[simonrafferty]

I've been trying to get this to work on & off for a year, without much success! Then today I had a brain wave!
Attachment 450542

My motors are Fanuc A06B-0310-B002 on a Denford Cyclone Lathe. I suspect that any of the AB06 motors, so long as they have a PulseCoder type Incremental encoder will work with minor tweaks.

First of all, download a copy of Allen Bradley Ultraware software. Allen Bradley will tell you it's not available to the public, but if you create a login on their web site, it SOMETIMES works. Keep trying on different days and eventually it will let you in! There are one or two other sources on line if you search. Doesn't seem to matter which version.

Within that, you will need to configure a custom motor:
Attachment 450544
Some of the information to go in the different fields is available on line. The Inductance, I measured with a meter - but you could just guess. Getting it right will give you the best performance but won't stop it running.

You'll need to connect the Ultra 3000 to your PC. I used a USB to Serial adaptor. Mine had the wrong gender, so I made an adaptor. If you buy the right one (Doh!), it will plug straight in. The USB adaptor needs to have a Male Sub-D9 connector.

The other two connectors CN1 & CN2 are unhelpful 3 row Sub-D types. You'll need a 3 Row D15 and D44 connector. EBay sourced these.

The wiring for them is detailed in the manual here

You can see, CN1 has inputs for step & direction (plus a load of other stuff you can set up in the software).

There are a couple of sources for the pinouts & connector types for the motor. The one I used is Here

The missing bit is that each of the four A & B lines need a pull up resistor to +5V, otherwise the Ultra 3000 will not detect the signals (the encoder has open collector outputs). I used a 10k resistor on each which seems to work.

Several sources on line say that you need one of the PICO boards to convert the (unhelpful) Grey Code Commutation outputs of the motor to something the Servo Drive can understand. This is not the case for the Ultra 3000, which is why they are a good choice (and cheap too on eBay). They can use the incremental encoder to provide the commutation signals.

In Ultraware you need to configure the motor to the custom Motor you defined above in the 'Motor' tab. Then go to the Encoder tab:
Attachment 450546

My motor's encoder is described as being 2500 line per revolution. The Ultra 3000 reads all four rising & falling edges, giving 10000 pulses per revolution - as set above. Yours may be different!
If you've got everything correct so far, when you turn the motor shaft, you will see the A, B & Index lights flash on the bottom panel. If not, check your wiring.

When you enable the drive, it will try to turn the motor to figure out the commutation settings. If it tries then fails with an error E39 or E20 - Here's today's brainwave - try swapping the U, V & W connections around on the drive. These feed the power to the motor and the phasing needs to match the encoder. On my second go, the motor worked!

When it enables without displaying an error, go to the Tuning tab, click Autotune. The motor will spin a bit and it will figure out the settings for velocity & position.

Lastly connect the Step & Direction inputs to your breakout board - and hopefully it will run!

I'm no expert, I just figured this out by trial & error. You will likely have to do the same - but I'll try to answer questions if I know the answer. I won't bother with the bit about high voltages being ouchy / dangerous. I'll assume you're a grown-up and have figured that out for yourself.

[Al_The_Man]

What I have done in the past, is replace the encoder with one that includes BLDC commutation pulses, you need to know the pole count to obtain the right one.
This changes the motor from 3ph sinusoidal to BLDC.
I used to get them from Renco before Heidenhain took them over.
But there are other sources.
BLDC reputedly offers slightly more torque than sinusoidal.
This was not intended for A-B however.
The original Fanuc has proprietary method of commutation.
Al.

[simonrafferty]

That was pretty much my first thought. Unfortunately the Y motor is so burried, it needs the machine completely stripping down to access it. The Z motor was hard enough (god knows how I'm going to get it back in!).
The only remaining option was to re-use the original encoder.

Although it was a long journey to get there, it is surprisingly simple once you figure out the pullup resistors and phasing.

I've seen the question asked many times on forums - so thought a writeup might help.

Si

[Al_The_Man]

This is the commutation format for the 4 outputs used by Fanuc. For the red-top motors.
Al.

[simonrafferty]

Thanks - I searched high & low for that info! One of the brief options was to use an Arduino or similar to convert the Grey code into the same format as regular Hall sensors.

I have no doubt it will be useful to someone in the future!

Si

[Al_The_Man]

There was one member here, I have lost track of his posts, but he came up with a circuit he was putting together for taking the Fanuc 4 bits and converting to BLDC for these motors
Al.