Searching for a consultant. Willing to pay.

(Moderators please move this to a more appropriate place if it isn't welcome here.  I didn't see a good place for it.)

I need some help on a partial retrofit of my existing machine (Supermax Bridgeport clone).  I've done a lot of work on this machine over the years so I know my way around.  Lately the ancient servodynamics amps have started acting up and faulting out.  I'd like to replace them with something more modern and reliable.

To figure it out is going to take more time than I have available right now.  So I'd like to pay someone to be my brain.   Help me figure out what I need to order and then be available online to help me work through the details of the conversion.  Nights and mostly weekends when I can find time.
I'm willing to pay and no in-person or on-site time is required (though welcome if you're near mid-missouri).

Of course if you've already done a similar conversion and just want to share what you learned here, that's welcome too.

Consider getting Delta or Yaskawa servo systems, those should already be set up properly for the motors they come with.
Saves a lot of time on the setup and wiring and tuning, but more on replacing motors.
LinuxCNC should be fairly easy to set up with those, especially if they come with position mode / step dir inputs.
A Mesa 7i95 would go nice with those as most probably they will have encoder outputs that can be wired to Mesa encoder inputs.
This will also close the loop in LinuxCNC, besides the drives itself.

Sliptonic, that name sounds familiar....are you the FreeCAD Path guy?

I'd help you out in exchange for code lol... I'm kind of in the same boat but code is my problem.

It might be something you want to discuss with whoever winds up helping you out but it would probably be best for you to come up with a budget and general expectations. Tommy's suggestion about Yaskawa servos certainly isn't bad but that's like $900 per axis. Yaskawa is good for OEM because the drives usually have special functions, kinda think they're overkill for LinuxCNC retrofits. I use DMM servos alot. They are not the same quality as Yaskawa but I can't imagine you would actually see any difference in performance using step/direction. I mainly use them cuz DMM is a good company to work with. I can get custom firmware cheap, discounts, replacement drive boards and somebody to actually talk to about issues.

I refrained from suggesting DMM as they have issues with velocity mode having unusable lag, but this is the second time i read that step/dir works good on those, so i am OK with it.
Rant:
What i am not OK is, i wrote to them, twice, to send a set to Andy, PCW, and me to have them tested and see if we can figure out where the lag is happening, no reply from them ever. Explicitly chose members who have Mesa analog boards and huge knowledge of analog servo systems, it would benefit them much more than 3 sets.
End rant.
Thank you for confirming they work in position mode.

Hmm, I'm unaware of that, did you make a thread? I've been using a DMM 5000rpm servo on my mill spindle with S+D for over 2 years...no issues there.

I also use them in a product I make. It's actually a replacement for Yaskawa servopaks and Sigma Vs with indexer module. Kind of a complicated arrangement with an external microcontroller that accepts Yaskawa's serial protocol and sets up rotary positioning and spits out DMM serial commands. No issues with DMM there either.

S+D is velocity mode and serial is Position mode. I've never commanded them through analog but I'm not really sure why anyone would want to do that these days anyway when installing new servos.

blazini36 wrote:

Sliptonic, that name sounds familiar....are you the FreeCAD Path guy?
 

Yep.  That's me.  Now founder of Ondsel the open-core company building around FreeCAD.  The new company is eating my lunch time-wise.  Hence my desire to get some help.

I'd help you out in exchange for code lol... I'm kind of in the same boat but code is my problem.

It might be something you want to discuss with whoever winds up helping you out but it would probably be best for you to come up with a budget and general expectations.

Absolutely. 

Tommy's suggestion about Yaskawa servos certainly isn't bad but that's like $900 per axis. Yaskawa is good for OEM because the drives usually have special functions, kinda think they're overkill for LinuxCNC retrofits. I use DMM servos alot. They are not the same quality as Yaskawa but I can't imagine you would actually see any difference in performance using step/direction. I mainly use them cuz DMM is a good company to work with. I can get custom firmware cheap, discounts, replacement drive boards and somebody to actually talk to about issues.

Do you really think it's necessary to replace the servos?  I'm not opposed to that but the motors work great.  I thought there must be options to just replace the amps.