Hardware to run Fanuc Red Cad alpha 6 and alpha 22 servo motors

Hello,
currently i do renovating an old polish Lathe and of course it will be later an CNC Lathe, but my plan was to use standard stepper motors or hybrid steppers, but i got 4 Fanuc Servo motors which all should work for very cheap, so now i am thinking to use them instead of stepper or hybdrid motors, but unfortunately i have no drives/amplifiers.

I was looking already for informations and found out that Jon from Pico Systems offers an PWM controller, Servo amplifiers up to 120V and 20A and Fanuc encoder converters, but what else i need or is it all hardware i need to run the Fanuc Servo Motors?
I have 2 alpha 6 (1.4kw) servo motors, which should be very good both axis, but one of the bigger motors i would like to use as spindle motor. Unfortunately they would need bigger amplifiers, so what alternative i have ?

I am not sure if Mesa has also something to offer to get those Servo Motors to run. If so, it would be nice if you could help me out.

PS: I have send an e-mail already couple hours ago to Jon from Pico Systems, but i thought that i will ask you guys too.

Thanks in advance!

Just in these days I had the same problem and as for the Fanuc motor drivers I used the "ARGON" Granite Device drivers
And for the spindle always fanuc a Siemens Sinatics V20.

The spindle is:

- model 1s type A06B-0750-B100 # 3000 2.2 kw

Motor is:
  - model 1 - 0S A06B-0312-B002 # 7000 120V 2.2 A
Encoder is:
  - A860-0308-T112


Hi gmarconi2

andypugh wrote:

It is possible to run the Fanuc motors with Mesa kit. It is even possible to do it with a parallel port, though that's a kludge.

(the bldc HAL component can convert the commutation signals in software).

Well, not in all cases. The old Fanuc red cap encoders had industry-standard AB quadrature with index, plus proprietary commutation signals. The newer serial pulsecoders do not have any quadrature output, so it gets way more complicated.
They send out an absolute position value as a serial data stream at about 1 mbit/second.

Jon

Hello,

i am sorry that i did not reply here.

First of all thanks for your help Andy and of course also thanks to Jon (awesome e-mail support)

I try to make it short: Today i went to that place where i got the servo motors from, and actually i was just there to look for transformers for the Pico brushless servo amps and the Fanuc Motors and also for an automatic lubrication pump (Vogel Japan). When i was looking for the transformer, i saw something yellow
Just take a look at the pictures.
Here all part numbers listed:

1 x Fanuc CNC Control Series 18i-MA : A02B-0266-B506
2 x Servo Amps: A06B-6096-H103 and A06B-6096-H105
1 x Power Supply for both Servo Amps: A06B-6077-H106#L
1 x Safety I/O Unit (from different machine): A03B-0821-C001 B

I cut of the cables, but i think everything is as it was (i had to take off couple wires and it might be i plugged them wrongly back)

My question now is if i can use those amplifiers for the Servo Motors i have. (take a look at the first post). The first amplifier just gives 5.9 Amps,so to less for the alpha 6 but i also have found an smaller 1KW alpha 4 motor with an brake (alpha 4, take a look at the picture below).

I have no experience at all with servos, so it would be great if someone could help me out. I tryed to find some informations about which motors and encoders does work with those Amplifiers, but havent found anything for now. The whole Fanuc hardware was in an different machine then the motors, so its a mess..

I wanted to order all necessary pico systems hardware to get the alpha 6 motors to work for my Lathe project, but i got those Fanuc Hardware very cheap, so i just took it. If it does not work, i will sell it.

Thanks in advanced.

Those servo amps take 6 PWM signals from the CNC control for EACH servo amp, so you would need 12 channels of PWM output to drive two axes. I think Mesa does have a scheme to do this, but one would have to check with them to make sure that it has already been done with those servo amps.

Jon

Thanks andy.

I am not sure if that is the answer you are looking for, but through googling i found out that the A64 encoder and the iA1000 encoder are "pulse encoders". Not sure if that helps.

EDIT: Jon wrote in an other thread couple years ago, that the encoders (a64) are serial encoders