CNC board ?

BigDon

DESi Customs
Silver Member
I have been given some really good advice so far on my cnc build thanks to TW, Royce and several others. I would like to know if anyone has any experience with the Leadshine MX3660? I know Royce had suggested the G540 but this drive is fairly new so wasn't sure if that was the hold back. Has been said it is a G540 on steroids. Any thoughts?

http://www.leadshine.com/UploadFile/Down/MX3660hm_V1.0.pdf
 

RBC

Deceased
I have been given some really good advice so far on my cnc build thanks to TW, Royce and several others. I would like to know if anyone has any experience with the Leadshine MX3660? I know Royce had suggested the G540 but this drive is fairly new so wasn't sure if that was the hold back. Has been said it is a G540 on steroids. Any thoughts?

http://www.leadshine.com/UploadFile/Down/MX3660hm_V1.0.pdf

Donnie

I don't have any experience with any of the leadshine products. I've heard and read where others have used them and liked them.

Here's what I do know.

The G540 is a breakout board and 4 drives all in one package. Combined with a 48v power supply and either of the nema 23 motors offered by Gecko, it will perform well. Even better with a smoothstepper. They work great on smaller machines or machines where you don't have to move more than 100 inches per minute. They have 2 outputs available as well as enough inputs to use home switches. The smoothstepper adds plenty of I/O's if you need them.

The G213v drives are separate individual drives that take up to 80 volts and a higher amperage than the G540. I have 2 with the bigger nema 23 steppers from Gecko and they just don't ever miss any steps at all. I have plain old .200" pitch acme screws on them and still get 150 or 200 ipm rapids with fairly high acceleration settings. You will have to use a separate mother board, and I recommend the PMDX 126. Couple this with a Smoothstepper and it's hard to go wrong for anything cue related.


I hope that helps!


Royce
 

BigDon

DESi Customs
Silver Member
Royce, as always thanks for the help! I was all geared up on running the Gecko after the last time you was telling me about them but I come across a IAI set up with a 1600 mm x and 1200 mm y. Here is a link to what I am talking about. http://www.intelligentactuator.com/pdf/isd-isd-cr.pdf
They have AC servo motors built in to the end of them and wrapped around the end of the ballscrew. I have taken apart some of the smaller actuators with this type of motor to use with stepper motors and they are a pain sometimes. I was hoping to find a AC servo controller that I could just use these motors and I have found Leadshine has them. Not the MX3660 but they have ind drives. Now it is back to more confusion as I don't know a thing about the AC servo side.

On another note, the x axis has a 20mm pitch screw and the y axis is 10mm. Would this be too far out for just tapering? I have 5mm actuators for the taper machine I am building and would just need this for the taper.

Thanks again for any help!
 

RBC

Deceased
Royce, as always thanks for the help! I was all geared up on running the Gecko after the last time you was telling me about them but I come across a IAI set up with a 1600 mm x and 1200 mm y. Here is a link to what I am talking about. http://www.intelligentactuator.com/pdf/isd-isd-cr.pdf
They have AC servo motors built in to the end of them and wrapped around the end of the ballscrew. I have taken apart some of the smaller actuators with this type of motor to use with stepper motors and they are a pain sometimes. I was hoping to find a AC servo controller that I could just use these motors and I have found Leadshine has them. Not the MX3660 but they have ind drives. Now it is back to more confusion as I don't know a thing about the AC servo side.

On another note, the x axis has a 20mm pitch screw and the y axis is 10mm. Would this be too far out for just tapering? I have 5mm actuators for the taper machine I am building and would just need this for the taper.

Thanks again for any help!

Donnie

You're venturing into a completely different territory with this.

Running AC servo's with step and direction requires that the encoder count per unit be matched with the steps per unit. If you have 2000 encoder counts per inch, then you would set Mach3 to 2000 steps per unit as well. The trouble is that Mach3 is limited by the parallel port to a max of 100K kernel speed. Most servo's have a pretty high encoder count which means you max out the kernel speed and can only move at pretty slow speeds.

There are a couple of possible solutions.
First, some servo drives can "gear" down, or basically make many encoder counts equal one step pulse.
Second is that you can opt for an Ethernet Smoothstepper. The ESS gives you up to 4Mhz speeds so you can deal with higher encoder counts.


I have to tell you though, that servo's are probably over kill for what you want to do, and can get very complicated to setup, tune, and diagnose when there's a problem. Here's a good read:
http://www.geckodrive.com/support/choosing-a-drive.html


I would really recommend the gecko setup. If you really want something strong and fast, go with the G203v's. If you want good performance with simplicity, go with the G540. Here's a good package for an almost plug and play G540 controller. I would opt for the Gecko motors to go with it.
http://deepgroove1.com/controller/cnc controller.htm


Royce
 

BigDon

DESi Customs
Silver Member
Thanks Royce. I may just have to go through the trouble of taking the servo motors out and hooking up some steppers. What do you think about the 20mm pitch. Is this even worth bothering with for a taper machine to start with?
 

RBC

Deceased
Thanks Royce. I may just have to go through the trouble of taking the servo motors out and hooking up some steppers. What do you think about the 20mm pitch. Is this even worth bothering with for a taper machine to start with?

Donnie

Well, it's certainly steeper than I like for my machines, but it would probably ok for turning centers. I've used .500" pitch before and it worked fine. 20mm works out to .787402", so it's a little steeper than what I've used. Unless they're really good ground ball screws, I might think about changing them. With the Gecko drives microstepped, you're looking at .000394" per micro step, which should be fine. I'm just used to more like .0001".


Royce
 

BigDon

DESi Customs
Silver Member
Thanks for the push on getting away from the servo motors. These bigger ones were actually the easiest to get apart and come off clean with no problems. The ballscrew come all the way through and has left me plenty to connect a stepper to. Now I am just not sure if I am going the G540 route or the MX3660. I like the specs on the leadshine and the reviews are good but my source of any help and support here would all be Gecko that I know of.

Thanks again as always for the help!
 
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