Brother TC-211

The job' is a 3D artitistic milling about 7.5 inches in dia. with personalized engraving. It is a 60 piece orer, and the are waiting to for me to get running right now, but won't wait forever. If I could do it with the conversational I would. I posted the design out at work on Master cam. its about 200 pages of code.

will have power to the unit by next weekend also. With the possibility of the order thinking of possibly changing to new servos to make the change over easier and faster, and doing tool changes by hand. Only 5 changes per part. last 2 tools should run about 20 min each. 1st 3 about 5 min each.

The only concern I have with a total swap is the spindle drive. It is also a LARGE servo motor, and something I don't really want to change.

I would tend to agree with Andy here, assuming your existing drives/motors work.

The drives you have are about as simple as can be expected:
(Analog velocity command from controller, quadrature position feedback to controller)

New drives will have the same interfacing issues as the existing ones
plus possible additional mechanical and wiring work.

Personally (myself having limited direct experience with your situation) I would think to try to see what's going on with the original control and drives and try to just nix the NC and use LXcnc in it's place. Being a Brother made/designed control of that vintage it may be pretty simple-ish drive interface and probibly easier to figure out and find info on how they function than fanuc.....

You have AC brushless servos which are good for preformance. As mentioned the mechanical aspect of swaping servos could be tricky, expesive, or both. Think shaft couplings, power transmission, mounting plates... trying to scrounge for used or new old stock stuff gets scarce and buying new gets expensive or you sacrafice preformance, and still is expensive.


Either if you swap servos and drives or use the originals, you will still need the LinuxCNC integration. Why not tackle that first?

Where are you located? What are you expecting out of the machine? Do you just need it running good enuff to make your parts? Do you require a real operator pendent or can you live with the gui and the mouse? Im slow right now and might be willing to come to you. Do you have the computer yet?.m in Florida.

JR I'm up in CT. I should be getting a letter of commitment in the next couple of days. When I get it I can fly you up here to do the swap over. Just send me an email and I would be willing to make you an offer for a flight and a weekend of work. What I am planning is artistic 3-d milling. so high speed milling. I would love to keep the speeds and feeds the machine has now. Just be able to read g-code files (really big ones) resultion would have to be under .0005 inches, sme for back lash. Any worse and the images would start to blurr and mis match.

Email me a phone number and we can talk. This is more then a weekends worth of work. There are more snakes and trap doors on a retrofit then most can imagine....

Had a nice chat with mesa this weekend. 7i77 and 5i25 kit are on there way. 3 phase power kit is also on the way. Hope to get some movement by this weekend. Wish me luck everyone.

Well got in my 3 phase convertion kit from wny converter and supply. Kt came with everything except the case. I needed to get a few more wire connectors and a little more wire. Everything went good on the build. I will post pics later. I need to mount it to the wall and wire to the 220 1 phase, 3 phase motor then the machine. Unfortunately I got the wrong connector for my machine so back to home depot tomorrow.

Finally got the 3 phase working. Friend of mine had someone check the wiring diagram from wny, he changed it up a little and motor started on 1st try. If any one gets a kit from them send me a message and i will explain the changes to get it working.