I am helping my friend fix his CNC mill that is setup with a ProtoTrak M3 retrofit. Recently he was getting a few errors at startup and strange readings on the DRO. Now none of the axes will move and the DRO stays blank.
We have determined that the slave board (motion controller) is dead, since the status LEDs don't light up and the firmware is not listed when requesting the status.
Instead of sending the controller back to SWI for an expensive refurbished unit with next to no warranty, he wanted to look at using LinuxCNC or Mach3 (or any other open source/cheaper software) because he found the capabilities of the ProtoTrak a little limited and tedious to program.
Since the servo drives are still in good condition, we would like to reuse them. However I am having trouble finding a motion controller that would be capable of outputting 2 PWM signals for movement control.
I have found 2 similar threads here:
http://www.cnczone.com/forums/knee-v...74574-cnc.html
http://www.cnczone.com/forums/dynomo...ervo-amps.html
It appears that the only controller capable of this is the Dynamotion Kflop? Or are there other options out there?