A little background : About six years ago, as I was just starting to design my shop-built gantry machine, I came across a SUPER deal on Ebay for six sets of drive components. Each set included a line filter, Parker OEM300 75V, 7.5A power supply, Parker OEM750 stepper driver and a stepper motor. I didn't know a whole lot about this stuff a the time, but I knew it was a deal I couldn't pass up. So, they became the drive system for my CNC build. As it turned out, only five of the six drivers worked. Thas wasn't a problem (especially for what I'd paid for them) because my gantry is only (at least for now) a 3-axis machine. But, six years later I've lost two additional OEM750's and I'm now running on my last three. Another failure and I'm down and its decision time.
Here's my question for the worldly experience of the group. I'm retired and this is a serious hobby machine and I don't have a great deal of money that I can throw that this. So when the inevitable failure of the next stepper driver occurs, what would you do? Repair the OEM750 (~$280)? Or would you look at replacing the Parker hardware with something else like Gecko or maybe go the Mesa route? I've really been pleased with the stepper performance I get from the Parkers and the software stepper generation that Linuxcnc gives me is more than fast enough for the work I do. The repair is expensive and the drives were released in 1997. So they're 18 years old. I just don't have enough real world experience with this stuff to feel like I can make a good decision. If it was your problem, what direction would you go? Thanks in advance for your thoughts. Dean ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Dive into the World of Parallel Programming. The Go Parallel Website, sponsored by Intel and developed in partnership with Slashdot Media, is your hub for all things parallel software development, from weekly thought leadership blogs to news, videos, case studies, tutorials and more. Take a look and join the conversation now. http://goparallel.sourceforge.net/ _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
