TOO large for most of the low end DIY drives that were designed around small/cheaper servo setups.
SOmetimes if you are going to play big to have to spend big.(;-)
I was in the same boat when I started my project. I soon realized that at the level I wanted to play in I had to have very dependable drives.
I did a quick search for your application and there are plenty of options out there. You just have to know what you are looking for and be able to commit the $$$$$. I also came across some vendors that offered replacement drives for some of the older machines.
BUT before I would spend the money in your case I would make absolutley SURE that your drives are dead. It still could be something relatively simple. If you are certain that you are going to strip it down and start fresh, then strip out all the unneccesary hardware and hook the drives back up in a simple MODE (power supply, drives and servos) and retest the drives again without all the old gizmos interfaced to them.
Keep it simple (;-) TP
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TP
After finding out the fact the DIY drives won't fit the bill i am going to back and look at the drives in the machine, problem is who ever had the machine before me coobled so much to the electrical system I found it hard to make heads or tails of it but i did make my way through it and found one of the power supplies over voltage to the drives and i don't know if it hurt them i am going to look at repairing the power supply or replacing it just didn't want to through good money after bad and in the end finding out i needed to replace it all anyway don't mind spending some money but having been down this road before and getting screwed over with promises i don't want to repeat this again.
Dennis
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If that is your mission then just strip out all the extra junk and rewire that whole shebang. It is not that hard to wire up the basic drive system. You are going to go to MACH controll anyway so you do not need all the old gizmos. It will make it a LOT simpler to trouble shoot the system if it is simplified to start with.
I believe there are Vendors that may can repair your drives at a lot lower price than $900ea (;-)
But as I said before a new set of drives will take most of the worry about down time out of the equation. If you buy step and direction drives you also make it simple to hook up to mach and will not need any analog convertors. You just need a computer, BOB, and cables. My machine paid for the new drive$ in 30 day$.
GOOD LUCK and keep us up to date on where you are at on your project. We will help you celebrate when you have it slinging chips.
(;-) TP
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Dennis somewhere on a site there was someone that had a old set of SD drives they wanted to get rid of ???? HUM I can't remeber where it was, try doing a couple of searchs. It was either here or over on the yahoo site.
(;-) TP
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TP
Thanks i will do a search or them it remains to be seen how this all turns out i have a CNC lathe and another CNC mill but it's much smaller then the Lagun machine it would be great if i had work for the Lagun but i don't so spending a lot of cash on it right now is not in the budget my thought was i could get it up and running with out to much of an investment looks like that plan is out the window i am hoping i find the present drives in working order and use them until such time it pays for itself and i can upgrade to a more modern drive system know anyone who needs some machine work done.
Dennis
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Hi, Dennis
Did you download the diag.'s I sent you a total of 3.
Thanks, Chip
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Hi Chip
Know i did not as i was planning to go with a new drive set up but that plan now is in question i am going to work on the machine through the holidays as i am getting caught up with work so i will attempt at that time to look at saving the servo drives already in the machine if i can and i will download the Diag's now thanks fro reminding me you had sent those.
Dennis
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Chip
I have looked back through the post and can not find the Diag's.
Dennis
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Hi guy's
Made some progress sorting the machine out i found a small power supply that supplies the 15 +& - voltage to the drives has a voltage reading of 15volts + and then a Reading of 27.8 volts - so this must be down as i see it would it be possible to use a 12 volt power supply from a computer as it has + & - 12 volts ? next i have traced back the wiring for the servo motors to the wiring cabinet so now i can power the motors from the cabinet wiring removed all the drive boards and gave them a look saw nothing smoked so i am hoping they a salvageable and in looking at the wiring from the drives i see only one wire that looks like it is capable of handling the current to the motors the others are way to thin so the big question is how dose the drives reverse the power to motors is there another devise that dose this?
Dennis
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Dennis, the drives reverse the polarity internally, so no other devices to look for.
Hood
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Chip
Did you get the picture's i sent via e-mail?
Dennis
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Hi Guy's
Help me to understand this one a company offers drives that they advertise @ 100 VDC and 20 Amps but then say not to run them at the advertised rating ( HUH ) how's this work.
Dennis
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Dennis that is an OLD advertizing gimic. THe device may be able to run @100V and looks good up front BUT it may go up in smoke at 102V (;-). Todays MANF's seem to spent more time figuring out a way to "trick" you into buying their product than they do actually engineering it to actually work.
At least they have warned you not to believe their HYPE.
(;-) TP
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TP
I have talked with Gecko and they rate there drives at 80 VDC but they can handle a Max of 95 so to me if a manufacture advertise that there drives are 100 VDC then they should be able to handle more then that or advertise that's the MAX not the operating Voltage.
Dennis
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I agree,(;-) TP
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Dennis do you just have one drive bad and in need of repair??
(;-) TP
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TP
No what i have is the original drives in the machine they are analog SD drives really massive drives and they maybe in good order don't know for sure they are servo drives in going through the machine i found that one of the power supplies is bad giving a high Voltage on the - side to the drives the drives did have a fault indicator on for voltage but in calling Servo dynamics they said that the drives if need be could be repaired but the cost to repair them would exceed the price of a new drive so mythought then is just get new drives to start with my problem is finding a drive that i can afford for this project the ones i have found so they are rated high enough for my power supply and motor's but when contacted say don't run these drives for my machine as they won't handle the motor's.
Dennis
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If I were i your shoes I would strip out the guts and rewire up the drives and SEE what worked. If you only have one bad drive We may be able to find someone to repair it at a resonable price. OR find a good used replacement.
That is of course if you are going to convert it over to mach. If you are sticking with the original controller then you gotta do what you gotta do.
Just a thought, (;-) TP
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Dennis
I have sd 1525s on my machine and will be using p100s, I consulted with a cnc repair men familiar with sd 1525s and a electronics engineer
and when I get home Tuesday I'll post the information here about pins, pots on the sd1525 and which go to +,- &, ground between sd & p100s.
I'd post it right know but I don't want to steer you wrong but thought you'd like to know it's coming
Ben
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Hi Ben
Since starting out on this project and finding out that the pixes have been discontinued i installed a set of Gecko servo drives they are up and running now on the machine i still have some other thing's to finish up it now has it's own computer in the electronics bay and a new monitor key board ETC but thanks for the help.
Dennis
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Hi Dennis , what did you do with the old sd drives(;-)
(;-) TP
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Hi Tp
Sorry for the delay in getting back to your post the old drives are gone sold them along with all the other stuff i removed from the machine.
Dennis
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HI Dennis I was just going to remind you that the old parts have value as support parts for the older machines. BUT you have already figure that out(;-) Never Mind.
(;-) TP
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Hi Dennis, I'm new here, but have just read your entire post. (along with about 1000 others... should probably get some work done) I have a compumill 4000 with a dynapath controler. I seem to have similar servos as yours. Reading trough your posts this is what I got.
Your Drives might be good or bad?
Most DIY drives were "too small"
you ran around in circles a lot.
Then ended up with Geckos and everything work out!!!
Is this about right, does Mack drive the Geckos and the Geckos drive the servos.
Thanks,
Tom
You guys on this forum go above and beyond, Thanks
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Yes thats correct, Mach sends the pulses to the drives and the drives move the motor to where Mach has told them to move to.
Hood
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Thanks Hood, Just to be sure I don't need a pulse to analog converter? gecko does this right?
The servos are rated higher than the gecko is capable of, Will the servos just run a a slower max speed if we keep the volts within range of the Gecko? Will this hurt the servos?
Thanks
Tom
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Yes the Geckos are step/direction input drives so they take the pulse that Mach puts out and move the motor accordingly.
Yes also if you limit the power supply to the max (or near) of the Geckos then you will get a proportional speed out of the motors. Servo motors have a voltage and torque constant, voltage constant is **v/1000rpm so you will be able to work out what speed to expect if you can find that constant on the motors plate. The torque constant may well be there as well, torque is directly linked to the current supplied so you will see something like Nm/Amp for the torque constant.
Hood