Category: CNC Machines
I understand, as far as what I've seen from the manuals and such the fielbdus is proprietary and as per an elumatec engineer's review himself, the system wont even enable itself until all ferrocontrol only components are connected to each other, so theres no point in a half swap to third party, might as well just switch out the entire drive system, (though the only obvious issue is with the PC here, the guy from elumatec also said the same 28k USD for a new PC, so safe to say thats not an option)
Thanks for the advice, at the very least I did get a pretty decent bit of knowledge about linuxcnc which was quite interesting, and hopefully someone else with the same issue can use this information to save some time.
As for our next course of action, we'll start looking into retrofitting kits and other controllers like mach3, if anyone has any other suggestions or reviews on good companies with full retrofitting kits (drive system + controller etc) I'd appreciate that a lot.
Bit worried about the price for the spindle especially, but I've been told there are some pretty decent chinese companies with cheaper motors, and another option for the axes is just choosing a lower power drive and using a gearbox to match the necessary torque, so I'll keep looking.
edit: just went through the document and found this section, might be relevant:
Complex automation technology plants require an effective and radical possibility
of monitoring, i.e.
• insight into the system, in particular the retrieval of conditions
• influencing, intervening in the system
under various conditions:
• initial commissioning
• plant-specific basic parameterization
• subsequent altering or optimization of the settings
• service and regular maintenance
• malfunctions
For this purpose, two interfaces are available to the DARC system as a partial
component:
When it is integrated into a CAN or Profibus-DP-fieldbus system the DARC system
can be parameterized, tested and commissioned via the serial service interface RS-
232.
When it is integrated into the ferrocontrol CNC fieldbus system the DARC system
can be parameterized, tested and commissioned via the fieldbus.
The following chapters describe all the procedures and methods, depending on the
type of fieldbus used, necessary to operate the DARC system with the appropriate
service interface.