Torus Pro Steppers

[DFree998]

For those of you who have the Pro with steppers, are you happy with them or do you wish you had gone with the servos? I am trying to decide whether the servos are worth the extra cash.

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[iGAK]

I have Servo Motors on my current Torus PRO. I had a Novakon NM200 CNC Mill with stepper motors and sold it three years ago. Both mills worked great. However, I prefer the Servos for the following reasons:

The Servos are industrial grade, are quieter, are more powerful, and provide feedback on movement. For me, they were worth the additional cost. The Servos can also be run faster than the steppers.

[upnorth]

I have two CNC mills. One is small (Hercus V-300) and it has servos. The other is a stepper based Torus Pro. The servos are definitely quieter when the machine is moving but make an annoying noise when stationary. The steppers are noisier when moving but silent when stopped. I do like the idea of the servos faulting out if there is a crash. I have not had a real crash with the stepper machine yet. I have made some errors that resulted in the machine taking bigger cuts than planned. The Torus Pro plowed through the excess material although it did protest a bit.

Personally if budget is an issue I would go for the steppers. The extra money can buy a lot of things you will need more. If you plan on running the machine a lot go for the servos. My biggest parts run so far has only been 20 parts so for me I would not see much advantage to servos.

Tom

[DFree998]

Thanks for the comments. The business decision is toug considering I havent actually started making/selling anything yet. Ultimately, I would like to see demand eventually require the machine to run all day, but that's not where I am yet. I was thinking during the startup phase and while I have a day job, it may make more sense to go wih the steppers and use the extra money for an ATC which could possibly gain me more efficiency than the servos if I use the ATC to make runs in my absence. If I ever do get established though, I will likely want the servos then. Tough decision.

[SCzEngrgGroup]

You can always do what I did - start with steppers, then switch to servos later. It's not a terribly difficult conversion - took me about a day to do it.

Regards,
Ray L.

[Novakon]

You got the right idea. Since the electrical cabinet is large and the chassis are all predrilled and tapped for either stepper or servo drivers, so it is very easy to upgrade later. The downside to this though, is the upgrade kit costs more because the stepper hardware is not deducted from the price like it is when assembled on the initial order.

I would definitely go for the PDB and ATC from a practical standpoint over the servo with economy in mind. The servos are exceptional nice, but money is the bottom line too. We do have quite a few of customer that pump out parts all day long with stepper motors but it is a call on whether you want to invest up front and if lease/bank financing is involved. I would say that if this were to be leased, the difference in payment is small compared to the added expense in a servo upgrade after the purchase.

I hope this helps.

Regards,
John

[Novakon]

I have two CNC mills. One is small (Hercus V-300) and it has servos. The other is a stepper based Torus Pro. The servos are definitely quieter when the machine is moving but make an annoying noise when stationary. The steppers are noisier when moving but silent when stopped. I do like the idea of the servos faulting out if there is a crash. I have not had a real crash with the stepper machine yet. I have made some errors that resulted in the machine taking bigger cuts than planned. The Torus Pro plowed through the excess material although it did protest a bit.

Personally if budget is an issue I would go for the steppers. The extra money can buy a lot of things you will need more. If you plan on running the machine a lot go for the servos. My biggest parts run so far has only been 20 parts so for me I would not see much advantage to servos.

Tom

Hi Tom,

If you are having harmonic noise on an axis while it is stationary, you can lower the loop gain using parameters P005 and P009. Look at the EP-1 manual from our website and look at section 4.3 for the description. By lowering one or both of these will get rid of the harmonic ring.

Regards,
John

[upnorth]

Hi Tom,

If you are having harmonic noise on an axis while it is stationary, you can lower the loop gain using parameters P005 and P009. Look at the EP-1 manual from our website and look at section 4.3 for the description. By lowering one or both of these will get rid of the harmonic ring.

Regards,
John

Hi John:

The machine that makes the servo noise when stopped is the Hercus V300. The Torus pro is stepper based and is silent when stopped. Its a home made control and gecko based.

Tom

[upnorth]

Thanks for the comments. The business decision is toug considering I havent actually started making/selling anything yet. Ultimately, I would like to see demand eventually require the machine to run all day, but that's not where I am yet. I was thinking during the startup phase and while I have a day job, it may make more sense to go wih the steppers and use the extra money for an ATC which could possibly gain me more efficiency than the servos if I use the ATC to make runs in my absence. If I ever do get established though, I will likely want the servos then. Tough decision.

I had the same dilemma as you and if I could do it again this is what I would do. First get the mill with steppers. Get making what ever it is you need. I would forget about the automatic tool changer and power draw bar for now. I have the power draw bar and although I like it tool changes are not too difficult with the tormach/novakon quick change tool system. Just get making whatever it is you want to make. Upgrades later are easy. If it works out for you (so far it has not for me) then upgrade to whatever you want. Once you know what you can sell and in what quantities you can make better decisions about what you want or need. For now I would just figure out what you want to make and how you are going to make it and most important figure out how to sell it.

Tom

[dertsap]

I had the same dilemma as you and if I could do it again this is what I would do. First get the mill with steppers. Get making what ever it is you need. I would forget about the automatic tool changer and power draw bar for now.

I went bare bones on mine and I manually tool change with the standard draw bar . Tool changes are quick to do with the old school methods . All of my mills including my one torus are manual change and they all run a bare minimum of 40 hrs/week on production runs . The way that I weigh it out is that the cost of the auto draw and the tool changer equal the cost of the pulsar . Efficiency wise , two spindles are far more efficient than one with an auto tool changer . All the bells and whistles are nice to have but dollar for dollar , I prefer to put my money into more spindles and a bit of elbow grease . This is how I look at things business wise , others may see things differently .
I'd say get the bare bones , see what you can do with it and if you feel you need to upgrade later then it's easy enough to do , Otherwise the money you save could put another mill on the floor

[DFree998]

Thanks a bunch, Guys. That really helped me sort out my thoughts. After running several financial scenarios and weighing the pros/cons, I think I am leaning towards taking a measured approach to this, so I can reserve more funds for operating and unforeseen expenses. Will probably go for the servos just because I can likely get my money back out of that option if I need to sell the machine and upgrading from steppers to servos is possible, but comes with a notable loss of funds as there is probably no resale value to the used steppers. Not going for the atc or drawbar, as that money may be better served converting my lathe into a basic cnc machine or another spindle as dertsap points out or simply a better website or other marketing means. As someone pointed out, without reaching the customers, it is all in vain.

[upnorth]

Thanks a bunch, Guys. That really helped me sort out my thoughts. After running several financial scenarios and weighing the pros/cons, I think I am leaning towards taking a measured approach to this, so I can reserve more funds for operating and unforeseen expenses. Will probably go for the servos just because I can likely get my money back out of that option if I need to sell the machine and upgrading from steppers to servos is possible, but comes with a notable loss of funds as there is probably no resale value to the used steppers. Not going for the atc or drawbar, as that money may be better served converting my lathe into a basic cnc machine or another spindle as dertsap points out or simply a better website or other marketing means. As someone pointed out, without reaching the customers, it is all in vain.

I can't tell you how to spend your money but I think you are making a mistake if you go with the servos. You don't gain much with them. For what the servos are going to cost you could get a nice pair of kurt vises and a Haimer tester or probably even a probe. These will be very useful as opposed to the servos which are nice but do not do anything for you especially in the beginning stages. There will always be some sort of resale for the steppers. You might even use them yourself.

[kvom]

Personally I'd like to see Novakon provide a servo spindle for rigid tapping on the Torus, but I agree with the prior post for a startup business.

[dertsap]

Im only running steppers and I see no real reason to upgrading to servo . I can cut as fast as I need to without pushing beyond the capabilities of a 6000rpm spindle . Rapid speed increase would be some benefit but programming smart and minimizing rapids helps a lot . The only upgrade that I'm doing is adding the smoothstepper , which should be here this week .
I agree that a servo spindle motor would be nice

[DFree998]

Ok, well I think the message is clear. Servos can be beneficial but there are more important items during startup. You have convinved me, so thanks for your persistence. My biggest desire for the servos was to maybe get better accuracy and the quietness of them. This is going in my garage, and am somewhat concerned with the noise level. I am not sure to what degree the difference in noise level is between the steppers and servos is, but I cant imagine it being the difference between either hearing it from outside the garage vs not hearing it outside the garage. I live in a stand alone townhome with a 10' easement between each house, so it is fairly close quarters here.

Dertsap, what do you mean by the smooth steppers? Is that the computer upgrade?

[dertsap]

The tiny bit of noise that comes from steppers is hardly worth consideration in my opinion . It's not noisy at all , sure they make a sound but noisy they are not . The spindle and cutting tools is where the noise is

[Steve303]

My Coolant pump makes more noise than my steppers do.

Steve

[dertsap]

Dertsap, what do you mean by the smooth steppers? Is that the computer upgrade?

The smooth stepper is an add-on board . I'm more or less buying it out of curiosity and I'd like to see how much of a difference it makes on the performance of the mill . It's an option that I opted out on when I bought the mill . I have a funny feeling that it'll land up on the shelf with my collection of discarded crap but I might like it . If it performs anything like the uc100's that I've bought then it'll be turfed quickly

[upnorth]

Ok, well I think the message is clear. Servos can be beneficial but there are more important items during startup. You have convinved me, so thanks for your persistence. My biggest desire for the servos was to maybe get better accuracy and the quietness of them. This is going in my garage, and am somewhat concerned with the noise level. I am not sure to what degree the difference in noise level is between the steppers and servos is, but I cant imagine it being the difference between either hearing it from outside the garage vs not hearing it outside the garage. I live in a stand alone townhome with a 10' easement between each house, so it is fairly close quarters here.

Dertsap, what do you mean by the smooth steppers? Is that the computer upgrade?

When we mention steppers being quieter its probably a bit misleading. Maybe 5% of the noise from the machine comes from the steppers. The various cooling fans make far more noise. The biggest source of noise by far is the spindle doing the cutting. It makes 90% of the noise and will do the same whether its steppers or servos. If you need to quiet things down on Aluminum I run Iscar chatter free end mills. They are very quiet compared to others I tried. As long as you don't overload the spindle there will be no difference in accuracy.

To give you an idea of the noise. I also do some wood working at my shop. The wood working equipment is far more noisy than the cnc mill. If you buy your computer with your machine the smooth stepper will be already installed.

Tom

[kvom]

In my shop the air compressor drowns out the mill (I use air blast instead of coolant).