Servo motor hardware
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Best regards,
Greg Bernard
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I have a few 600 watt brushless 3 phase 100 VDC motors lying around that use hall sensors for commutation. Is it possible to just buy just servo encoders separate and in effect turn these into servo motors?
Yes. As well as the Pico drive already suggested the Mesa 8i20 might be a good fit. Support is still experimental (the drive parameter setup is not settled yet). There is a HAL component that will start the motor using the Hall sensors, then switch to sinusoidal commutation using the encoder once it gets an angle fix.
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Also, is it possible to configure drives such as Siemens, Parker, or Kollmorgen to work with Pico or Mesa controllers? Im wandering why I dont see EMC using many other brands of hardware. Seems like its mainly only Pico or Mesa. Is it that hard or impossible to configure other brands of hardware to work with EMC?
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analog +-10V, Step+Dir, or PWM inputs. Suppliers of interfaces for servo drives include Vital systems, Mesa, and Pico Systems. Theres some preliminary support for EtherCat drives as well. Other interface hardware can be supported by EMC but this requires
1. The hardware be capable of real time control (this rules out most USB devices or "smart" buffered devices)
2. Hardware documentation be available
3. An interest by a developer in supporting the hardware
Note that many drives are designed to work only with matched motors, I think this is why the Mesa and Pico system drives were suggested (they can are made to work with most motors and I think
you suggested that you had bare motors and no drives)
BTW TTL level(single ended) encoders are probably not a good idea for 600 W motors. Differential encoders will have much better noise rejection characteristics
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To an extent you can do anything you can imagine with EMC. However you need to consider how you are going to get the DRO feedback into the EMC2 PC, as the available realtime interfaces are fairly exclusively digital. If you can find a way to convert the sinusoidal voltages to something which looks like an encoder, then it should be straightforward.I guess ill have to get interpolation boxes for the position encoders since they output sinusoidal signals. Is it possible to mix signal types??
However, whilst it is possible to combine ballscrew feedback with DRO scales, it might be more trouble than it is worth.
The other drives you describe tend to be "intelligent" drives with internal PID controllers and lots of features that EMC2 does not need. EMC2 is most effective with dumb drives, and the PID calcs performed in the PC (with the considerable advantage that you can monitor them with Halscope). With the other drives you mention you will be paying for a lot of features that you won't be using, and might need special cables/software to disable. The only reason to use those drives would be if you got them cheap. (from eBay for example)Also, is it possible to configure drives such as Siemens, Parker, or Kollmorgen to work with Pico or Mesa controllers? Im wandering why I dont see EMC using many other brands of hardware. Seems like its mainly only Pico or Mesa. Is it that hard or impossible to configure other brands of hardware to work with EMC?
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"BTW TTL level(single ended) encoders are probably not a good idea for 600 W motors. Differential encoders will have much better noise rejection characteristics "
Are TTL better for higher power motors?
Thanks for the help!!!
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"BTW TTL level(single ended) encoders are probably not a good idea for 600 W motors.
Are TTL better for higher power motors?
In this context, 600W are high power motors. Low power motors where TTL signal level encoders would be suitable would be in the 24V / 100W range.
TTL encoders share a 0V line between all three channels (and probably also the power supply) and output a 5V signal. Noise on the 0V line (or the 5V) line due to interference can cause problems.
Differential encoders have each signal as a positive and negative pair. Your signal is the difference between the two lines, not their absolute value, and so the level of interference rejection is a lot higher.
Having said that, some people report good results with the US Digital encoders, and they are almost cheap enough to try experimenting with.
usdigital.com/products/encoders/incremental/rotary/kit/e4p/
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