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I have a 90VDC 2.5 DC motor which I plan to mount an encoder on.
This will be mounted on a mini lathe spindle to use on my bench top Jet mill & my 4x8 router table.
I have the 90V controller.
How would you wire to be able to use as motor for lathe work & switch over to use as servo motor to use as 4the axis with Gecko driver driver????

[acondit]

I have heard people say that a standard DC motor will not work well as a servo motor. Something to do with how the armatures are designed on real servos versus the standard DC motors.

As a spindle drive you just need a variable speed DC controller. As a servo you need a servo drive. By the way the max voltage on the current Gecko servo drives is 80v dc.

With the proper drive and motor, you could use it both ways with the same setup under EMC2.

Alan

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Thank you, will check into EMC2. Can it be used with MACH3?

[tauntdesigns]

IIRC:
EMC2 software does what Mach3 does but runs on a Linux operating system, where mach3 runs on a windows operating system.

Jack

[acondit]

IIRC:
EMC2 software does what Mach3 does but runs on a Linux operating system, where mach3 runs on a windows operating system.

Jack

An important difference is that when using servo drives with EMC2, EMC2 can close the loop with the encoders where as Mach3 relies on the driver to close the encoder loop (Gecko drive style). This (EMC2) offers more flexibility in choice of servos and drives.

I am not sure how well Mach3 would handle a servo motor as a spindle drive but it would probably work fine when using a servo drive (step and dir style) and servo motor to run a 4th axis.

Alan

[chafik]

I was under the impression that a servomotors cannot be used as a 4th axis, I could be wrong though. My understanding is that servomotors when controlled in position (using an encoder, as opposed to being velocity controlled either using an encoder or a tach as the feedback transducer), will 'hunt' between encoder positions (Gecko calls it 'singing'). This is a very small angle (related to how many lines your encoder has), that the servo would oscillate around.

This is just my understanding, since most of my experience (both hobby and work) is with steppers. I would appreciate any corrections to the above from someone who has experience using servos to hold a position.

Chafik

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Good point on the servo motor, well have to check into it.
Maybe I'll just use the motor for Lathe work & a stepper for 4th axis.
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