hydraulics with CNC

My hydrualic application is a tube bending
machine...not a milling or turning application...

I have a rotary encoder hooked up to the bending
spindle...it has 4000 pulses per revolution. This
spindle is pulled (by leaf chain wrapped around a
drum) by a relatively large hydraulic cylinder.

The kind of force needed in this application will not
allow me to run stepper motors as it is 40,000 lbs of
pulling force...but the system runs smoothly and
accuracy can be low (compared to a milling machine).
The machine bends the tube until you let go of the
electric pushbutton.

I realize mach 2 only allows you to control steppers
(I think) and does not have any provisions for closed
loop feedback but I have to believe there is some way
to do it maybe with maybe Turbo CNC?

Thanks,
Todd




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