I have a Chevalier Falcon 1995 model with a Dynapath Delta 40M controller. It has DC baldor servos-brush type> Therefore, I'm sure all is analog. It does not have a VFD but I will install one and I want to install a 4th axis at a later date. Big dreams, big mouth(according to the lady of the house) and littke pocket book and even smaller knowledge. I thought at 60+ years that I didnt want to learn more, BUT. I have seen Hood and Poppa Bear and numerous others  commenting on a project such as this. Every thing on this machine works and works flawlessly except programming is a bitch(French and my ex wife). I would love to reuse the servos and drive cards and what ever else. I know some of this but my knowledge is very limited. I thought being a engineer would help but being retired for 6 years has left many voids(CRS). Void my arse, some of it I never ever knew. People, I would love to do a project of this magnitude, but I can only afford to do once(broke after Christmas and 7 grandsons and 4 great grandsons). Aint got no ballgames until spring. Can yall help.
racear

First thing to do is find out the type of servo drives it has. As you say it is most likely analogue but there is a slim chance they may do Step/Dir or Quadrature. If they are purely analogue then your choices are limited but seems to be good reports coming through regarding the DSPMC from vitalsystems so that would be one route you could take.
 Even if the drives can accept Step Dir then you will need to know what the encoders line count is, it may be too high for the parallel port but you could always get a smoothstepper if that was the case.

Hood

Hood
I thank you very much for your inquiry. The servos are Baldor #MTE-4070-BLBCE. They are 28 lb-in at 2500rpm @100to 150vdc. Has encoder @1000count
I hope this helps.
racear

Hood
Here is tech sheet on the servo
http://www.baldor.com/products/servomotors/dc_servomotor/dc_servo_spec.asp?Catalognumber=MTE-4070-BLBCE.
again thanks
racear

Do you have the servo drive specs?
Hood

Thanks again Hood
I hope or think the link I posted above is the specs on the drive from Baldor. The drives are still available. Thanks
racear

The link seems to be just for the motor, I can get to the drives from that link but dont know the model of drive you have so dont know what to look at

Hood

Hood
I'm sorry I just understood what you asked for. I will look and post back.
racear

Hood
Pulled drive card and it is Servo Dynamics model # SDFPO1525-17 serial # 123574 description FET Off Line Module They are out of Chatworth, Ca 91311. I hope this is what you need.
thanks man
ravear

Looked at their site and cant find any info on that. With you saying its a card then I would suspect its an analogue amplifier so you only have a few options if you want to keep them. One is to try some of the Analogue to Step/Dir converter cards, dont have any experience of them and the reports of them are thin on the ground.
 Another option would be the DSPMC motion controller, have seen a few recent reports and they are all great. Problem is its around $800 I think.

You could also get the likes of Gecko G320'S or CNC Teknix Tek10's to replace your drives. You would lose speed though as the max voltage they can handle is 80v. With your figures above that would mean your motor speed would be limmited to around 1,300 RPM.

Personally I would go the DSPMC route as it would allow your full speed and also no problems with the highish count on the encoder. If you went one of the other routes then your max speed with 1000 count encoders would be limited through the parallel port, at 45KHz you would get a max of 675RPM, so you would need to go for a 100KHz kernel speed to get the 1,300 rpm the geckos/teknix would allow. Whether you can get 100KHz from your port is highly dependant on the computer.
 You could of course go the SmoothStepper route with Geckos or Tek10s. The SmoothStepper does the pulsing externally from the computer and has a max of 4MHz, I use the SmoothStepper on all my machines

Hood