[Dollythelw]

Good morning Learned Ladies and Gentlemen,

I have inherited a Shizuoka AN-S complete with the Matchmaker cnc kit (Posidata 2800), the iron itself is in reasonable condition which leaves Noah's original control system which is presumed DOA. The previous owners were an exceptionally nice bunch and gave me everything they had to go with the mill including 2 rotary A axis, a massive bundle of tooling and 3 DC servos.

Having drawn a blank on ID'ing the electrical fitout on the mill I eventually tracked down an ex-posidata service engineer who has confirmed that its fitted with steppers all round.

So... with the preamble over here's the project asset register;

1 AN-S mill
1 pile of presumed scrap; stepper motors, control cabinets (small houses),
2 Jones and Shipman rotary 'A' axis
3 Baldor servos, (all different but all in the 4.5Nm range, all 180v Max, speeds being 2000, 2500 and 3000rpm)
1 Fabricator/Welder lost in a world alien to him
1 budget concious wife

I guess my initial questions would be should I ditch the steppers and fit the baldor DC servos or sell the baldors and fit a new and therefore supported (budget friendly and presumably reduced capacity) set of aftermarket kit?

Options on the table are AC servos and controller, new DC servos, or keep the baldors and spec a system up from there?

All input throughly appreciated, please excuse the newbie nature of the post but its a new field to me and Im keen/desperate to learn

Many thanks

Jez

[underthetire]

Well, if your wife lets you spend the kind of money it would take to go AC servo...but doesn't sound like it. Even DC servo can get expensive, since this will require DC servo drives ( figure 1K ) and a control that can handle encoder/closed loop. Mach 3 with steppers would be the least expensive, but your probably still going to have to replace the stepper drivers at minimum. Downside is its going to be open loop. You really need to inventory exactly what you have in electronics/motors before you can make an educated decision.

[Dollythelw]

Im being less than generous to the long haired General (shes secretly a tool junkie and a petrolhead) - the budget is £2.5k to get it up and running so figure about $4k US

The baldors are
SD32-20-A1, which specs as: 2000rpm max, 180V max, cont stall torque 4.6Nm
SD35-30-A1, 3000rpm max, 180V max, 48A peak current, cont stall torque 4.52Nm
and finally
MT-4535-BTYCN, 2500rpm max, 180V max, 35.7A peak current, cont stall of 40lb/in (this one seems modern enough to have a data sheet on the web Tech specs

Ive seen 1500w AC servos and drivers packages for pretty reasonable prices, I would hazzard a guess they are Chinese though. I came accross a couple of DC packages which included pre-populated control cabs, DC servos and cabling for reasonable money although they offer considerably lower torque. Flying blind I have no point of reference (torque wise) of how much gun do I need to drive the bed?
Ive got 3 phase in my workshop, plenty of juice on tap, this machine wont be in a production role but I do need it to have the capacity to drive hard if needed.

Would it help if I can find some further info on the steppers originally used by Matchmaker or should I consider them effectively scrap?