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Author Topic: Servo Drive Review - Granite VXD-XE added. New TOP CHOICE drive.  (Read 6160 times)

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Offline simpson36

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Since the original review was done, the granite Devices VSD drives have undergone significant upgrades which brought the product into competition with the Dugong drive. Additionally, new firmware allows the Granite drive to control two motors (DC brush) which also makes the product price competitive with the lower powered drives.

I have had a continuous stream of requests to look at the Granite Devices product, but until the drive was further developed, it was not suitable for my application, and was too expensive to just purchase and review as a 'favor' to people.

Two issues have converged to make the Granite drive not only attractive, but necessary for my application. First was a very significant upgrade in the drives specs to 160V 40A. Second was CNCdrive's inability to add the needed features to the Dugong.

My 4th axis project has been at a standstill for months now waiting on promissed new Dugong features. With the Granite drive already having the feature set I need and now with the higher power that I also need, the higher cost of the Granite drive was more palatable.

Here is the link to the review: http://www.thecubestudio.com/ServoDriveReview.htm

As it turns out, while I was mostly interested in the feature set of the Granite drive, the exceptional performance alone would easily justify the higher cost in some applications. The same features that make the VSD suitable for the 4th axis also make it suitable for a servo powered spindle, either for a mill or a lathe. On balance, below are two excerpts from the updated review which summarize my findings:

UPDATE: 06/24/2010: the Whale3 remains the ”BEST CHOICE” among the smaller (100V/20A or less) drives in this lineup, but after adding and reviewing the recently upgraded Granite VSD-XE, it is now the TOP CHOICE .

While the Ganite VSD-XE is my TOP CHOICE for this review, that choice is weighted heavily with performance and features of the VSD-XE that the competing products simply cannot match in their current configurations. However, users requiring a 100+V/35A drive who do not need the features of the Granite product, and are not gong to use step multipliers, would most likely be happy with the less expensive previous winner, the Dugong from CNCdrives in Hungary.
« Last Edit: June 24, 2010, 08:33:28 AM by simpson36 »