VMC retrofit

[mmckell]

good day all

i have a Cincinnatti Arrow 500 that i'm about to rebuild and i'm looking at the MACH 3 controlls with Mitsubishi servos and drives from Machmotion.

anyone here have any feedback about the control/drives/servos/company- good or bad, i'd like to here it.
this is something i need to be sure about - 15-20K is quite a bit of bread to put out for some i "might" like

thanks all
Mac

[Tormachmaster]

The company and their program is great thats all I used from them but look around I dout you will find anything at all bad about this company their software is great.

[samco]

what is the story? What are the original servos and drives? Could they be re-used? If you could re-use the servos and or drives the price for the retrofit would be a lot less. (I don't know about mach - I use emc2)

This is using early 80's servos with amc drives
YouTube - Kearney and Trecker CNC running simple program. (tool changing and everything)
sam

[slowlearner]

What is wrong with the original control?

[rmarchjr]

I must put a very positive vote in for Mitsubishi Drives & controls.

They have been the most responsive and helpful company of any I have dealt with. Look at the MEAU website. You can freely download any documentation or call them and get to a real person who will help you.

just my 2 cents.

[mmckell]

Originally Posted by samco what is the story? What are the original servos and drives? Could they be re-used? If you could re-use the servos and or drives the price for the retrofit would be a lot less. (I don't know about mach - I use emc2) This is using early 80's servos with amc drives YouTube - Kearney and Trecker CNC running simple program. (tool changing and everything) sam

hey Sam
the original servos and drives are Kollmorgen (BDS4, VFS5 and Goldline servos) running from an A2100 Vickers controller... great, great, great fantastic system - just old and causing a lot of grief. the mill is in good shape just need it NOT to be down so much
everything is completely reusable but, you will inherit the problems that go with the 15+ year old equipment
my supervisor has decided that this is the way to go
the only original electronic part will be the spindle motor - everything else will be gone
have a guy that gets first bids on the drives and servos - he's kept me running for a couple years now and hasn't asked for a cent - if he's not interested, we'll be selling on the net
I'll be sure to post any thing left over on the ZONE - likely be in the Cincinnati section

thanks for the input
Mac

[mmckell]

Originally Posted by slowlearner What is wrong with the original control?

hey slowlearner - how are you?
did you get your tool change positions going?

we've decided to go with something a little newer and not NT based.
not a lot of us that have NT knowledge here at work and the new controller from Machmotion uses win7 - if I'm gonna upgrade, I'm going all out
Need to deal with mallardfizz before i can let anything go
he's been good to me

have a good one
Mac

[mmckell]

Originally Posted by Tormachmaster The company and their program is great thats all I used from them but look around I dout you will find anything at all bad about this company their software is great.

thanks tormachmaster

that's good to hear

thanks for the input
it's good to know if i have a question about the software, there are people here that might be able to answer those questions

Mac

[mmckell]

Originally Posted by rmarchjr I must put a very positive vote in for Mitsubishi Drives & controls. They have been the most responsive and helpful company of any I have dealt with. Look at the MEAU website. You can freely download any documentation or call them and get to a real person who will help you. just my 2 cents.

thanks rmarchjr - I'll do that - good to have all the sources available for this upgrade

real people are good to talk to - beats the h*ll out of the machines with S Hawkins voices

appreciate that

mac