Gettys FANUC Motors

[spottiepop]

Does anyone out there have info. on Gettys FANUC 10-2-5 motor? It is off a Okuma LS-N10 lathe. I can't see what the # is on the X-axis motor, any clues from you out there that have seen one of these old ones? I would like to retro this lathe and need all the help and suggestions I can get. The control on it now is a FANUC 2000C, anyone need any parts or interested in the old control? Lots of fuses and such, even have a in not so good condition operators manual but it seems to be all there.

[Al_The_Man]

If you do a search here like this one, http://cnczone.com/forums/showthread...ght=fanuc+2000
there is some info on extracting the info emperically.
There should be other posts as well.
Al.

[spottiepop]

AL,

If you were going to retro this machine how would you go about it? I would like to use the motors that are on the machine now if possible. The machine was working when the previous owner bought it so I think the power cabinet is o.k., in my opinion it just needs a good control. He could not get it to come all the way online, but looking at the last date the battery was changed I think it lost it's memory and I have no idea where or how to get an exec. tape for it, would probably cost an arm and leg if I could. I have been reading about lathe retros on the forum and it does not sound too promising. I have way more in the shipping than in the lathe and the iron is in excellent shape. I want to do this right and have a machine I can use for a long time. Could use your wisdom on this one since you do this for a living.

spottiepop,

[Al_The_Man]

I would assume your cheapest way would be the parallel port/PC based systems, If you can get step and direction drive/amplifiers that can handle the motors, or get analogue drives and find step/dir/analogue converters which I believe someone here has developed.
Then you could check out Mach3 S/W or others.
There is also Camsoft which is more money, but analogue drives can be used.
The above allow you to use the existing motors.
As was mentioned in another thread, there is not much out there for DIY Lathes, apart from using a control from one of the main players like Mitsubishi, Fagor, Fanuc etc.
I believe fagor still make a system that you can use your own drives and motors.
But you may not want the price or learning curve from those three.
Al.

[NC Cams]

I talked with Centroid/Ajax about their system to drive some Fanuc/Getty servos and they balked. Look up "lathe retrofits" on this site and you should be able to find the thread.

Simply put, it is NOT fun trying to retrofit a Fanuc based system with a current PC, especially if it is a lathe....

I contacted Mach personally and they indicated that they could NOT drive servos with their system via the parallel port. i got the impression that they were a stepper only sort of deal.

Rutex has drives that SHOULD drive a Fanuc servo, depending on the rated current and voltage. There is another thread that was on this site just the other day where a guy was driving a Fanuc 10 servo motor (or trying to do so) with a Rutex 2020. His question involved what to do/how to do the braking resistor. "Braking resistor" search or something like it should turn it up readily.

Keep in mind that a lot of the servos of the generation you're working with are no longer "in vogue". They were driven by +/-10 volt analog drives that are not that popular any more. Then, they had high current, lower voltage - now they run higher voltage and lower current. The high current is what makes driving the old servos the hard thing to do with today's drives.

There is a converter that takes the +/-10 and turns it into the appropriate direction command BUT I didn't find a step/direction interface that would output the analog output needed to drive a +/-10v analog servo amp.

With the onset of digital systems, the older analog technology that was capable of driving the early servos just isn't being supported by the DIY systems - at least nothing that I could find.

Digital drives are no problem. Steppers that run off the parallel port via step/direction, ditto. Trying to take early 80's industrial strength servo's and driving them with modern DIY amps and a PC is not something I had any luck in finding when I looked into trying to upgrade my Fanuc powered lathes recently.

Good luck...

[spottiepop]

Thanks for the input NC Cams, I was refering to your thead in my previous post about lathe retros not looking too promising. I went out to the shop tonite and pulled the caps on the servos and they have tachs & resolvers, the Z-Axis is a 10-2/5 & the X-Axis is a 5-2/5. I asume that the info on this forum that AL did on the Fanuc motor that was a 5 would be the same & would I be right in my thinking that the 10 would be twice the motor the 5 is? If I knew what the KW was on these motors it would help me to figure out what size I would need to get if I went with new ones. There are gear boxes that the current motors attach to so it is already gear reduced. I bought the machine with the assumption that it would need a retro, but being on a budget made me want to use the motors which are fine and sized to the application already. I do not want a nightmare however and if doing a complete system from Centroid, Ajax, or other is the best way to go then that is what I will do. I have read about some of the problems with these controls but was wondering if these were caused by trying to make something work with the vendors software or if they were complete systems from the vendors. Threading is one of the things that has to work properly as that is alot of what this machine will be used to do, anyone out there that knows of issues with these controls and threading or turning cycles please speak up.

[Al_The_Man]

Actually the analogue drives are alive and well and made by quite a few manuf. I have used A-M-C PWM analogue drives to drive Gettys-Fanuc DC brushed motors fine up to 100amps.
The older servo's that are not so popular anymore are the SCR drives

I am pretty sure there is someone on this zone that has developed a step/dir to analogue converter, I know I have seen one somewhere.
Like I mentioned before there are people like Fagor that supply a ±10v analogue system.
This is also used by the Galil Motion cards also.
If your Fanuc motors have resolvers, you will need to change them out for encoders.
To find the resistance of the armature, lock the rotor and feed a small DC voltage into the armature and measure the current and applied voltage, this way you can get a fairly accurate reading, do not use a Ohmeter.
Al.

[NC Cams]

I second the trick about locked rotor current measurement. If you lock the rotor, that is max current. Using E=IR, apply a small voltage the you record the value of, read the resultant current with a good current meter inserted in one of the power leads to the servo and and R is easily determined.

Rutex had a +/-10v to pulse width converter but I never found a pulsed output to +/-10 analog converter. If this were the case, I'd suspect that Mach could ultimately drive servo's off the parallel port, which, according to my contact with them, they can not do.

The Rutex/Gecko/Etc drives that are in vogue for DIY CNC are not that "friendly" toward the older analog systems. Simple case of technology having moved on. Seems that earlier motors used high current/lower voltage motors - today, they use lower current/higher voltage motors. Big difference when it comes to switching electrical power.

Analog drives ARE quite available but are not inexpensive. Probably 2-3 times that of the DIY stuff you've looked at. Reason: it is pure commercial quality and quite robust. Also, lower volume.

HOWEVER, the controller cards and a bolt together PC interfaces (which usually used ISA slots which disappeared prior to the onset of XP) needed to drive analog boards are sadly not available. Last fully integrated system controller that I could find that has predeveloped software was the BMDC used by Bridgeport for their EZPATH lathe and EZTRAK mills. Never could find one of comparable development that was available as an "aftermarket" item. Too bad.

Moreover, with the migration to XP, the use of Microsloft or Linuks systems is become more of a mandate than an option - the hardware is simply NOT as widely adaptable anymore as it used to be when the 386/486/Pentium ISA systems abounded. Unless you use PCI and the Win or Lin software which PCI was developed for, you're pretty much dumpster diving for orphan technology to do DIY stuff.

There are many opportunities for mill and router CNC retrofits. Hence a big market and a supply base to serve it. However, the reasearch I did for my retrofit lathe thread led me to conclude that lathe stuff simply wasn't and won't be as plentiful. Maybe that is why only Anilam, Fanuc and Fagor are the readily available players when it comes to CNC lathe controllers.

It is INORDINATELY easy to thread on a geared lathe - pure KISS mechanical connnection that ALWAYS stays in time. This is not necessarily easy when one starts to try to electrically encode the rotation of the spindle to the lead screw that are only connected by wires and a computer that only counts 1 & 0's. Must not be that easy or reliable as one would think as even the auto engine guys refresh and recount the postion with EVERY revolution of the engine.

The prior lathe retrofit thread outlines the issues faced by users of the two popular CNC retrofits when it came to threading. Simply put, caveat emptor and choose widely.

The more I looked, the more I came to the conclusion that the cost of the Fanuc controller was well worth it simply because the darn thing WORKED. No hiccups, no mill control cloned to make it think it was running a mill on its side (aka a lathe), it just worked.

The Fagor and Fanuc stuff works but I'd suspect it WILL be pricey - probably 5 figures at least. Sadly, we learned we ultimately couldn't update our Fanuc 5T's even though it should have been simple - hook up aftermarket drives to our encoder equipped servos, fit in the PC, load some software and make parts. Not in your wildest dreams.

Now, if you want to buy someone's software and controller, do the retrofit and then, as SEVERAL software supppliers told me, write custom code to make their "bolt on system" work, have a go.

If you only want to plug-n-play and make parts, take and follow the advice of the one guy who responded in the lathe retrofit thread,

"...just go out and get a sharp stick and poke yourself in the eye...."

Now you know why I've gone back to massaging and giving TLC to my Fanuc's. Life has gotten too short.

[Al_The_Man]

I knew I had seen the step/dir to ±10 analogue drive converter here
Pixie Step/Dir to Analog Servo Controllers
Al.

[spottiepop]

If you guys don't mind you are going to have to talk in laymans terms with me on the testing of these motors to find out enough info to pick drives and such, I am new to this side of the CNC world and know very little. Now that AL has been so kind as to find the post for the Pixie cards that do the converting would Mach3 be worthy of trying for a production machine or would you choose something else? AL you said you had used PWM drives, do you have a link and suggested drive for my servos? AL or NC could ya'll direct me to some tutorials or books or something that would help on this? What type of current tester do ya'll recommend for testing this type of equipment? I have a auto type multi-tester but that is all. I have nothing against learning and want to do some retrofits for my own shop to learn how this stuff works but I am going to need lots of help, this forum seems to be full of knowlegable and willing people. NC what is BMDC? What O/S did it use? With the type of guys out there DIYing now-a-days I would think someone could reverse engineer the stuff you mention.

[Al_The_Man]

Probably Mach3 is the cheapest way your are ever going to do it. Personally I have never used a parallel port type control, simply because the customers I work with pay for the full blown control like Mitsubishi.
The servo's I have used for controlling Gettys type motors are the A-M-C 50A8 25amp or the 100A25 50amp drives.
I have used these with Galil type motion cards that sit in a PC slot.
It pays to get a good multimeter like a one of the Fluke series, they come up on ebay quite regularly, I use a Fluke 77 for field work, and a clamp-on amp-meter accessory.
The cheaper auto type meters are sometimes a bit limiting in their range.
I don't know of any books that detail CNC retro-fits per-se ( maybe I should write one).
A CNC control covers many aspects, Electrical Control circuitry, Servo control, PLC (machine control logic), Hydraulics/pnuematics. So you would really need a book for each discipline.
Al.

[NC Cams]

The BMDC was a PLC (programmed logic control) card that ran off a an ISA slot in a DOS (166mhz max) machine - DOS 6 was the OEM O/S, it will run on 6.22 and should run on 5.

The Bridgeport Machine Digital Control (BMDC) had the various drivers and D-A coverters for servo use and canned funtions (for +/-10v analog control) coded onto it - you "filled in the blanks" on a PC screen and the machine did the rest. The same idential card would run either a mill or lathe or VMC based upon the resident EPROMS and DOS software. (George: correct me on details). It was a very nicely coordinated system and would be a godsend today for DIY system builders. We already have it doing 3 azis machining on a 2.5 axis BPT mill using std G code - essentially the SAME G code also runs on our neighbors Haas VMC. Many folks told us that we couldn't do that but we did - the joy of watching them walk away shaking their heads in disbelief is priceless.

Imagine, ONE SINGLE fairly reasonably priced card (in retrospect) and a DOS machine that could run a 2 axis lathe, a 4 axis VMC and/or a 3 axis mill. And it ran on DOS, with a 486 in 1995 and did NOT need Windows or Linux or XP!!!!

Today, it would run on essentially FREE O/S's and darn near FREE P/C's. I'd buy 3 tomorrow if a kit were available today.... THe only hard part is finding machines with ISA slots.

I looked into retrofitting a BMDC (possible but HARD if you're not fluent in wiring and/or machine integration). I had to give up due to other issues with higher priorities.

Even in its day, it was essentially a plug and play (in that particular machine). They had external interface cards with 50 pin ribbon connectors on one side and appropriate over the counter plug in plastic connectors to interface with the various wiring harnesses. Once you did the install and wiring, you could literally plug and play - at least at the OEM level but that's what OEM's do for volume production, plug and play not plug and pray like us DIY'ers do.

Sophisticated in its day but it would be a piece cake for a well qualified DIY'er today IF they could read a schematic and wire a control cabinet properly and do the external servo integration. Now that Digikey/Mouser makes so much formerly hidden electronics stuff only a web search away, it would NOT be that tough of a thing to integrate today.

The guys who did the computer integration for the BMDC system have reportedly do high end CNC integration elsewhere. Sadly for the DIY'ers, their experiences with the sordid world of "intellectual property rights" will probably prevent a contemporary update of a psuedo-BMDC card anytime soon if ever.

HINT: If the guys who did the deed are still out there, and they know who they are, and they still have an interest in "their baby", there are ways to get around those "old issues" and perhaps do a comparable product for the DIY market that WON'T rustle feathers with the IP owners....

We do it all the time in our industry and in some cases do it WITH the outright support of the current IP and copyright owners... Simple case of making a situation where EVERYONE wins...

Re: reading material. There isn't a one source book that you can go to as a primer.

Reason: like George said, it involves too many disciplines that few people can master ALL of so as to do the whole process. Somebody has to engineer something at some point and the knowledge needed to do true hardcore engineering does NOT always work well if self taught - it is DEFINITELY not a fits-all situation.

The following links should get you started however:

Research (how to find stuff outside of asking dumb questions)
CNC Information

specifically post #15

Electronics books (good basic primers - I got started with these)
http://www.forrestmims.com
or
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/pro...lance&n=283155

The "holy grail" of electronics info but not for lighweights or perhaps the DIY CNC neophyte:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/052...lance&n=283155

Web-based books on electronics:
www.ibiblio.org/obp/electricCircuits/

Linear scales;
http://www.cnczone.com/cg...3;t=003181;p=0

Ball screw basics:
Ball Screws 101

Ball screw treatise, the hard core stuff:
Ballscrew Basics

PID tuning of servos
PID explanations?

Daisychaining ATX power supplies:

http://www.cnczone.com/forums/showth...015#post142015

http://forums.bit-tech.net/showthread.php?t=108208

Linear P/S design/construction
http://www.campbelldesigns.com/files...ply-part-1.pdf

Servo amp P/S design
http://www.elecdesign.com/Articles/A...7635/7635.html

Servo motor , servo amp, powersupply sizing for CNC
http://www.rutex.com/pdf/Mystique2.pdf

Bearing literature:
http://www.bardenbearings.com/literatr.htm
http://www.timken.com/products/bearings/catalogs/
http://www.jp.nsk.com/app01/en/catal...gi?ec=bearings

NOTE: Get the NSK E1102 catalog for starters

Motor torque info/defininition
http://www.merkle-korff.com/formulas.asp#con

What gage wire to use:
What gage wire?
http://www.cnczone.com/forums/showth...480#post136480

Servo vs Stepper:
Steppers and Servos...

Simply stepper info:
http://www.parkermotion.com/catalog/catalogA/A12.pdf

Stepper reverse engineering:
http://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/~ih/doc/stepper/others/

Stepper sizing:
Sizing Criteria for Torque of Stepper motor

Small stepper P/S
http://www.campbelldesigns.com/files...ply-part-1.pdf

G code parts counter
Fanuc parts counter