Gerber AR600 Retrofit

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ericbowman
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Re: Gerber AR600 Retrofit

Post by ericbowman »

I guess I’m confused because you said that you can only use acorn with closed loop, but it works with gecko drivers and the other guys told me that gecko drivers are open loop.
martyscncgarage
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Re: Gerber AR600 Retrofit

Post by martyscncgarage »

ericbowman wrote: Sat Nov 06, 2021 10:22 pm I guess I’m confused because you said that you can only use acorn with closed loop, but it works with gecko drivers and the other guys told me that gecko drivers are open loop.
Acorn provides step and direction signals. Your gecko drives accept them. Your steppers do not use encoders.
They are open loop.

There are drives and motors that use encoders and still accept step and direction signals, the drive monitors the encoder for position. The drive closes the loop.

In both cases, Acorn still does not monitor position.
The latter is called a hybrid closed loop because the drive is ensuring the motor is in position, based on the step/direction pulses it has received.

You already purchased the Geckodrives. You may as well just run them and the steppers and see how it goes. The table was engineered with those steppers and power supply. Back when it was made, it's unlikely that affordable closed loop steppers existed. You can always upgrade the table later once you have it up and running and have time to learn the control and system. Technology changes and improves. Hybrid closed loop steppers, AC Servos, brushless DC servos like Tek if Clearpath SDSK and SDHP and others have become available available for better and more reliable performance. But at added expense.

What are you hoping to make with your table? What kind of parts?
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tblough
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Re: Gerber AR600 Retrofit

Post by tblough »

Probably the confusing part is the motor technology. A servo motor is like a regular electric motor; you supply power and it spins. The only way to use one of these motors for position control is with feedback. The feedback tells the control to vary the input to have the motor speed up or slow down.

A stepper motor moves a discrete amount when current is applied to one set of coils, and another discrete amount when the current is switched to the opposite set of coils. These motors can be moved a precise amount by controlling the exact number of coil "swaps". You don't need position feedback with this type of motor.

The earlier poster said he was using servos with Acorn. Since the Acorn is open-loop, the only way to use servos with it is only if the DRIVE can receive the position feedback since the Acorn cannot.
Cheers,

Tom
Confidence is the feeling you have before you fully understand the situation.
I have CDO. It's like OCD, but the letters are where they should be.
ericbowman
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Re: Gerber AR600 Retrofit

Post by ericbowman »

I’m planning to make wood and aluminum parts with it.

I’ll keep the motors and wiring for now and just upgrade the drivers, controller and spindle. The gecko drivers have a standalone test button, so my plan is to wire a gecko into the 24v input to the original control board and into one axis. I will then use the standalone test feature to check if the motors are wired properly.
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Re: Gerber AR600 Retrofit

Post by ericbowman »

Just got off the phone with Gecko customer support and it was one of the best customer support experiences I've ever had. They seemed very knowledgeable and were very patient with me despite my basic understanding of all things electrical.
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Re: Gerber AR600 Retrofit

Post by martyscncgarage »

ericbowman wrote: Mon Nov 08, 2021 3:38 pm Just got off the phone with Gecko customer support and it was one of the best customer support experiences I've ever had. They seemed very knowledgeable and were very patient with me despite my basic understanding of all things electrical.
Yes, Geckodrive is one of the best, not the cheapest, but you now know why, service behind their products!
I hope you are squared away and ready to move forward.....
Marty
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Re: Gerber AR600 Retrofit

Post by lavrgs »

ericbowman wrote: Mon Nov 08, 2021 3:38 pm Just got off the phone with Gecko customer support and it was one of the best customer support experiences I've ever had. They seemed very knowledgeable and were very patient with me despite my basic understanding of all things electrical.
My experience has been the same - TOP Notch support.
ericbowman
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Re: Gerber AR600 Retrofit

Post by ericbowman »

I wired the x-axis stepper into the gecko drive using the original power supply and everything seems to be working properly when I press the test button.
ericbowman
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Re: Gerber AR600 Retrofit

Post by ericbowman »

I’ve got the control wired to one axis but it will not move. I’ve either missed a wire or missed a configuration step, and my guess is a configuration step. Here’s a picture of how I have it wired up.
62CA5C1C-9B7A-45CF-9712-48771F64EB76.jpeg
martyscncgarage
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Re: Gerber AR600 Retrofit

Post by martyscncgarage »

ericbowman wrote: Tue Nov 09, 2021 12:08 pm I’ve got the control wired to one axis but it will not move. I’ve either missed a wire or missed a configuration step, and my guess is a configuration step. Here’s a picture of how I have it wired up.

62CA5C1C-9B7A-45CF-9712-48771F64EB76.jpeg
I hope that is not a conductive surface you have everything on.
Are you bench testing with HEADER?
ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS Post a FRESH REPORT (F7 Utility, F7 Create Report) here each time you ask for help. Otherwise we do not know how you have things configured.
Screen shots of your Wizard settings would be helpful as well. (Using Windows 10 SNIPping utility)

Let me ask this, when you power everything up, is the stepper motor rotor locked?
Marty
Reminder, for support please follow this post: viewtopic.php?f=20&t=383
We can't "SEE" what you see...
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