I have a Bridgeport Interact with a dead servo drive. A replacement is going to cost me best part of $1000 and the one that has blown was replaced with a 'reconditioned' drive 12 months ago - so I'm not keen to buy another!

Gecko's amongst others are fairly inexpensive and capable of driving the 100v/15A motors - but they have step / direction control. It seems that you can get a good quality S/D drive for $150, but +/-10v start at about $1000 for DC motors.

I'm wondering if, by using a microcontroller I can convert one to the other?
The +/-10v controls the velocity with feedback from a tacho generator. The uController can read the voltage with a simple ADC and use the tacho to generate the step / direction pulses as required.

The offset (programmed on my TNC 370) can be controlled by the uC as can the servo lag by increasing and decreasing the number of pulses per sec for a given ADC voltage.

Have I missed something? Is such a converter already available or are there low cost +/-10v drives around that I've not found yet?

Si