Add Z-Axis to my machine

Let's forget about that black round servo motor by CMC for now. I have another one: SM233AE-NGSN that's powered by a parker GV-L3 amp and it's literally ready to go. I have everything I need and simply need a place to plug the following things into my MESA cards:

+/- 10v (assuming I can plug these 2 wires into my 7i49 card AOUT2 for Z control?

Encoder A+ / A-
Encoder B+ / B-
Index + / -
+5v / Gnd

Also this driver has an enable feature that if I complete the circuit between 2 pins I can ENABLE or DISABLE my servo. So that would be nice to have a switch for it (meaning 2 more pins on a MESA board) but not necessary I guess.

Hi Andy,

My encoder is 1000 ppr and with the current 3-ph motor running around 1400 RPM as my travel speed gauge that equates to 23.3 rps or 23,300 pps from the encoder. So if the 7i42 can handle < 30kHz I think we're fine because that's a really fast travel speed on my knee and I'd only want those speeds during a jog movement not a milling maneuver. Can you help me out with the BIT file required?

You started saying 7i43 and I have 7i42TA. Is since the 7i42TA just extends (protects) the IO channels of the 7i43 do I simply concern myself with writing a new .BIT file for my 7i43-U-4 card and nothing is needed for the 7i42TA?

OK Guys I have made a choice. I think I'm going to get a MESA board to allow me to use ENCODERS and get rid of my resolvers altogether. I don't know why I didn't really think of this sooner but Encoders are only like 20 dollars on Amazon??? This will let me seamlessly integrate my X,Y,Z all together on 1 board. Additionally I'm thinking of adding a servo motor for my spindle in the near future and getting rid of the nasty 3-phase on top. Then I could truly do rigid tapping and all kinds of cool stuff with the servo motor driving the spindle.

So can you guys tell me if I'm on the right track here I'd appreciate it. I already have a 7i43-U-4 MESA card and I think I would just need a 7i48 card for my encoders I want to buy. Is that right? I can keep my 7i42TA card for limits and other stuff.

The encoders I want to get would be like this... and I'll even get new couplers:
www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00UTIFCVA/ref...A2CH56PPVFOUBF&psc=1
www.amazon.com/gp/product/B078VTPBQY/ref...A1THAZDOWP300U&psc=1

Now my servo motors are driving a toothed belt up to the x and y leadscrew meaning every 10 or so revolutions on the servo motor equals 1 revolution on the leadscrew and on the resolver (soon to be encoder). Will this be a problem during setup or should it be simple and straight forward?

Going this route I can add my new Z servo which already has encoder quadrature output so that should be child's play after this mess I've been dealing with.

Give me your feedback soon please I want to get my new MESA card ordered and get these encoders ASAP. If these encoders are not sufficient, please recommend something better for me to use.

Attached are pics of my old resolvers on the machine so you can see what I'll be replacing with the new encoders I want to get.

Andy do they do some trickery with the electronics because my current Parker Motion motor that I'm adding to my Z says 1000ppr in the literature but it gives 4000 ppr on ORES/ERES in the software settings EPROM. So maybe that would be the case with these new encoders as well? 4x the stated PPR?

So my dilemma is this ...I can't really rip the encoder off of this parker servo so I'd have to scrap it completely if I wanted to get a servo with a resolver. Plus finding the resolvers seems to be a pain because they are older tech. Yes I see them on e-bay but you'd really recommend putting resolvers on new servos just to keep resolvers?

I figured I'd go with the lesser evil and just swap my 7i49 card out for a 7i48 card and go encoder everywhere. Later I was thinking of even adding a rotary table for a 4th axis to my bed? I have another 4 of these Parker servos (and drive) waiting in a box.

I guess I just feel like I'd be going backwards at this point to go resolver. One last thing is one day in the future (hopefully not so far) I'd love to rip that 3-phase off of the top of my mill and replace all that crap up there with a direct drive 1.5Kw servo motor. That would let me do rigid tapping and all kinds of cool stuff with feeds/speeds. It would even get me above my rated 3300 RPM Max I have now because my bearings can go far faster than 3300, it's a motor and gearbox limitation right now.

Please let me know what you think because I'd really like to pull the trigger on this today. If I need to find better encoders, that's no problem. I can always swap them out later for better ones.