Servos for Dummies

Since I have yet to find "Servos for Dummies" or even "servos 101" I gotta keep asking what must be obvious to all but me.

I am building a 10 inch Atlas lathe on my own easy pay plan (buy 1 part at a time when I can afford it) and am down to the gearing part. I have another (well worn) Atlas 12 inch and plenty of gears but wonder about the practicality of doing away with gears and using a servo to turn the leadscrew in relation to the spindle.

I checked my motor stash and came up with a Pacific Scientific motor with an encoder of some sort. The motor has two wires the encoder has a 10 wire ribbon and header plug. My eyes are blurred from trying to find this thing on PacSci's wesite with no luck.

Here are all the numbers from the dataplate:

4MV82-004-4 835D20074-01
Torque Constant: 9.1 oz. in. amp
Rotor Inertia: 0.00070 oz. in sec (squared)
Terminal Resistance: .89 ohms
30 V 7.4 A (rms)

My gut feeling (based upon absolutely no knowledge of servos) is that this motor would make a decent CNC leadscrew drive. Is my gut misleading me?

Assuming I have a more than adequate supply of spare computers and all the necessary stuff to mount and connect the motor to the leadscrew, do I just need something like a Gecko G 320 and a dab of software to make a "punch in a number and cut the thread or set the feed" type operation or am I just urinating contrary to the ambient airflow?

Frankly, I am confused by the servo language.... "servo amplifiers," "servo drivers" and this make me a little nervous about what I can do and/or expect as to accuracy, suitability and reliability. I can probably live with less than 100% reliability (an occasional screw-up) but I have spent 30 years with a worn out lathe and I would like to be able to cut a thread that fits the nut... or vice versa.

I also have a good stash of NEMA 43 steppers just in case the crossslide needs power too. But that's a later upgrade and I have a semi-decent grasp of steppers.

Thanks,
WDSmith






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