On Mon, 2009-02-16 at 10:05 -0600, cogo...@verizon.net wrote: > Thanks Kirk , Tom and Jon for the quick replies, and the good > suggestions. > > The time frame is very loose. We have a FADAL 4020 that's been > doing all we need for years, and another one that's been dead for > years. At the end of last year I mentioned to the machinist that we > should probably get another mill running, just to have a backup ... > just in case... > > About a month later the working FADAL blew a servo drive card. We > were operating on the old hand operated mills in the shop for a week, > until we found out that the drive cards, though of different sizes > between the two machines, were compatible. > > The FADAL that's not working has an issue either with the tach, or > the resolver, and with this economy we don't want to just throw money > at the problem. > > We are also a little slow with work right now, so if I can do > something with the spare time I have, that would be good. > > If we were in a booming economy, I'd probably suggest getting 3 > Viper drives, 3 expensive quadrature encoders, and a MESA 5i20 card; > but we're not in a booming economy.
I think the FADAL's are also good candidates for EMC conversion. Having an idle machine to work on is a big plus. You might consider just getting one axis working to get started. Posting pictures of your Shizuoka and FADAL would help us provide more information. One advantage on converting one or both FADAL's is that there are allot of them out there. Just like your company, other companies are probably looking at repairing an old mill instead of buying a new one. If you develop an inexpensive FADAL conversion, you can expand your business. If you need help, I suspect that one or more people might be available (hint). The only unknown I can think of right now, is the tool changer which probably just needs a few digital IO pins and a short C or Classic Ladder program. If I had a vote, I would replace everything up to the axis motors with new parts that could be second sourced. When I started out working in technology, second sourcing was a big deal, somehow, as companies and as a nation we got away from this. You don't need expensive smart motion controller/motor drivers. EMC does first class motion control, so all you need is a dumb driver. A big advantage to having EMC do all of the motion control is that you can use HALscope for tuning and troubleshooting: http://wiki.linuxcnc.org/cgi-bin/emcinfo.pl?PWM_Servo_Amplifiers US Digital can provide encoder disks and sensors that allow you to refit to your current sensor locations. Their 2500 line (10,000 count) disks should provide more than enough resolution. To help offset the cost, you can probably make a fair amount selling the usable leftovers from the Bandit and the FADAL. If you are concerned about EMC, here is an example of size not being an issue with EMC: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxxdq6y8z8M (see Big Iron in: http://wiki.linuxcnc.org/cgi-bin/emcinfo.pl?Videos ) ------------- Kirk http://www.wallacecompany.com/machine_shop/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Open Source Business Conference (OSBC), March 24-25, 2009, San Francisco, CA -OSBC tackles the biggest issue in open source: Open Sourcing the Enterprise -Strategies to boost innovation and cut costs with open source participation -Receive a $600 discount off the registration fee with the source code: SFAD http://p.sf.net/sfu/XcvMzF8H _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
