Knee mill CNC retrofit using Anaheim

Is anybody out there using Anaheim Automation's "DPJ72LC" LC Series on their knee mills?

From what I've seen the product looks fairly capable and cost effective.

I'd appreciate any comments.

Reply to
Lucky Strike
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I'm not familiar with that company but for my own Knee mill retrofit, I chose

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It's a small company, but they give great service. I have over 4000 hours on the control now and it has been extremely reliable doing a ton of 2.5D and 3D work. It uses a proven Galil based motion card that just plugs into a PC. JRA wrote a G-Code compiler that translates from G-Code into the Galil motion language. The motor drives (Servo Amplifiers) are from AMC
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- I had to put all the pieces together on the mill etc., but it resulted in a good machine. The JRA system supports a handwheel (MPG) that makes setup a breeze.

One minor criticism of the program is that the peck drill cycle is a bit non-standard and I still can't generate the entire G83 code from my CAM software - maybe your CAM software can? For me, it requires a simple manual edit which is a bit of a pain, but not a big deal. I don't do a lot of drilling. Let me know if you want more info.

yada yada - just a happy customer

Cheers, Peter

Reply to
Peter R

I looked at the above mentioned product. It is a stepper system. I would avoid making a machine with steppers. Gecko Drives makes servo drivers that use step and direction signals on the input side. For an

80 volt 15 amp driver you would spend $114.00. Of course, you will need three drives. US Digital sells inexpensive encoders that will work with the Gecko drives. And there are several step and direction software packages available. Some for free and others, like MAXNC, for a pretty good price. I have bought and used the MAXNC software that I used to drive a small stepper driven X Y stage. The software worked well and was easy to setup. But I had problems with the stepper motors losing steps. To avoid losing steps the stage could not move faster than 30 inches per minute. Gecko has an engineer who will gladly help you decide what size motor to get, either servo or stepper. Just my 2 cents worth. Cheers, Eric R Snow, E T Precision Machine
Reply to
Eric R Snow

Reply to
Tim Killian

bud sorry a bridge port i have reto with anaheim automation works very very extreamly well 100 part never mised a beat!!!!!!!

Reply to
HaroldA102

Cliff wrote in news:1eaov0tta9pt4shgd5eqsa0lcnk1s5btuh@

4ax.com:

They are open loop for one.

Dan

Reply to
Dan Murphy

My vote is also for servos over steppers except for slow, low-torque apps.

And steppers are not cheap, if you compare based on performance.

Reply to
Richard J Kinch

The biggest problem with steppers is that the torque drops drastically when the motors are close to their maximum rpm. And the max rpm is not very high. In slow speed applications a properly sized stepper is a good choice. They can be run open loop, which means no position or speed feedback. And they have lots of torque at low speeds. Also, because of the way they are made, the accuracy of positioning when moving one complete step at a time is very good. All error is corrected every 4th step. When microstepping more error is likely but will still be corrected every 4th complete step. So if the motor is being micro stepped at ten microsteps per full step then the error will be corrected every 40th microstep. Microstepping is accomplished by using varying voltage to the windings. Instead of energizing one winding, or a pair of windings, all the windings are supplied with varying voltage which will prevent the motor from locking at the natural steps built mechanically into the motor. You can imagine this by picturing an iron pendulum suspended between two electromagnets. With the electromagnet on the right energized the pendulum will swing over to it. But if the left hand electromagnet is energized the pendulum will be attracted to it. by varying the energy supplied to the electromagnets the pendulum can be held at any position between the electromagnets. This is how the microstep drives work. A printer is a good example of a stepper driven system. A stepper driven machine tool the size of a bridgeport is a bad example. Even though a servo driven system is much more complex electronically than a stepper system the advantages of high speed and positioning accuracy of the servo system outweigh the simpler stepper system. ERS

Reply to
Eric R Snow

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