On Wed, 2009-12-09 at 11:30 -0600, Jon Elson wrote: > Martin Pinkston wrote: > > The stepper motors are thought to be MAE motors. I have gone to MAE > web site and I can't find the motors. No surprise there, they are over > 20 years old. But I think they are either 2 or 3 amp motors. The MS3 > in the model number > makes me think 3 amp motors. These motors have 4 > wires feeding them red, > green, black and white. They are 6.5 ohm > across the two fields. The physical size of the motors are 3.5" in > diameter and 4" long with an output shaft out the face and back. > > > If these are classic stepper motors, then you should be able to re-use > them, but they may be quite sub-optimal. 3 A at 6.5 Ohm is 19.5 > Volts. These motors may be pretty slow compared to more modern > motors. ... snip > controller. Since these are not going to be microstepping drives, I > would strongly suggest you get rid of them. Their performance will be > SO FAR below a modern microstepping drive that it is hard for the > uninitiated to believe there could be such a difference. The only > possible reason to try to re-use these drives is so that when you > finally move up to a Gecko drive you will appreciate how good their > drives are! > > Jon
I would tend to disagree with your disagreement, at least in my case. My Shizuoka works very well with the the original motors and drives. I think that if the system under consideration was a higher quality system to begin with, then with EMC2, it should perform just as well as the original. Centroid makes a good product, so my guess is, an EMC2 upgrade would work well. In my case, I was able to upgrade with very little investment (break-out board, VFD, glue), and gets me by until I can justify a servo upgrade. The 3 amp limit was a guess from the original post, so I wouldn't make any big decisions based on that. My drives are rated at 8 amps and 45 volts. The mill weighs 3500 pounds so it's not exactly petite. Gecko's and microstepping is good stuff, but the extra cost is a fair jump up. I would rather put the money into encoders and a servo system later. -- Kirk Wallace http://www.wallacecompany.com/machine_shop/ http://www.wallacecompany.com/E45/index.html California, USA ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Return on Information: Google Enterprise Search pays you back Get the facts. http://p.sf.net/sfu/google-dev2dev _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
