Fehlmann Picomax 50 CNC conversion/refurb

[Agathon]

I'd like to get my hands on one to see, but the torque curves look more akin to those of a stepper system, than a servo system. Stepper and brushless motors are very similar, it's just stepper motors are synchronous (which is what gives them the detents), while servos are a/non-synchronous, which means you don't lose power/torque overcoming the detents.

Regarding the Nema 23 v 34 argument. Compare them running similar voltages. You'll generally find Nema 34 graphs are using a high voltage driver, while Nema 23 are done using a relatively low voltage driver.
I've just had a quick look to see if I could find a couple graphs to do a comparison, but the Nema 34 graphs I found were mostly using a 110VAC supply (about 155VDC), while the Nema 23 ones were using 30-40VDC supplies. At those low voltage, torque drop of is very noticeable, and crippling Nema 34s with only 70VDC also makes for a very similar torque drop-off. You need voltage to over come the back EMF at speed. Without that voltage, torque at speed is very limited.

I have to say all this stepper and servo stuff is new to me. I'm very familiar with squirrel cage motors and vfds, but steppers, and now servos are a very steep learning curve. I know what you mean about the Clearpath graphs, but Teknic have stated that they are servos and not steppers. Their torque curves are certainly much more healthy at speed than any stepper graph I've seen (which admittedly isn't that many). Certainly when you compare the torque/speed graph of the Clearpath 2.04 Nm (rms) (CPM-SDSK-3421S-RLN) servo I was thinking of buying to that of the Astrosyn 4.8 Nm (holding torque), there's no competition. Where the Clearpath has no problem producing its nominal rms torque at 1000rpm the Astrosyn has fallen to something in the region of 0.9 Nm at around 3000 steps/s (900rpm).



Just as an aside, if the Astrosyns were geared 2:1 they'd only be producing 0.4Nm

Having looked at the torque curve more carefully I see now that with my table axes running at 2000mm/min that the motors should be producing something in the region of 1.7Nm - which should be fine and indeed seems to be so. I can also see why increasing the speed by 50% causes them to lose steps as they've lost 0.5Nm in torque