On Thu, 9/5/13, Greg Bentzinger <skullwo...@yahoo.com> wrote: Hello group; An old friend contacted me recently about problems he has been having with his hobby mill. I say hobby because the man is a top notch surgeon who does mainly reconstruction of destroyed hands. His hobby mill looks to be a late 70's vintage CNC knee mill with a 2 or 3 hp Universal 300 qwik switch spindle. The control CRT is long gone and a B&W 7 inch hand held TV is strapped in place using composite RCA video. I'm guessing a Z80A cpu. The Mill has Baldor servos as follows; Model M-4060-FL-43 Mfg Code 16/190 81633 Max Current 25A Torque Stall 350 oz inch Max Speed 2500 RPM Max Volt 120 VDC -----------------
He's in the same boat I'm in. High voltage DC motors and new or new-er amps to drive them are hideously expensive. But a surgeon, you say? That usually means a person of means. I couldn't get around the cost of replacing one missing old amp and then coming up with the hardware to control it - and then always the worry that one of the nearly quarter century old amps would go *poof*, just like lighting $500 on fire. If they were under 100 volts there's plenty of amps or drivers on eBay, but get over 100 volts and there's not much. (I spent a lot of time on there looking for more up to date drives capable of handling 140 volt DC motors.) He'll be best off buying a new kit of motors and drivers with all the wiring. They usually include some cheap Chinese BOB. Use it to get it set up then toss it and get compatible gear from Mesa or Pico or one of the other guys who posts here. If you can afford it, all new is the best because A. It's supposed to work. B. If it doesn't work you can exchange it. If he does want to pinch a few pennies, there's a seller on eBay going by FA-PARTS, selling kits with used drivers and motors, all tested, with all the connectors, wiring diagram and software in English, and a cheap Chinese BOB. The connectors have been cut off of cables so wiring is up to the buyer. (I'm thinking of buying a kit from FA-PARTS but it'll have my investment in the mill over $2,000, dagnabit!) Might be able to part out the old system to recover some of the cost. I've brought in about $700 on old Anilam Crusader M pieces and still have some of it left. Curiously, no bids on the amps at a starting bid of $100. My sights (and budget) are set a bit lower. Still looking at options with NEMA34 size motors - and going to have to have someone else make plates to adapt a NEMA34 mount to a 4 on 75mm bolt circle. That's something your Dr. friend can do before his mill goes dead. Settle on what sort of motors to use then get adapters made. If he doesn't want that 4th axis, I'd be happy to take it off his hands. :-) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Learn the latest--Visual Studio 2012, SharePoint 2013, SQL 2012, more! Discover the easy way to master current and previous Microsoft technologies and advance your career. Get an incredible 1,500+ hours of step-by-step tutorial videos with LearnDevNow. Subscribe today and save! http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=58041391&iu=/4140/ostg.clktrk _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
