Servo driver selection

Gatesy wrote:

Will driving the motor with the PICO drive (and the MESA??) mean that the motor will generate less power than when powered by the Fanuc drive?

The Pico PWm servo amp can be used up to 160 V DC supply voltage and can deliver up to 20 A peak to the motor. Some big Fanuc motors are designed for WAY more current than this. So, without more info, I can't really answer that. There are some MASSIVE Fanuc motors that need 100+ A peak to deliver the peak torque rating.
But, the smaller motors can be driven to their full rating by our drive.

Jon

Gatesy wrote:

What output do the PICO drive and MESA drive give out? Is it trapezoidal or sinusoidal?

Speaking for the Pico PWM brushless servo amp, they call this trapezoidal or six-step drive. Only two coils are driven at a time.

One says brushless DC and the other says AC, but as commented in an earlier reply on here they are effectively the same thing?

Yes, there is a difference in motors made for trapezoidal or sinusoidal drive, but the AC vs. DC designation CAN'T be trusted to tell you which they are. If they say something like "optimized for sinusoidal drive" or the opposite, ONLY then will you know.

Jon

Oh blimey, Is there a simple guide to MESA boards online somewhere, showing what you can connect to what, and what they do? The descriptions on the website are very technical, but a bit too technical for likes of me who want to know what boards do what, and what you need to connect to what in simpler terms?

give us an idea of what your requirements are , and we can guide you further
as we do not know what your machine is etc

Just had a look at General Mechatronics. Again looks good and easy to install, but they seem to recommend the Granite VSD servo drive, that seems to do everything and prices start at 199 euros, but granite have replaced these drives with the Argon which is 489 euros!!!

Seems a bit strange that your replacement product is over twice the cost of what it replaces.

The Motors are Fanuc model 2-0 AC servo motors, 3 phase 8 pole, 2000rpm, 47V, 3A stall current

I think the granite devices website is slightly misleading as the main blurb on the IONI drive says it is a full featured servo drive, but when you go into the purchase page it says that it only controls servo motors in torque mode

Gatesy wrote:

Just had a look at General Mechatronics. Again looks good and easy to install, but they seem to recommend the Granite VSD servo drive, that seems to do everything and prices start at 199 euros, but granite have replaced these drives with the Argon which is 489 euros!!!

Seems a bit strange that your replacement product is over twice the cost of what it replaces.

The Motors are Fanuc model 2-0 AC servo motors, 3 phase 8 pole, 2000rpm, 47V, 3A stall current

Ahh, then I might recommend the Pico Systems products. Our brushless PWM servo amp will drive these motors.
We have converters for both types of red cap encoders (old-style and serial) that produce the commutation the servo amps need. And, our Universal PWM Controller ties the whole thing together. 47 V and 2 A seems like these must be the smallest motors Fanuc makes.

The PWM controller is US $250 and handles up to 4 axes. If you need more, they can be daisy-chained on the same parallel port. The brushless PWM servo amps are $150 per axis, and the converters for Fanuc encoders are $150 per axis (both old and serial styles). Other than that, all you need are a PC with a parallel port and a power supply.

Jon