Converting a Tsudakoma rotary table to operate on a Fadal?

[tmt]

Has anyone converted, or had Fadal convert, a Tsudakoma rotary table to operate on a Fadal Mill? My understanding is that the servo motor needs to be changed to a Fadal servo motor. Of course the wiring and some type of adapter to mate the servo to the table will need to be performed. Are there any more Gotcha's involved?

Thanks!

 

[Milacron]

For what it's worth, I have two 1996 vintage Tsudakoma rotary table driver/interface boxes for sale. They were previously used on a Chiron VMC with Fanuc 0 control. Condition is pristine...like new. Somehow the tables got removed from the Chiron so all I got was the "boxes" they connected to.

 

[D. Rey]

Fadal uses a couple of different servos, older machines had Glentek, I forget the other brand, a look through the on line fadal manual would get you the other name. You should be able to get one or it's equiv. from any supplier or ebay.

I'll look it up hang on.....

 

[D. Rey]

Sorry can't find it in the manual, look at your x axis servo motor cover, should be a name there, Glentek or some other.

One wire going to it and it's a DC, two wires it's an AC.

I have seen ads with other than Fadal brand rotary tables attached / sold with the machine so it must not be too big a deal.

 

[tmt]

My drives are Baldor AC's. I did talk with Fadal about it, because they listed that table on their options. They told me that they didn't use Tsudakoma anymore and when they did offer them that they bought them minus the drive and installed their own. Anyway after some time of the phone with them all they could say is that I would need to send it to them and only then could they determine if they would or could (at who knows what price) make the conversion.

I don't blame them for that answer and I felt that I had pulled all their teeth, but couldn't get anymore info out of them.

I can't imagine it being too difficult. Even a new $1500 servo would still make this a good purchase but, a good deal could turn out to be a very bad deal in the long run if for some reason it just won't work.

 

[D. Rey]

Post this over at CNC zone in the Fadal section. There is a guy there named Neal, comes by like once a week maybe a bit less. He's a tech at Fadal, very good, seems to know the answers to the unusual questions and problems.

You can also call him there at Fadal in Chattsworth CA. (Getting through to someone on the phone there can take a few tries, just keep calling back)

All I can figure you need is a spare motor, same as the others on your machine, axis card, servo drive, and wire harness. Then just have to figure out how to attach the motor to your rotary table, the mechanics should be straightforward...what may be tricky is keeping the enclosure coolant proof.

Is your machine already wired for a 4th?

 

[WILLEO6709]

as long as the motor and drive are compatable, youcan run about anything as long as you can connect it properly to the control. I am not familiar with fadal, but most controls are configurable for encoder counts,, speeds, etc. per axis. I have an allen bradley motor with a Max430 A-B drive running in a Cincinnati VMC with Kollmorgen x-y-z and spindle drives under an acramatic 2100. It can be done....but depends on how comfortable you are with an oddball combination. It sometimes will confuse the factory techs.

 

[pi]

Post this over at CNC zone in the Fadal section

my experience with cncbonz is they already copy posts from other forums and paste them there to make people reply. so why go through the hassle?