Retrofitting knee mill

i have a chevileer knee mill with an anilam control i purchased on auction. half the control is missing so i haven't been able to test anything. i have the servo motors with tachs and encoders on them. and i have the servo drives. id like to run it with linuxcnc. and would like to use mesa cards. some kind of pci/pcie mesa card the witch ever daughter card. im not sure if i should replace the servo drives with a newer one and not sure what to go with here either. i would like it to be setup as true closed loop as in encoders back to the controller. i have attached pictures of the name plate on the servos and on the drives.

thank you for the help

Welcome.

That looks like a perfect fit for linuxcnc.
Those will be undoubtedly be +- 10 volt analog drives.
(IIRC anilam rebranded some one else's drives)

If the drives are good it makes sense to keep them - they were chosen to match the motors/requirements.
If not there are lots of options - new drive/motor, ebay drive - (like advanced motion drive )

The mesa 7i77 is usually used with analog servo drives.
Most people use the ethernet cards like the 7i80 or 7i92 but you could use a 5i25 for pci. (there is a 7i97 ethernet card too but I'm not sure it's available yet)

Peter could advise you better on the most cost effective combo.

Any idea how much I/O you need?
How many MPGs do you want?
Will you want to do rigid tapping? (need an encoder)

Chris M

The machine has flood coolant. And automatic way lube pump. So I’d need to hook them up. And limit switches of course. But can’t think of any other io right now.
I’m probably not going to do rigid tapping right now. But would like to in the future.
Some kind of mpg would be nice.

I wouldn’t be opposed to an Ethernet option. I was just going to do pci because I had read it was faster.

Thank you for the quick reply

Hey austin136,

I'd recommend getting the PCI express version of the Mesa card, which is the 6i25. Otherwse you'll have trouble buying a new computer motherboard for your machine.

I bought a 5i25 and ended up buying used computer parts instead of new ones like I'd planned. There might also be problems with replacing the PC once something goes wrong in a few years. It's easier to source PC parts than the Mesa cards, and the PCI express port isn't going anywhere soon. The difference between the 5i25 and the 6i25 is just ca. 20$.

Just my 2 cents based on recent experience.

EDIT: for example, my machine motherboard will not auto-start when I turn on the power, that option in the BIOS doesn't work. So I needed a power on switch. Now when I turn on the machine, I use the main switch on the electric cabinet, and then have to press the power on button to get the PC going. When you buy new parts, you can make sure that the mobo has the options you want, not the ones you can get. The old PCI port is practically phased away now, I think the Mesa 6i25 should be the standard recommendation instead of the 5i25. From what you're saying, and depending on the interface you'd like to have, you might have enough pins on the 7i77 to connect all the machine's system to the control.

I have done a BP with anilam retro. What vintage are your drives? Mine are really old (crusader II, early 90's?) and work fine with the mesa 7i77 but the older drives emit a high pitch whine that can get annoying. Something to think about. I'll be swapping them out sometime in the future when they start to fail. If you have the power supply and relays in the drive box it will be a relatively easy conversion.

Sounds like I’ll be going with the 6i25 and the 7i77. Anyone have a recommendation on what mother board and cpu to go with. Budget isn’t a huge issue the Mesa cards are cheap. I had debated Putting a centroid controll on it. So this option is way cheaper. Leaves a lot of room in the budget.

A 7I77 + 7I92M is a good choice if the PC is in a separate cabinet than the control/power electronics

Nice clean box JT. I wish mine was roomy. The old ones were smaller and I had to hang the 7i77 off the end in a separate enclosure. I assume your drives don't emit that annoying high pitch whine? Where did you mount the vfd?

PCW wrote:

A 7I77 + 7I92M is a good choice if the PC is in a separate cabinet than the control/power electronics

Whats the problem with the 7i92M and 7i77 in same control cabinet as the PC?