Messages

1

General Mach Discussion / Re: Advice needed on interface to Kollmorgan drive or new drive recomendation

« on: April 17, 2018, 06:38:47 PM »

Thanks you are making up my mind to sell these on eBay and use the proceeds to get something else.  I think the Kollmorgen stuff is valuable if you can find someone that has an an existing system that needs them.  That being said what do you recommend for driving a mill with the least amount of hassle with Mach3, steppers or servos?

Thanks
Bill

2

General Mach Discussion / Re: Advice needed on interface to Kollmorgan drive or new drive recomendation

« on: April 17, 2018, 04:42:53 PM »

Thanks for the reply.

The unit is a BDS5 the line drawing was not correct  sorry I did not look closer at driver that came out of the goldline motor catalog. According to what I can find the BDS5 is a PWM driver, the cut sheet on this unit appears to be unavailable.

3

General Mach Discussion / Advice needed on interface to Kollmorgan drive or new drive recomendation

« on: April 17, 2018, 02:25:38 PM »

I am new to CNC machining and purchased a platform for a laser cutter that was half build from a company that went under.  It has one axis complete with a Kollmorgen PSR4 power supply and BDS5A servo drive along with one B-104 Servo motor and an additional power supply not sure what for, all of these items are believed to have zero time.  I found some Kollmorgen motionlink software which I think is for motor setup and was able to fire up the unit and get motion out of the motor through the controllers serial; port, but I am a long way from doing any machining with this.

I am trying to figure out where to go from here, my research led me to the popular Mach3 software, which has a large following, I was getting ready to pull all the guts out of this unit and replace them with stepper motors when I thought I better slow down and figure out if that was what I wanted to do.  When I looked at the cost of the servo motor I have vs the cost of stepper motors I figured there must be a reason, and it looks to me that for CNC servo motors are probably more powerful and may or may not be better.
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So looking for advice, should I keep the one setup I have and add 2 more servo motors, replace all or add 2 stepper motors.  If I keep what I have, what do I need as an interface between Mach3 software and the servo driver (if anything) and/or the servo motor.  I appreciate any advice.

I have attempted to post some images hope they work.

Thanks
Bill