[js412000]

I got my motor working ,on the bench, using Pico systems pwm controller, brushless servo amplifier and Fanuc encoder converter.

I had a few minor problems but Mr Elson at Pico systems was most helpful by telephone and e-mail in solving my problems.

Due to low humidity in my basement I have quite a problem with static electricity. Every time I get out of my chair it generates enough electricity to make a 1/2 inch long spark. Needless to say, I ended up zapping the servo amplifier a number of times. Even though the the damage caused by this was completely my fault, Mr Elson graciously repaired it free of charge .

I was a bit discouraged ,for a time, because the motor would not run at all with the PID tuning settings in the INI file that came with EMC. Mr Elson gave me some settings to try and it has worked like a charm ever since.

My machine won't be ready for some time so I rigged up a wooden brake on the shaft coupling to give the motor a load to work against.
I'm running the motor at 60 volts for now( I plan to up that to 100 volts later)and it runs smoothly and has a fair amount of torque. I can barely stall the motor by pinching the coupling between two fingers.

As you can see from the photos it is quite a large motor. The servo amplifier is rated 20 amps . After running for a few minutes I can feel a couple degrees of warmth on the heat sink but no sign of overheating.

My next task is to figure out how to use the HAL oscilloscope feature that is included in EMC and do some fine tuning of the motor performance.

[jmelson]

I got my motor working ,on the bench, using Pico systems pwm controller, brushless servo amplifier and Fanuc encoder converter.

Great! I've been out of town, and just spotted this message. Thanks for the testimonial comments!

Jon

[dresda]

I have tried to run Fanuc ac motors with absolute encoders Fanuc analog drives, DSPMC motion board from Vital systems with no success, I think it might work with Inc, encoders. Have some problems, glitches between mach3 and DSPMC, still can't get my MPG to work.
Now I have a new project and would like to use my Fanuc AC servomotors with a drive that puts out the required step/direction, and I still don't know what step/direction means.
I also have a 3-1 Fanuc digital drive and I know that's not going to work.
My motor are:
AC servo model 0S
Torq stall 2.9 Nm
Amp stall 4.2A
3 phase 8 pole
Perm, magnet 3000rpm
127 volts.
Do you have a drive for these to run on Mach3 or could you point me in the right direction
Ray.

[Al_The_Man]

If they are quadrature/differential encoders Granite devices has drives that should work using step/dir.
You may have a problem finding a drive compatible with the absolute encoders.
Al.

[dresda]

Al, you are fast for me, I just posted on the Granite site.
The problem I'm having is trying to understand step/dir stuff, never been exposed to this, only Fanuc etc.
Ray.

[jmelson]

I have tried to run Fanuc ac motors with absolute encoders Fanuc analog drives, DSPMC motion board from Vital systems with no success, I think it might work with Inc, encoders. Have some problems, glitches between mach3 and DSPMC, still can't get my MPG to work.
Now I have a new project and would like to use my Fanuc AC servomotors with a drive that puts out the required step/direction, and I still don't know what step/direction means.
I also have a 3-1 Fanuc digital drive and I know that's not going to work.
My motor are:
AC servo model 0S
Torq stall 2.9 Nm
Amp stall 4.2A
3 phase 8 pole
Perm, magnet 3000rpm
127 volts.
Do you have a drive for these to run on Mach3 or could you point me in the right direction
Ray.

The motors are totally standard, if you fit them with a 6-channel encoder set up for an 8-pole motor, they will work fine. You will have to align the encoder to the motor poles.
Alternatively, my Fanuc encoder converter takes the commutation signals from the Fanuc encoders on the S series motors and converts them to industry compatible "Hall" signals.
Or, you could use a sensorless drive. The Fanuc encoders on these motors have industry standard incremental quadrature plus index signals, it is just the commutation signal that is proprietary.

Jon

[dresda]

Thanks Jon, do you any drives to suit these motors?
ray.

[Al_The_Man]

If you give me the number off the encoder I can see if I have the data to let you know the format.
Al.

[jmelson]

Thanks Jon, do you any drives to suit these motors?
ray.

Yes, I have a servo amp that I have tested with the 10S motor, which is quite
a bit bigger. The amp is tested to 20A and 122 V. The S series of motors
have a proprietary commutation output, so I also have a converter that changes
that to industry-compatible commutation signals, which my servo amp and
many others need. But, this is not a step/direction drive, but a PWM-input
servo amp. That means the amp gets a command from the controller, and
the width of the pulse is proportional to the voltage sent to the motor.
This uses a sign/magnitude scheme, so if whatever controller/interface
you are using can send a sign/magnitude PWM output, it will work.

I generally work with EMC2, which is a more integrated servo motion
package. You can do the drive tuning and watch following error right
in EMC2, without needing other packages to handle the drive tuning.

So, I have a set of boards for these motors/encoders. The Universal PWM
Controller is the interface to the PC and EMC2, and reads the encoder
quadrature signals and gives position feedback to the PC. It also
generates the PWM signals. The Fanuc encoder converter takes the
encoder signals and sends commutation signals to the servo amp, and
the quadrature signals to the PWM controller. (It uses the C1 C2 C4 C8
signals from the Fanuc encoder until the motor has passed the index pulse
the first time, it then counts encoder pulses to give more accurate commutation.)
And, the brushless PWM servo amp drives the motor, based on the PWM
from the controller board and the commutation signals from the Fanuc
converter.

You can see these products on my web store at
Pico Systems :

I'm sorry I don't have a complete one-source solution for Mach, I did discuss
a driver for our products at one time with Art Fenerty, but there wasn't any
effort put into developing it.

Jon

[dresda]

So yours are +- 10v analog right. I have that setup at the moment on a mill with SEM dc motors and servo dynamic drives but then I have to use the $1500 motion board, that hurts..So emc doesn't need a motion controller?
Ray.

[jmelson]

So yours are +- 10v analog right.

No, the command input to our PWM servo amp is a PWM digital signal.
That is true for both the brush and brushless models. But, you do need
an interface to this to read the encoder signals and send the PWM
out. Our Universal PWM Controller is $250 for 4-axes. The brush
PWM servo amp is $125, the brushless is $150 per axis.

I have that setup at the moment on a mill with SEM dc motors and servo dynamic drives but then I have to use the $1500 motion board, that hurts..So emc doesn't need a motion controller?
Ray.

No, I have a cheaper interface for analog velocity servos. It is $780 with card cage
and power supply, but that is better than $1500. It is not a "motion controller", just
an interface to the encoders and analog input to the servo amp. EMC2 is the
motion controller.

Jon

[dresda]

Now I'm really confused my head is spinning. The DSPMC from vital systems works good on my Servo dynamics drives, he does sell a less expensive card to use with EMC2.

[jmelson]

Now I'm really confused my head is spinning. The DSPMC from vital systems works good on my Servo dynamics drives, he does sell a less expensive card to use with EMC2.

Sorry to make your head spin! But, Pico Systems also has a complete system for the original
Fanuc red cap motors. There is the Universal PWM Controller, the Fanuc encoder converter and the brushless PWM servo amp. I can guarantee all this works, and have configs files already
set up for it.

Jon

[Al_The_Man]

I picked up a batch of motors marked in a similar fashion, 2000 pulse coder but I did not confirm the encoder # first, it turned out they were quadrature differential OK, but were one of the odd ball low level sine wave signal encoder that Fanuc uses an intermediary unit between motor and drive.
Al.

[jorber]

Pico Systems also has a complete system for the original
Fanuc red cap motors.

Jon is your web down? I am trying to get the price for the fanuc encoder converters.

[jmelson]

Jon is your web down? I am trying to get the price for the fanuc encoder converters.

We've been having some cable modem problems, and just had a new modem
installed. Hopefully, it is all working fine now.

Jon

[goldenfab]

Driving a Fanuc servo might be more simple than I originally thought. Thanks for sharing.

I picked up a Tsudakoma rotary table with a 10S Fanuc servo which I hope to use some day. My original plan was to fab up shaft and bracket to run a KL34-180-90 servo with a gecko drive. This is what I have on my 9x42 Knee mill that the rotary table would be going on.

So to run the servo amp from Pico Systems I would need 3 phase power right? Single phase 110/220 is my only option in my shop. Would the servo amp do ok with a cheap static phase converter? Any advice/opinions welcomed as to what would be the better route.

Adam

[jmelson]

Driving a Fanuc servo might be more simple than I originally thought. Thanks for sharing.

I picked up a Tsudakoma rotary table with a 10S Fanuc servo which I hope to use some day. My original plan was to fab up shaft and bracket to run a KL34-180-90 servo with a gecko drive. This is what I have on my 9x42 Knee mill that the rotary table would be going on.

So to run the servo amp from Pico Systems I would need 3 phase power right? Single phase 110/220 is my only option in my shop. Would the servo amp do ok with a cheap static phase converter? Any advice/opinions welcomed as to what would be the better route.

Adam

No, you don't need 3-phase mains power. That is a totally separate issue from the motor using 3-phase power to move it. That 3-phase power is generated by the servo amp.

So, there are a couple ways to do this. Gecko does not provide a brushless motor drive. Some outfits such as Servo Dynamics and AMC do provide servo amps that accept step/direction signals. be careful, many of these drives do NOT accept step pulses, only analog velocity commands.

We have our own solution, but it only works with LinuxCNC and our own controller board (or Mesa contollers can also be used). These send PWM commands to the drive, not step pulses.

Jon

[goldenfab]

Thanks for clearing that up. So it looks like the amp is DC input. I have a 72v supply already, it sure would be nice to use it. What is the recommended voltage?

I forgot to mention I am the KFLOP motion control board by Dynomotion along with Mach3. I wonder if my setup would work with the Pico servo amp and encoder board. I'm not opposed to using LinuxCNC but I'm not sure what it woulda take to get it to work with the KFLOP.

[jmelson]

Thanks for clearing that up. So it looks like the amp is DC input. I have a 72v supply already, it sure would be nice to use it. What is the recommended voltage?

I forgot to mention I am the KFLOP motion control board by Dynomotion along with Mach3. I wonder if my setup would work with the Pico servo amp and encoder board. I'm not opposed to using LinuxCNC but I'm not sure what it woulda take to get it to work with the KFLOP.

72 V DC will work, but you won't get full speed from the motor. This may not matter with a rotary axis. The motors usually have the voltage needed to achieve rated RPM on the nameplate, often 120 - 150 V. If you have 72 V available for a 150 V-rated motor, you'd get about half rated speed.


Our controller board is only supported by LinuxCNC, sorry. Our servo amps require PWM pulses, not step pulses. If the KFLOP can generate a 50 KHz PWM signal that is proportional to desired motor speed for a positioning axis, then it ought to be able to control our servo amp. We want to have PWM PLUS a direction signal.

Jon