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Looking for advice, I have acquired a Cam Tech laser etcher with a 1400mm X 1200mm bed it's approximately 20yrs old. It has been in use but I would like to update it. Don't know much about these things,the software has been updated but I was wondering about the cost of updating drives, steppers, motors ect. Could someone point me in the right direction or list the components required. Sorry if I'm being a bit vague but as i've said I'm totally new to this. Many thanks Gary
Whats Your goal ?
Unless You have a goal, there is no possible way to procede intelligently.
Itīs unlikely, but possible you could get the old control sw to run faster/better with newer motion hw.
This would mean new motors, aka ac servos, acting as better steppers ( or a new control board at 10x better but forgetting the old sw/hw totally).
It is possible, not difficult, to replace an old industrial control with a new one.
The vast majority of refits are:
-done on simple machines like wood routers
-donīt use or implement industrial standards or safety protocols
-not very well done in terms of io or safety or homing or lots of stuff
The so-called controller is a sw/hw package that determines what and how stuff runs.
Linuxcnc with mesa cards,
machx with cslabs hw or other hw,
or chinese integrated sw/hw are 3 common different paths.
Each has +/-.
To really re-build a commercial machine or equivalent requires lots of io, with some logic.
This is very laborious, and somewhat expensive.
Expect 2500$ in bits and parts, and at least 400 work hours, and at least 200 - 300 IOs.
And 1000-3000$ in the controller, depending.
But...
For 1000$ total lots of people have a home-brew kit running with a basic chinese controller.
With limited homing, squaring, probing, offsets, etc. but it moves. Somewhat.
You asked about a "refit or commercial" and like 98% of people will probably think it is too expensive.
Fine.
Thanks hanermo2. we have previously been running the machine to laser etch mostly black granite, although the machine has stood idle for a few years now. We use photograv 3 SW , Wincnc which I think is the controller. I was wondering if it was worth updating the hard wear to get it to run quicker,smoother etc, plus the HW is over twenty years old so could possibly be worn. We have struggled to get a replacement Slo syn MD808 drive motor hence the reason for possibly updating everything.Hope this makes some sense to you.
Upgrading drives and the controller should give you a performance improvement, but without knowing what's already fitted, it's kind of hard to give any specific advise.
The biggest issue you're likely to have, is how to control the laser. You'd need to research how any replacement controller could be programmed to handle controlling the laser. The physical movement of axes will be pretty straightforward once you work out how to control the laser.
The only thing the MD808 does, that you may struggle to find in another drive, is the Reduce Current input.
Online, wincnc seems to be up and running.
Their web says 100 kHz max rate, which is a bit slow for new servos, but might be ok if you are not using high-res features, like a milling machine or a cnc tool/cutter grinder or a lathe.
They say it uses an interface card, and the speed of the older cards is unknown.
The card is probably not expensive.
Your have a wincnc license and are a user, so You could probably upgrade the card for not much money.
New brushless ac servos could speed up your acceleration rates by about 5x, and your practical speeds by about 3-5x.
These are not expensive.
Buy ac servos that take mains voltage, around 400-750W.
Ignore the peanut gallery that says you donīt need the power for a laser.
You do, not for movement but for acceleration and deceleration.
Itīs a power of 2 curve - so higher acceleration will result in much higher peak momentary power draw.
And the mains-powered servos donīt need expensive power supplies.
You can use the servos with step/dir controls just like steppers.
Except they are about 10x better in terms of acceleration, speed, and accuracy.
And you can adjust their internal settings so that they donīt need all the high resolution they can deliver, by internally scaling the input pulses your controller can send at 100 kHz.
A modern ac servo of 5000 counts / 3000 rpm needs 50x5000 pulses per sec or 250 kHz.
Just scale it back to 100 kHz internally, since your laser wont need to position to 0.2 microns in any case.
The servos should cost about 400$, give or take, per axis.
Cheers for all the information, I think I need to do some more research. It's good to know that we could possibly update the machinery in the future, or even replace with new depending on the costings!