Re: 21iT control retrofit?
About 3 years ago I went through exactly the same thing with my lathe and for the same reasons. I have a very low tolerance for antique controls. My controller was a Fanuc OT with red cap motors. The red cap motors are pretty much not compatible with anything, although I think Centroid may have a solution.
Now with a Win10 computer on the machine I'm able to run Fusion 360 (or any other CAD/CAM programs) right at the machine. Want to make a change? Update the drawing right at the machine and repost, boom, done. I personally think conversational programming is useless, I would much rather do it in CAD
I got into the retrofit and realized that the red cap motors were not going to work, so I ripped everything out that said Fanuc on it and replaced everything with the exception of the spindle motor. I bought 4 DMM Tech 1.8kW servos (X, Z, Live tooling, and Turret) The spindle motor I ran off of a VFD up until a couple of months ago when I replaced that with a 7.5kW SureServo2 (Delta) from Automation Direct because I needed a full C axis for some new parts we are making. The spindle motor was the last Fanuc part on the machine.
For software, Centroid, Dynomotion, and CamSoft are good solutions, and of course there are others. I just wrote my own CNC software and use a Galil motion controller as the brains of the system.
I think my cost would have been < $20K for everything, if everything was purchased new. Not exactly sure of my actual cost because I used a lot of parts that I had on the shelf.
Overall I couldn't be happier with the outcome, and run the machine dark all the time.
Jim Dawson
Sandy, Oregon, USA