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