Re: [CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO] replace Heidenhain with Gecko?

ebiz_59 wrote:

> I am looking at a Bridgeport CNC mill (with servos) that has a Heidenhain controller with Z axis out. I have seen a few similar machines that use steppers and Gecko G203V drives. The mill I'm looking at has servos and I am thinking about replacing all 3 Heidenhains with something like Gecko G320x or G340 drivers. Is that a reasonable thing to do? Will Gecko drives handle the Bridgeport servos? And it would appear to be a pretty straight forward replacement - or am I being too naive? thanks Chuck
>

If you have a working machine, with servos, drives, and encoders, then I
would leave as much hardware intact as possible. You don't need to use
step and direction, EMC2 (at <http://www.linuxcnc.org>) can drive servos
just fine.

The money you would spend on geckos could then be put towards a servo
interface card of some sort. This will give you better performance, and
the ability to interface to more of the machine hardware (coolant, lube,
spindle, limit/home switches, etc) than a parallel port would allow.
There's a list of supported hardware on the linuxcnc website, with costs
from around $200 and up. You can get industrial interface hardware for
4 analog servos+encoders plus an additional 48 generic I/Os for about
$450 - the cost of 3 geckos.

- Steve