What do you guys think of this old Gerber machine?

I have searched on the Gerber site, but unfortunately the former GGT is now Gerber with much other parts. I have found nothing, but must try to call and hope I find a technician who can ask my question.
Actually I have bought a small CNC-lathe. I hope it works so, but it has a very bad accuracy, the smallest step is only 0,0138mm or a bit more than 1/2mil.
If I use the 2 servomotors with the drive I can have a accuracy in the range of 0,002mm 0,08mil. And a much higher rapid speed 160ipm vs 28ipm at the moment.

No I don't think you will get a lot of info on drives and such from Gerber. But I doubt Gerber made the drive systems in your plotter. You will need to scrounge around and discern the manufacturer and model number of the drives them selves. I would not be surprised if Gerber used a number of different manufacturers to supply the drives they have used over the years. That or post some pictures of what you have and maybe someone can recognize it.

On the Backside of the PCB was the manufacturer "Motion Science San Jose Ca." But was I can found out is, that the company isn't working yet. Unfortunately, I can't get any informations from a closed firm.
www.corporationwiki.com/California/San-J...ce-inc/41080201.aspx

I don't know much about circuit design, otherwise I would try to "reengineer" the function of the drive. Thats only a doublesided board and the complete wiring Diagram can be redrawn. But that wan't help me, because I don't know the function of the different parts.

OK. I know some parts, 4N23 are optical couplers, 7555 are timers, LM201 and 2901 seems to be Op-Amps and a CD4066 is a digital Switch.

But how they all work together is nothing, what I can easily found out.

Yes, but only similiar. On the Board is a label DHB5010-04 SN. 10098 With the Number of the Ebay Board its obviously, that this is the M.S. Number of the board. I know its no matter how the board works, but eventually I can find out if the Board is a step/dir or a +/-10V.

Wow Andy, the machine you helped me make a driver for must have been really ahead of its time built in 2003 using Teknic step/dir servo drives. (really doubt they were all that new back then either)

I think Step/dir exists since more than 15 Years. All digital Servodrives from the big companies are more or less this principle.

Now I found a little more from my drive. It seems that the pins 1-4 are for I hope 10V X+Z, pins 5+6 are NC Pins 7+8 are the LED of an optocoupler (H11A1), Pins 9+10 are Collector and Emitter of another optocoupler (4N32). But I don't know, why one of the signals goes to the input and the other to the output of the OC.
Maybe the first is the enable and the second is the working signal to the computer.