Originally Posted by ktmrider  I have a an old CNC mill. The servos are good. I have been looking into Mach3 as a controller. I understand the vipers are the way to go to push the servos. What else do I need to pull this off?
Thanks for the help. |
As they say it all depends.
You say that the servos are good.
What about the drives and power supplies?
If they are good and usable you can go with the Kflop and the kanalog option or go all out and use the dspmc.
Both have the ability to drive the analog servo amps that are most likely on the mill.
If the servo amps are not usable then the vipers are a valid option. Of course it all depends on what the motors are rated for voltage.
If they are 80v motors, the G320x would be a very viable option to drive them.
For conversation lets say you are going to use the viper drives and already have a usable power supply. You would at the very least need a breakout board of some sort to make it easier to connect to the parallel port of the computer.
Limit switches should still be there but may need to be replaced do to age.
Then it all depends on what you want for options such as speed control from the computer or do you want to turn the spindle on manually.
Mike.