Recommendations on next step.

Afternoon all, 

I have been developing a machine similar to this subject on the forums HERE for the past 18 months.  I have it working with stepper motors and running with three axis, X, A & B with no issues. Unfortunately I cannot get the speed I need on the X axis with the stepper motors, and while they have worked good in the initial concept stage, I would like to change over to servo motors.  

I would like to go to a closed loop system, and would really like some help in understanding what hardware I need to be looking at.  I have calculated that I need about a 400W servo motor, but apart from that, I am trying to understand if I need a Mesa board, or other boards to link up to run through Linux CNC.  I will be removing one servo ( B Axis ) and looking to replace it with a proximity sensor to detect when the X Axis is ready in position to adjust the cuter.  

Anyway, any suggestions on what hardware to use or point me in the direction to start looking would be greatly appreciated.  






 

Afternoon ? It's 4:15AM here!
First, more info on what you have, what drive, motor, power supply and what control.
As someone who can use steppers at over 3000RPM, i would not dismiss steppers that easy.
As for servo, almost all new servo drives can be controlled by step/dir or analog +-10V and some other types of control, so the question becomes: loop closed in the drives or LinuxCNC or both.
For the latter, the Mesa 7i97 has everything and then some, analog +-10V control.
Or the same thing done differently, Mesa 7i77 with 7i92 (eth) or 5i25 (PCI) or 6i25 (PCI-E).
There is also the Mesa 7i95 that does step/dir and has encoder feedback for all axis.

Morning Tommylight,

Your out of bed early......or are you just getting to bed. The current steppers I have are HERE . Nema 34 with 7Nm of torque. I figure this is probable a little over kill for what I need but I was not sure when I first started as to what size I needed.

Currently the best I can get is around 70 Inches per minute before it stalls out, and I need around 180 Inches per minute.  For the Breakout Board I am using this one HERE . Probably not the best, but again this machine is in the prototype / concept stage.  

Tommylight how do you find the Stepper Motors at 3000 rpm?  Is there much vibration?  I notice that I have a lot of vibration with the current steppers .  

Again thanks for your times. 

I am still up.
No answer on the drive type and power supply ????

Ahh Bugger forgot that. I have pictures of the drivers and power supply but forgot to put the info up.

Drivers are DM860T from Steppersonline HERE
Power Supply is 48vDC 7.3A   HERE

 

Cutter07 wrote:

Ahh Bugger forgot that. I have pictures of the drivers and power supply but forgot to put the info up.

Drivers are DM860T from Steppersonline HERE
Power Supply is 48vDC 7.3A   HERE

 

With the specs from the drive.
Input voltage 18-80VAC or 36-110VDC

You could do with upping the voltage to the drives to 65v AC or 95V DC