5 axis Build

I have a Bridgeport VMC with a Fanuc 18i. It is a 5 axis machine with a trunnion and rotary table. It has Yaskawa a/c brushless motors and drives. The machine has less than 140 hours on it since new. It was used to make a high precision special part for a company. But the controller got damaged by a forklift and I am thinking about building my own controler using the existing servos and drives. Ive had a few people looking at replacing the controller and the price shocked me.

Ive been searching for this type of conversion on the forum and there doesent seem to be any like it that I can find. Anyone know of any that they can point me to?

I have the money and time to do this right now due to low work load so Ill document the build here for others who are interested.

Any recomendations to hardware would be greatly appreciated

Thanks
Jim

Thanks for the reply.
Yes, the drives can be controlled by +-10.
They are pretty good drives. I have them on other machines and they can control position, velocity and torque.
I was looking at something like the 5I22 from mesa and a PCI bussed computer that I already have. Im sure it will be more complicated than you say. There are many limits and other such components to find and wire. But sure beats junking the machine and Im sure ill learn quite a bit in the process.

Yes, the there are encoders.
I had pretty much the same hardware list. Ill call Mesa tomorrow and see what I need to put it together.
Jim

Yes, There is lots of IO. Im going to try to identify it today. There is also the issue of the ATC, Cooling and lighting.

What is the purpose of the SSD? Additional memory for the FPGA? Or is it in lieu of a PC?

I would use a 7I48 instead of 2 7I33s to get 6 axis of servo interface on one connector, leaving more I/O free. Only disadvantage is that you need to use EMC2 master (2.5pre) to support 7I48