[vinmancnc]

Hi Everyone! I'm new to cnczone and was hoping I could get your help. I have 2 Prolight2000s. One of them is losing position on one of the axis without any error reported. I think it may be the encoder. I've been mulling over retrofitting one of these machines for years and I considered both a Mach 3 and an Acorn retro. Although the Acorn system is attractive, I don't like the fact I will need to buy a windows 10 machine to run it. I helped a customer setup a Tormach with an old P4 and a stripped down version of XP and it appears to run mach 3 just fine.

Here's what I'm considering for hardware.

Ethernet Smoothstepper
C25 Terminal Board
C41 PWM Spindle Control Board - to connect to the existing Minarik

Teknic Clearpath SD motors and possible power supply if I can't use the existing one.

My Questions -

(1) What do you think of my proposed setup?

(2) Which Clearpath Nema 23 model/s would you recommend?


1st I talked to Magmotor the manufacturer of my original servos. The guy there said the specs would be between they're 230 and 300 model (see attachment) although these are 3/8 shaft and mine is 1/4 shaft
When I sent this info to Teknic, I didn't get a recommended motor but got back a lot of resources about how to pick one which I am looking over but it's a little overwhelming. Considering this already has servo motors attached on the existing system I would think it would be easy to figure out a comparable Clearpath motor?


When I get this figured out I'd like to post pictures of my progress to helpfully help other users.

Any input would be greatly appreciated!

[CS900]

do the current drives have a fault indicator?

Seems unlikely that the servo itself would be the cause of position loss. I'd suggest looking over the mechanical aspects of the mill with a fine tooth comb before spending money on a new servo system. It may be something as simple as a loose motor shaft coupler.

[vinmancnc]

do the current drives have a fault indicator?

Seems unlikely that the servo itself would be the cause of position loss. I'd suggest looking over the mechanical aspects of the mill with a fine tooth comb before spending money on a new servo system. It may be something as simple as a loose motor shaft coupler.

Thanks for the response!

I'm not getting any errors at the control. Yes, I did check the couplings and everything seems tight. I think I remember running an indicator in the spindle against a block and in jog mode it was fine. The position is always off by an exact amount. I forgot what that amount was maybe .040" inch. The reason I say encoder is I have a customer who makes robots and they said it was probably the encoder when I explained the problem.

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