Bridgeport VMC760 retrofit

Thanks Tommylight.

I had a good read through your tutorial last night. Very informative.

Unfortunately it's the servo drives that are busted in my machine. I assume the procedure is similar for newer drives if running analog? I would tune the velocity/torque in the drive software, then tune position through Linuxcnc.

It looks like a few of the modern servo drives I've looked at have encoder outputs. Those will just run back into a Mesa card like the 7I97?

Hi Langdons,

Yeah definitely affordable!

We run 415v 3ph in Australia. Weirdly enough there isn't a huge amount of aliexpress drives that cater to that voltage.
Inovance, Leadshine and Delta do however offer 400v stuff which is nice.

spincycle wrote:

I assume the procedure is similar for newer drives if running analog?

Yes.

spincycle wrote:

I would tune the velocity/torque in the drive software, then tune position through Linuxcnc.

Yes.

spincycle wrote:

It looks like a few of the modern servo drives I've looked at have encoder outputs. Those will just run back into a Mesa card like the 7I97?

Yes.
3 for 3, nice!
New drives can also be controlled by step/dir and also have encoder outputs, and those can again be used in LinuxCNC.
And there are several boards from Mesa that can be used, not just 7i97, a lot of combos there so when you are ready to order stuff, ask here first as we have the Mesa Master with us here, always, in the form of PCW.

We have 3 phase power in houses, always, rated at 3x380V +-10% and can pull 16A at home from any plug, 32A in workshops/garages.
Lately the local provider started complaining if we pull over 15KW over long duration's, i do not blame them, we have 100A at our disposal.
To spite Americans (since i still refuse to go there despite being granted a Green Card 17 years ago), we can charge a Tesla at home with 22KW on any socket around the house, 60KW if we push it!
And that is with no permissions or requests or installing superchargers!

wrote:

50 hz is inferior to 60Hz b/c transformers, motors, etc. need to be bigger and more expensive.

Was this from chatGPT?
The only valid difference is the induction motors spin faster at 60Hz, everything else is pretty much irrelevant.

tommylight wrote:

spincycle wrote:

I assume the procedure is similar for newer drives if running analog?
Yes.

spincycle wrote:

I would tune the velocity/torque in the drive software, then tune position through Linuxcnc.

Yes.

spincycle wrote:

It looks like a few of the modern servo drives I've looked at have encoder outputs. Those will just run back into a Mesa card like the 7I97?
Yes.
3 for 3, nice!
New drives can also be controlled by step/dir and also have encoder outputs, and those can again be used in LinuxCNC.
And there are several boards from Mesa that can be used, not just 7i97, a lot of combos there so when you are ready to order stuff, ask here first as we have the Mesa Master with us here, always, in the form of PCW.

Ace! Thanks Tommylight.

I have a 7i96 kicking around from a machine that never got off the ground, but I assume the lack of encoder inputs means I should use a different card.

This machine originally had rapids of 32,000mm/min with 16mm pitch ballscrews - 2000rpm on the axis. Would there be any benefit of analog over step/dir or even ethercat, to maintain such rates of speed and precision?

I just got off a 10hr flight. I took the original Bridgeport machine schematics with me to asses the control side of things. It looks like the Heidenhain output a 24v (sourcing?) signal to a bank of relays to control the solenoids, enables, mag motors, contractors etc. I assume a Mesa card, like the 7i84U could take this role?

It'd be bloody awesome if I could just retain these original distribution/control boards and halve the amount of wiring required!