Bridgeport VMC760 retrofit

Thanks for the tip Langdons!

I'm a little apprehensive about cheap drivers as I've struggled with the manuals and particularly tuning in the past.

How was your experience setting up and tuning the servos?

Surface finish and accuracy are rather important to me on this machine

wrote:

I refurbished a 30-year-old CNC router machine at my school.

The original drivers were E-waste.

The original motors are great.

The original transformer (that powers the drivers) is also great (though it's terrifyingly powerful).

The original rectifer bridge + capacitor were also E-waste.

But most of the original switches are still good (one switch got welded contacts due to overcurrent).

Mechanical things outlive electrical things.

Yep! I'm keen to reuse the majority of the control contractors, breakers and transformers. I've got the full schematics for the machine, so ideally I would splice the original contractor boards into Linux control. 

Thanks for the input!

tommylight wrote:

wrote:

Lots of other men contributed to its discovery and invention too.
If you mean the induction motor, no, no one even tried it before him. He knew his s#it, for sure.
Induction motor has no magnets, no rotor coils, no brushes, yet it works!
It has been the single most important discovery that pushed civilization and the industrial complex forward.

Very impressive. Here I was thinking he just invented Tesla coils!

spincycle wrote:

How was your experience setting up and tuning the servos?

Analog servos? Velocity mode?
forum.linuxcnc.org/10-advanced-configura...ning-detailed-how-to

Ah using Linux to entirely tune the feedback loop?

I am interested in Ethercat communication, but I am getting slightly cold feet as it appears to be a path far less travelled in this forum.

Am I right in thinking that if you run analog signal and rely on linuxcnc to close the loop, all tuning happens within Linux, as per your link?

No auto tuning through the drives etc?

Thanks tommylight.

spincycle wrote:

Ah using Linux to entirely tune the feedback loop?

Yes, the position loop is in LinuxCNC.
Velocity loop is usually on the drives when motors also use tacho generators.

spincycle wrote:

Am I right in thinking that if you run analog signal and rely on linuxcnc to close the loop, all tuning happens within Linux, as per your link?

No auto tuning through the drives etc?

Yes, again only the position loop is handled in LinuxCNC, velocity and torque loops are handled usually in the drives, although LinuxCNC can also handle all of the above on it's own.
The tutorial is for using older existing drives, whenever possible i try to use them as they are very good quality and rarely fail, and most of the tuning is already done in the drive as they were in use and working perfectly fine.