Automatic band saw marvel v10a

 
 

Getting the control box together some is being reused from the original system such as the transformer the motor starters. 

Heres where im at with the project, I got the most of the machine wired up, and had it "functioning" the hydraulic that actuates the back and forth of the shuttle is leaking threw and slowly pushes forward when idle aswell as makes a big mess of my floor. When the machine trys to shuttle forward it like jumps back and forth intill it hits the spot it needs to be on the linear encoder then slowly seeps forward. I had a feeling this would be a problem. Am I crazy to try to pair a encoder to a hydraulic and expect it to acurately position? Or would this problem be solved by fixing the leaking hydraulic and maybe a new solenoid valve. Is there any examples of somebody doing similar, controling a hydraulic accurately with a linear encoder. or do i scrap the hydraulic system, only keep it for clamping and to push the blade forward. Replacing the hydraulic with a heavy duty servo motor and ball screw. 

I have successfully used PWM on 24V DC bang-bang valves with position feedback. However there is huge spool-overlap to contend with which isn't a problem in my case because I use a microcontroller and my PID-loop is easy to modify. It will never be a servo-valve but it works fine if all you need to do is hit a target-count.

There are many applications that can benefit from programmable positioning but the cost of full-blown servo-hydraulics is not justifiable.

Regards,
Craig