Help With Servos and Amplifiers (?)

[unteins]

I haven't posted much before, but I hope this is the right place.

I purchased a circuit board testing machine from a surplus dealer because it had a lot of linear bearings and lead screws. It also had a bunch of servo motors as well.

The servo motors are Sanyo Denki Super R types (R511-012W18). The motors are 110 Watts, 75V, 2.1A, 3000 RPM. The motors themselves have two wires connected, a black and a white. I assume this is just a power circuit to supply power?

The servos have an optical shaft encoder attached to them type E501000C30, Incremental 1000. Also made by Sanyo Denki. There are 6 wires connected to a pin socket, 5 thin and one black and thicker. The Encoder has a pinout for the 5 thin wires (+5V, Ground, Channel A,B,C). It also has a label for White as Ground (but I don't see a white wire) Shield = case.

There are also the Dynax Turbo boxes. I think these are amplifiers. Type DT4 - RP. (this may be the manual for these, but my Japanese is non-existant: http://www.robotics.jp/download/manu...DT-RPindex.htm)

Does anyone know anything about these servos or can you point me to a good starting point. I am trying to figure out what works and where to go from here.

I can supply pictures of the Dynax if that helps.

[jsheerin]

Sorry, no direct experience, but it sounds like you might have dc servo motors with the encoders wired single ended as opposed to differential. The wiring diagram in the manual doesn't have anything that screams step and direction inputs, so you will probably have a tough time using these with a controller like Mach 3. If the motors are brushed, you could probably use them with Gecko drives.

[Al_The_Man]

I seem to think they are step & dir if you look on page 3 & 4.
They look like decent drives, the encoders shown are differential but they may work with single ended.
The voltage in is either 85-132AC or 90~150DC.
Al.

[unteins]

I'm pretty sure they are DV servo motors based on the limited amount I have been able to glean from researching the parts.

From what I have been able to glean from the Dynax information I have found is that the Dynax Turbo's work off of FICS programming language. I found a guide talking about how the signals are structured, so my guess is that if I want to use the Dynax boxes, I will have to go from G-Code to Fics.

I think part of what I am trying to figure out am I better off selling off the motors and Dynax boxes and buying steppers with the money, or try to use what I have.

Al - How would I test the motors to even see if they power up and turn? Do I just connect power to the black and white lead coming directly from the motor? Would pictures help?

[Al_The_Man]

It looks like Dynax has both Canadian and US offices, so it may not hurt to send them an email?
The DC servo's can be run by using an automotive battery to test them, you could probably run them with the drive if keeping the rpm to 3k max.
Al.

[unteins]

I found the Canadian office and emailed them. Their claimed response rate of 12 hours expired a while back, but then, I probably don't count as a customer

When you say I can run them with the drive, do you mean the encoder or the Dynax box? Currently the motors are disconnected from the box as portions of the salvage machine were missing and I have been derouting (and labeling) cables and connectors.

So, if I understand you correctly I can hook the two wires on the motor body directly to DC power (making sure not to exceed the ratings on the motor plate) and the shafts should turn. How do I make sure I don't exceed 3000 RPM?

[Al_The_Man]

RPM is proportional to voltage, so going by the spec in post#1, 75v should give you around 3000rpm and pro-rated at any other voltage.
I meant you could experiment by hooking the drive motor and encoder up, it would be best to get hold of a manual in English though.
Al.

[jsheerin]

Al, those were the pages I was looking at, but I thought everything with pulse references was talking about signals coming out of the drives. Did you see something you thought was a step/direction input?

[Al_The_Man]

If you look at the bottom of page three it appears to show the input and output logic details for CN1, the first one is an input and AFAICT the step dir are inputs?
At least that is what I can make out.
CN1 appears to be both in and out pins?
Al.

[unteins]

RPM is proportional to voltage, so going by the spec in post#1, 75v should give you around 3000rpm and pro-rated at any other voltage.
Al.

So I taped together 5 C-Cell batteries to to give me 7.5 volts of DC power and taped on a couple leads. I was able to get 8 of my servos to move forward and backwards, albeit slowly.

I discovered that I have 4 of the servos above and 4 larger ones rated at 75 volts and 3.6 Amps.

So, I know the motors are ok, but if I understand correctly they are not steppers. So, if I ignore the Dynax boxes as controllers, what are my options? I assume I need a driver that pulses the Voltage to turn the shaft incrementally, or is it an interaction between regulating the voltage and using the encoder information to count steps?

[Al_The_Man]

There are basically two common types of drive, step/dir as used by Mach and ±10vdc analogue control.
The motor output now on most is PWM, Pulse Width Modulation, the feedback is via the encoder to either the drive, as in Mach, or to the CNC controller in the case of closed loop systems, which then outputs the required signal to position the motor.
Al.

[unteins]

So, assuming these drives aren't step/direction (I have no info on the drives themselves other than the wiring mentioned above) then these motors are controlled by analog voltage modulation? I saw in the Dynax manual a mention of PWM 20 KHz. So, I think the Dynax does the translation and positioning through methods currently unknown.

Are there drivers that will work with Servos like mine that might be easier to use than figuring out the Dynax? Or should I find some Japanese readers to translate the manual for me?

Also, I was wondering if there are any other drawbacks besides slower speed of running these servos at a lower voltage? Am I going to get less or more power than if they were run at 75V? The linear bearings I have aren't all the long, so I don't think I will be able to build a large machine (space also an issue) unless I can align two linear bearings end to end somehow, so speed isn't a huge concern. I think it took a few seconds at 7.5V to run the length of the bearing.