[want-to-be-cnc]

I would like to use Mach3 on my milling machine and have some questions regarding a good motion or breakout board.

I have an 1983 Alliant mill that was retrofitted to CNC with a Anilam Crusader2 controller. It is equipped with SEM MT30F4-45 analog servo motors with tachometers as encoders. I have replaced the old servo amplifiers with Copley 422, because I was having problems with the originals.
When it purchased the mill the previous owner told me that the controller did not function correctly but I could use it as a manual mill which I have since I purchased it.
I thought maybe I could get the original controller going but even with a friend with extensive electronics knowledge I couldn't. I then started a search on what kind of software and electronics I would need to put CNC capability back on my mill. I ended up with LinuxCNC, and Pico systems PPMC boards.
Installing the boards and wiring it to the existing servo box was not much of a problem, but the learning curve of Linux was too much for me, so I gave up on CNC, and just made the motors work by supplying +-10vdc reference voltage to the amplifiers

I am now back to where I would like to have CNC capabilities on my mill.
I am not an electronics expert so I have definitely made some mistakes. One of them was that I just purchased a four axis breakout board from Stinsmart. It was only $49 so I know it might not work, but I thought I'd give it a shot. What I learned was even though it stated 1-10vdc output, that was to control a VFD and not the reference voltage for the servo amps. After receiving it and looking at the instructions the reference voltage is actually 5 VDC. After doing some research on the Internet I found to correct this problem a guy could use YAPSC : 10V boards for this.

At this point I would rather bite the bullet and get the electronics designed for my type of amplifiers, and using Mach3 as software. It would be great if I could use the PPMC electronics I have already but I'm thinking they were designed for LinuxCNC.

I'm getting a little long-winded here so if anybody could answer these questions, I would really appreciate some good answers.

Thank you
Larry

[ger21]

To drive analog servos, you'd be looking at either CS Labs or Vital Systems motion controllers.

CSMIO/IP-A Ethernet Motion Controller (+/- 10V) 6 axis with connectors - CS-Lab CNC controllers CNC Machining CNC software

Ethernet Motion Controller, Mach3 Mach4 CNC Retrofit, Machine Tools, .Net C# CSharp Library

[awerby]

I think you're right about the Pico drives; they need to close the loop in software, which LinuxCNC supports but Mach3 doesn't. I don't think the tachometer feedback by itself will be enough to give your mill positional accuracy on the fly - unless it also has glass scales or something similar.

If I wanted to convert a mill like that to run under Mach3, I'd be tempted to junk the whole existing control system, get brushed servo motors with optical encoders mounted, and use Gecko G-320 drives to run it from step-direction input. But you might be able to replace those tachs with optical encoders and run the machine with the hardware you've got. All you need is a LinuxCNC expert to set it up for you (try advertising for one here). LinuxCNC is a royal pain to set up, but once it's installed and working, it's not that hard to run.

[want-to-be-cnc]

Thank you for your reply Andrew,
I don't know what happening with this website but this is the third time I've tried to reply and it seems like everything gets lost, and I don't know what the hell is going on, but I just want to thank you for your reply and if I can figure it out I will reply and hopefully you will get it. Thank you
Larry

[want-to-be-cnc]

Thank you for your reply Gary,
I've been having problems using this website to respond, so I just wonder make a quick thank you. I'm going to check out what you have in your response, and as soon as I can figure out why might text gets all changed around in responding to people, I will respond to you again.

Thank you
Larry