I have just been through to see a Chiron FZ12 that I was thinking of buying. It is a fairly large footprint machine but travels are not huge, in fact its not much bigger than the Bridgeport Boss's travels. It however is a much sturdier machine weighing in somewhere around 3 or 4 tonnes.
 The basket toolchanger is going to be great and another nice thing is the table does not move at all as it is a travelling column mill. This means it is very easy to load/unload as the table is always at the front just behind the doors, or rather where the doors fit as they are not n it at the moment.
 It is linear rail on all axis and it moves very freely and smooth and with very little effort. The motors that are on it (I am not taking them) are Siemens 1FT5064-OAG which are 4000rpm and 3.8Nm torque continuous which gave a rapid of 20m/min. I have some motors I recently fitted to my Bridgeport which I may use, they are a bit lower on torque (3.05Nm) but they are 5000rpm so I can likely gear them 2.5:1 instead of the 2:1 now and that would increase the torque to be almost identical.
I may however decide to put some Allen Bradley F-4030 motors on instead, in fact I will have to put one of these on the Z as it needs a brake and the F-4030 is the only one I have with a brake. The reason I may choose the 4030 motors is I have some Osai drives here that I would like to use but they can only use certain motors and the wee MPL motors are not ones I can use.
 I plan to use a CSMIO/IP controller on this and I am thinking I may go for the analogue one as no matter which drives I end up using they are all capable of analogue input, if I decided to go with the Step/Dir CSMIO then I would be limited  to the more modern drives.

Couple of pics, looks a bit scrappy but a clean up and paint and I am sure it will look great, the basket toolchanger has a cover and also all the tinwork for the side is there.


So all I need to do now is get rid of the Bridgeport and one of my manual lathes so that I can reorganise my workshop and fit this in
Hood

Hood,

Doesn't really look so good, but I am sure it's going to be a great machine after your magic touch

May I ask why you decided not to use the original motors? My guess is they have resolver feedback? Then why not use the original drives? Or their condition isn't good? Or you afraid of future failures with them?

Dan

Mechanically it is sound so thats all that worries me, pretty is no use if its knackered

Original motors had encoders but halls were 12v I think so they would have needed converting. Also the motors can be kept as spares by the current owner for other machines so if I wanted them the cost would be more. The original drives have boards missing as they were removed to keep other machines running, repair costs of each of the boards are in the region of £900 to £1500 per board I believe and there are quite a few in the machine,  so even if they were still on the machine and I got them thrown in I dont think I would want to use them as I can get other drives much cheaper than the Siemens cost to repair.

Hood

I see. I have a 1990 Cincinnati Falcon lathe awaiting retrofit. Mechanically and cosmetically it's almost new despite its age. Problem with it is that the motors have resolvers, but keeping the original Kollmorgen drives is something I want to avoid as I heard they tend to fail. On the other hand getting rid of the motor is a shame as they are in an excellent condition. 

Dan

Are they AC or DC servos?
My Computurn was like new, reckoned about 50 hrs total on a mid 80's machine. Sadly at the time there was nothing for Mach that could handle Analogue amplifiers, well there was the pixie but it was a hit or miss whether they would work and also the guy that made them wasnt making them very often so were hard to get. As said it was like new and the motors didnt even have any carbon dust inside, they were gleaming. I tried the Teknix drives but they just blew up as these motors were serious beasts, in fact I had forgotten how huge they were but saw them again on Sunday, peak current was something like 220Amps

Hood

They are AC.

Serious beasts indeed at 220Amps... Sounds more like a TIG welding machine spec than a servo's  Continuous current was probably around 70Amps and hence the power in access of 6kW... WOW! Probably were high RPM and low torque.

Dan

they were gleaming

Send me a picture..................... haven't seen that in ages. 

Brett

They are AC.

Serious beasts indeed at 220Amps... Sounds more like a TIG welding machine spec than a servo's  Continuous current was probably around 70Amps and hence the power in access of 6kW... WOW! Probably were high RPM and low torque.

Dan

Cont current only worked out about 32Amps and Peak actually was 293A, either that or my calcs are wrong.
Torque constant was 0.638Nm/Amp and the Cont torque was 20.7Nm and peak torque was 187Nm
 RPM was 2000 and max volts were 134VDC

Hood

Quote

they were gleaming

Send me a picture..................... haven't seen that in ages. 

Brett

Dont worry neither have I
Hood

SCARY numbers!

Dan