Servo Purchase Recommendations, Yaskawa?

That was my understanding also but the manual for these ones is specific. It's $4000US purchase that I would hate to take a chance on the 3ph working on single despite the manual warning.

Got a reply back from Glentek:

I would go with the same motors and drives we used to supply Fadal when they were building machines locally.For the motors, it is our GMBF5060-75-02300118-186A (26605).  For the drives, it is our SMA8715HP-5A-3-1B (6609).I do not have the cables, but someone selling Fadal replacement parts should.The motors are drives total $15,600.00.  Delivery is running at about 14-weeks ARO.

That puts them outside the price range I was hoping for.

Single phase aren't unicorns, they are just limited in power. Most of the usual suspects do 220v single phase up to at least 2kw. Sometimes they are switchable (like my sanyos that have a parameter for phase) and others are specific. some as mentioned can be derated, but many modern drives have phase sensors and will error. yaskawa (sigma 7, not sure about 5) also do 110v single phase up to 750w.

Single phase and especially 110v will cost more than 3 phase, because the power stage is in effect a bigger drive that's been derated. (66% or so for single 220, and 33% for 110).

Another to look at is Deltas B3 line. 220v single up to 2kw, 24 bit encoders, ethercat options and priced around $400-$700usd per axis online or less if you dig around chinese suppliers.

the yaskawa models you find from china will be aggressively NOT supported by yaskawa. As in, they will hang up the phone. So keep that in mind.

Michael wrote:

Got a reply back from Glentek:

I would go with the same motors and drives we used to supply Fadal when they were building machines locally.For the motors, it is our GMBF5060-75-02300118-186A (26605).  For the drives, it is our SMA8715HP-5A-3-1B (6609).I do not have the cables, but someone selling Fadal replacement parts should.The motors are drives total $15,600.00.  Delivery is running at about 14-weeks ARO.

That puts them outside the price range I was hoping for.

If it's motors they supplied to fadal building local, they were ancient and obsolete when they were new... in 2008.

That's the comedy or FU price though. I mean you can buy an entire siemens 828D control and single phase servo kit with wiring, transformers, psus, cooling system direct from siemens usa/canada, basic PLC support and 3 year on site service for less than that (my quote from a few years back was 13kcdn with 4 servos, no spindle). With 3 bigger servos, spindle motor, and higher prices of todays reality, you are probably still at or under the 15kusd price. this is what comes on new machines in the 50k-100k range. So keep that in perspective when you get any of these half baked offers.

I get this FU price a lot from north american suppliers. It's like they have never heard of the internet. I had mitsubishi tell me they had super competitive servo pricing and would beat delta... came back with a price double delta CANADA, and literally 5x that of delta's online in china (and 2-3 times the price I've seen mitsubishi online for). Fagor told me their new control was the cheapest on the market, great for hobby level... their price was 4x delta's (china), 6x LNC's, and double even siemen's 808D european MSRP (not the price you'll pay). These companies live in a bubble serving loyal corporate customers and have no clue or just don't care about single unit buyers. The worst are some of the US makers like yours above, who offer products that were obsolete 25 years ago for twice the price of modern yaskawa/delta/mitsubishi systems and no real explanation as to why.

these guys are legit, ive bought from them. they also sell on ebay, but the price will be slightly higher (ebay fees).

1kw 130mm $540

www.fasttobuy.com/ecmb3me21310rs1%C3%AF%...ries-kit_p37229.html

you can email them about any model they should give a price and lead time (they do yaskawa too, just remember, zero support).

I appreciate the input, this is exactly what I am looking for.

Yes the Glentek price was an FU. The servos didn't even fall in the range of specs I asked for in the quote. I recently got a spindle rebuild and went through the same issue. Most rebuilders didn't respond to me. One had an outrageous price and the other was high ($7k) but was responsive to my actual request. I could have had a new Taiwan spindle built for half the price but that introduced a new set of issues with shipping and lead times.

My Unicorn comment was more specific to the Yaskawa single phase 1.5kw drive. There are no American listings and I am suspicious of the Chinese listings. When you say there will be zero support for the Yaskawa servos purchased from China is this because they are not authorized sellers? Knock offs? Do these fall off the back of the truck?

I was looking at Delta also but put them in a similar category as the DMM (that I have) and the Lichuan (also have older model, not bad just difficult setup). Do you have experience with Delta drives in analog mode? Specifically the encoder output to linuxcnc? I have been experiencing some delayed response on the DMM's and am a bit shy about the cheaper drives now because of it.

Michael wrote:

I appreciate the input, this is exactly what I am looking for.

Yes the Glentek price was an FU. The servos didn't even fall in the range of specs I asked for in the quote. I recently got a spindle rebuild and went through the same issue. Most rebuilders didn't respond to me. One had an outrageous price and the other was high ($7k) but was responsive to my actual request. I could have had a new Taiwan spindle built for half the price but that introduced a new set of issues with shipping and lead times.

My Unicorn comment was more specific to the Yaskawa single phase 1.5kw drive. There are no American listings and I am suspicious of the Chinese listings. When you say there will be zero support for the Yaskawa servos purchased from China is this because they are not authorized sellers? Knock offs? Do these fall off the back of the truck?

I was looking at Delta also but put them in a similar category as the DMM (that I have) and the Lichuan (also have older model, not bad just difficult setup). Do you have experience with Delta drives in analog mode? Specifically the encoder output to linuxcnc? I have been experiencing some delayed response on the DMM's and am a bit shy about the cheaper drives now because of it.


 

Delta is in the category of yaskawa and mitsubishi, especially the B3/A2/A3 models (don't look at the B2, they are older and not as high performance). Delta is one of the largest power stage makers in the world (vfd's, psu's etc). They know what they are doing. I've had many of their vfd's, and know many people who have used their servos. DMM is in the category of borderline scam (sorry to anyone that owns them, its more about the company than the product itself). Most chinese servos are in the category of "unknown" JMC and leadshine are lower performance low cost reputable sources. Sanyo Denki is in a level up tier. Their stuff tends to be higher performance, but also a lot more money. These are what's in a brother speedio. Siemens, fanuc, indramat(bosch) make matched servo systems with controls, specifically intended for CNC milling machines. You buy their package, and it "works". You gotta pay though, haha.

As for yaskawa, if it's from a reputable seller (fasttobuy2012 for example) then they are legit. Those ebay listings where they just show a box, i wouldn't expect to receive anything more than an empty box. So, legit yes, however they are "chinese market" models and not identical to one bought in the US. As a result, yaskawa "knows" where you got them. Yaskawa north america has made it pretty clear that buying these puts you in their bad books - obviously because you didn't pay their FU price - but also in fairness, you have also not paid for their handholding and support either. They could be a lot less dickish about it though and at least offer valid pricing to single unit buyers (even i got quoted something in the range of $1800 for a 750w kit, as a small volume OEM buyer, when F2B priced them at the time at $600-700 in singles). With yaskawa now owning siemens, it worries me how their pricing and attitude might change.






 

oh, for spindles... it gets tricky, cause the prices and the product functionality are all over the place. rebuilds can cost more than new cartridges. also, us tarrifs have affected bearings - NSK had doubled in price so i assume its a 100% tarrif.

microlab is one reputable maker in taiwan i know of. belt spindles from them will be between 1-3k depending on speed, gripper type, cooling, bearing arrangement etc. They used to quote about a month lead, but in covid times, who knows.

In the US, setco makes high end "stock" spindles, I talked to them at cmts and they said they had a Taiwanese facility and could offer competitively priced spindles, so, might be worth calling them. because they are "stock" they might have a fast lead time on one that fits your machine.

For the spindle I ended up going with the rebuild. I was able to get a slight speed increase which was one of my concerns and something that Northland Tool was really helpful working with me on. Yeah it cost more but I didn't have any unknowns of installing a spindle built to order with configuration of the power drawbar, etc.

I did see microlab spindles but never reached out to them. I did go through almost the entire design process with Royal spindle who was very helpful but was a bit unresponsive as I was a single unit purchase. What got me hung up was shipping terms and import/export. That and they wanted the spindle to run a chiller. That wasn't impossible but added another layer. I did reach out to Setco and got no response. 

Thank you for all the info about Delta and Yaskawa. The Yaskawa/china packages make sense and will probably be enough to keep me away from them. I started some research on the Delta B3 and like what I see so far. Been searching the forums for examples used with LCNC and haven't found any bad experiences. Seems like they tune very well in analog mode. 

Your comment about DMM is spot on. While they have been very responsive to questions anytime I bring up the possibility that their drives are not operating correctly (with proof) they defer and see its impossible and blame LCNC/Mesa hardware. I should have done more research into them being used in LCNC with analog control. I still can't find anyone who has used them successfully that way. They do work great in position mode and open loop but the encoder feedback out of the drive is slow to respond. 

I really appreciate your help and insight.