Mach3 and AC Servo, Help :-)

[KiloBravo]

I bought a couple of used AC servos to convert my bridgeport. I installed the Demo of Mach3 and hooked it up to the breakout board that is connected to my servos. Right now I only have one motor hooked up.

How can I test the servo thru Mach3 ? Do I just run a program and Mach3 should pulse the X axis ?

I am reading the manuals but no luck yet. I was hoping for an easy command in Mach3 like JOG x-axis back and forth ???

Any thoughts ?

Thanks,
Kevin

[MaxHeadRoom]

AC servo's require Sinusoidal or DCBL drives to go with them, the only thing is that Mach uses step direction control, so unless you have the right drives you may be out of luck.
AC servo's are not as easy to mix and match drives with, as are DC brushed or even DC brushless.
Is this a B.P. that was CNC or just manual?
You may want to check out the Mach support site or the CNCzone for more in depth info.
Max.

[scmw]

In addition to the CNCZone Mach site, I would suggest the Mach 3 yahoo group as Brian and Art both frequent that list on a regular basis. There are many Mach 3 users on the Yahoo list as well.

Best of luck,

[macona]

I dont think Max knows what drives you have.

Anyway, on your drives you need to bring out the wires to the step and direction inputs. They connect to two internal optoisolators. Tie the two negative terminals together and connect this to ground. Your step input goes to the breakout step connection and direction to direction. Also make sure your enable line is hooked up to enable the drive.

You need to go into the drive configuration and set the drive for step and direction input. Some times it will be called clock and dir or some variant. What you dont want is CW/CCW mode.

Then set up mach to use the pins you selected on the breakout board for output for one of the axis. Set up the axis under the menu. Try jogging. X axis can be jogged with the left and right arrow keys. You might want to have your motor strapped down. You can have some pretty heavy acceleration with these motors.

[KiloBravo]

I dont think Max knows what drives you have.

Anyway, on your drives you need to bring out the wires to the step and direction inputs. They connect to two internal optoisolators. Tie the two negative terminals together and connect this to ground. Your step input goes to the breakout step connection and direction to direction. Also make sure your enable line is hooked up to enable the drive.

You need to go into the drive configuration and set the drive for step and direction input. Some times it will be called clock and dir or some variant. What you dont want is CW/CCW mode.

Then set up mach to use the pins you selected on the breakout board for output for one of the axis. Set up the axis under the menu. Try jogging. X axis can be jogged with the left and right arrow keys. You might want to have your motor strapped down. You can have some pretty heavy acceleration with these motors.

OK, I will give that a shot.

Thanks,
Kevin

[KiloBravo]

Well the drive is powered up and says "bb" on it. The "net" says this is good and it means the drive is waiting for a command. So it is either not getting the pulse and direction from Mach3 or it is not set correctly for pulse and direction.

I am new to Mach3 and these Yaksawa Servo Drives. I guess I just need to reread the manual and verify the parameter settings.

It would be nice if Mach3 had some kind of test mode for outputting pulse and direction that you could check with a scope or something. Maybe it does but I have not found it.

[Hood]

It would be nice if Mach3 had some kind of test mode for outputting pulse and direction that you could check with a scope or something. Maybe it does but I have not found it.

Diagnostics page, servo freq Generator.
Hood

[macona]

There is the feature Hood mentioned. it puts out a pulse to help tune servos.

You should be able to just hook up a led between the dir and ground line (Cathode to ground) jof one direction and the light should be out and jog the other way and it should light up. If not then you have something messed up in the settings.

Also make sure you have it out of estop mode.

[KiloBravo]

You should be able to just hook up a led between the dir and ground line (Cathode to ground) jof one direction and the light should be out and jog the other way and it should light up. If not then you have something messed up in the settings.

That's funny. That's exactly what I did. I used the funtion Hood mentioned "Servo Freq Generator" and set the Hz to 100 and the reversal period to 3 seconds. The led would light for three seconds and then go out for three seconds. So the direction is working.
I need to check the pulse freq. I ran the program to test the parallel port and it said it had excellent response.

I still need to verify the settings for the Servo Drive because the motor is still not moving. Any tips on that ? I plan on reading throught the Yaskawa manual tonight.

[macona]

What pins are you connecting to on the drive itself? What model drive?