Hickory Fadal retrofit

[Seralan]

I am finally ready to upgrade my Fadal VMC, and was about to start purchasing parts to build it out using Oak and sureservo2 (automation direct provides lots of great info).Now you have this new Hickory device and it appears to be simpler and superior.

I have 3 questions:

1) If I stick with Oak and that generation of servo controls will I be setting myself up for short term obsolecence?
2) There are resources already available to control my umbrella tool changer with OAK, when will those supporting PLCs ETC... be available for Hickory?
3) I was looking forward to having most all of my materials come from Centroid and Automation Direct. Will AutoMationDirect be a source for compatible ether-cat servos?/where should I be looking to purchase ether-cat servo's?

Thanks so much!

[cnckeith]

I am finally ready to upgrade my Fadal VMC, and was about to start purchasing parts to build it out using Oak and sureservo2 (automation direct provides lots of great info).Now you have this new Hickory device and it appears to be simpler and superior.

I have 3 questions:

1) If I stick with Oak and that generation of servo controls will I be setting myself up for short term obsolecence? < it will take many many years for oak compatible drives to "dry up" >

2) There are resources already available to control my umbrella tool changer with OAK, when will those supporting PLCs ETC... be available for Hickory? < Yes >

3) I was looking forward to having most all of my materials come from Centroid and Automation Direct. Will AutoMationDirect be a source for compatible ether-cat servos?/where should I be looking to purchase ether-cat servo's? < We wish Automation Direct would carry a EtherCat drive! Right now for Hickory your choices are Yaskawa, Leadshine, Estun, Glentek. These drives have all been tested by us, schematics and plc programs exist that work with them and are now in use on customers machines >

Thanks so much!

[Seralan]

@cnckeith

Thank you for your previous responses. I have spoken with motor manufacturers and feel pretty good about the supported solutions.

If I had a 4th axis that I hypothetically wanted to run with a different supported ethercat motor/drive combo, would that still work? So say 3 Leadshine EL8 drives for x,y,z and a yaskawa sigma7 for the 4th axis?

I am still learning about ethercat and may have some really basic questions

[centroid467]

@cnckeith

Thank you for your previous responses. I have spoken with motor manufacturers and feel pretty good about the supported solutions.

If I had a 4th axis that I hypothetically wanted to run with a different supported ethercat motor/drive combo, would that still work? So say 3 Leadshine EL8 drives for x,y,z and a yaskawa sigma7 for the 4th axis?

I am still learning about ethercat and may have some really basic questions

Hello,

Yes, you can use any combination of supported drives with Hickory. I currently have EL7 and EL8 drives hooked up to the Hickory testbench and we've had a Hickory machine in the shop running a combination of Yaskawa and EStun drives for a long time now.

[Seralan]

Thank you for the response. Trying to plan for future expansion it is nice to know that there is so much flexibility in the setup. I am really exited about taking on this upgrade project, and I just want to make sure I cross all my T's.