Red Cap Fanuc Motors (late 1990's early 2000's) w/ LinuxCNC and Single Phase?

Anybody have any tips on whether I can get new controls for the early 2000's red cap Fanuc motors or otherwise retrofit a Fanuc-based machine so I can convert them over to single phase and use LinuxCNC with a Mesa card?

I'm tempted to do a conversion, but dropping in new motors seems like it would be a deal-killer. I can afford new controls though, if I have to go that route.

Last conversion I did I just picked up new ClearPaths and it was super easy, but I am assuming that the original Fanuc motors are far superior to the CPs.

Yes, it can be done.

It has even been done with the parallel port!



Pico-systems have a converter and drives.

Alternatively there is a LinuxCNC HAL component that can interpret the commutation signals and re-transmit in a different format.
linuxcnc.org/docs/2.7/html/man/man9/bldc.9.html

Pico Systems (that's me) has an encoder converter that converts the proprietary Fanuc signals to industry-compatible quadrature plus commutation signals. I'm guessing from the date these are probably the serial pulse coder version.

We also have servo amps that can handle up to 20 A peak. And, we have a PWM controller board that interfaces to LinuxCNC. See

pico-systems.com/osc2.5/catalog/index.php?cPath=3

For more info on these products.

Jon

Thanks Jon and Andy!
So the motors are either α or α-i. My understanding is that the α-i motors used fiber optics for the data? Do your products support these?

For the spindle motor would I just want to look at a VFD?

Kind Regards,
FDP

I don't know anything about fiber optic encoders. Do you have pictures of the connectors?
I am pretty sure motors made in the early 2000's are not fiber optic. There are a HUGE number of different serial pulse coders that Fanuc made, so it can be confusing.
If you can get me the model number of the encoder or motor, I can try to look it up.
But, if these are Alpha motors, I should have converters for them. There are some later models like the (Beta)64iA that have a higher data rate, so my converter doesn't handle them.

Jon

Thanks, I am currently working on getting photos of the encoders/motors so I can get you this info.

After much talking to Fanuc/Fanuc techs I am leaning pretty heavily towards ditching the Fanuc control for LinuxCNC, but I would have to be able to do a full single phase conversion as part of that and not loose too much power in the process.

The machine is a meager 5kVA (2.5-5HP spindle), so from a power standpoint it should pretty easily fit on a single phase circuit. Is there a power loss if I use your boards?

Also, do you have anything to run the spindle, or should I just expect to have to use a VFD (with the commensurate power loss)?