Linear Glass Scale encoder with Kflop/Kanalog

Hi, I have a Bearings Beaver Mill with Anilam Crusader Control, Anilam Glass scales, SEM DC servos and Glentek drives. Everything is working fine - for now. The motors have tachos which feed to the Glentek drives.

I am considering upgrading this to Mach 3. I am reading the comments on stability and oscillations when using linear scales instead of encoders on the motors. I cannot see why something which worked 30 years ago (and is still working) cannot be replicated today.

The plan is to retain the DC servos with tachos. I am replacing the Glentek drives with AMC which accepts tacho input. The glass scale output (quadrature) would go to the KAnalog which then also supplies the +-10V drive signal for the servos. Mach3 interfaces to the KFlop processor.

Has anyone attempted/done a similar project before?

bump for a good question......I am curious about magnetic encoders and readers used with Kflop!

Good luck. Thats been a holy grail of sorts for the hobby crowd. I know it can be done but nobody wants to show how and so far questions like this go ignored.

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Originally Posted by turmite

bump for a good question......I am curious about magnetic encoders and readers used with Kflop!

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I also would like to see someone try this. Here is a previous post.

Basically linear scales have the potential to improve accuracy. But the control is greatly complicated by the additional mechanical elements placed in the control loop.

Magnetic scales can potentially add to the difficulties. They have about 100X less inherent resolution and use software interpolation techniques to increase resolution. This can add delays, noise, and other quirks into the feedback loop.

Regards
TK