Re: Renew old plasma table
That looks like a substantial old machine, but as you say the controls were made when the dinosaurs still roamed the earth.
Those drives appear to be analog DC drives. And as such are a bit more difficult and expensive to interface than step & direction drives. But depending on your skills and budget they are a very robust system, I still have 30 year old DC drives on my mill and am running modern controls. Having said that, there are some relatively inexpensive modern DC drives that do take a step & direction input that might be worth looking at.
The alternative would be to replace the motors and drives with modern AC servos.
If you have the original electrical documentation for the machine it would make the transition easier.
Jim Dawson
Sandy, Oregon, USA