Adding a 5th axis to an old Fadal mill?
 

To any Fadal experts here I have a question. I have a Fadal 15XT with
the 4th axis. I would like to add a 5th. Mainly for indexing. So I
would put another rotary table on the existing 4th axis, at 90 degrees
to the 4th axis, for some jobs that require it. I have one job now
that I bolt an index head to the 4th axis and I need to index the head
90 degrees in the middle of the job to finish the part. I have another
mill with a Centroid control on it that I added a 4th axis to. I would
like to use this 4th axis on the Fadal too. But the Fadal uses
resolvers instead of encoders. Does anybody here know if I can replace
the encoder on my home made 4th axis with a resolver, tune the servo
amp, configure the Fadal for 5 axes, and go to town?
Eric

Adding a 5th axis to an old Fadal mill?
 

wrote in message
...
To any Fadal experts here I have a question. I have a Fadal 15XT with
the 4th axis. I would like to add a 5th. Mainly for indexing. So I
would put another rotary table on the existing 4th axis, at 90 degrees
to the 4th axis, for some jobs that require it. I have one job now
that I bolt an index head to the 4th axis and I need to index the head
90 degrees in the middle of the job to finish the part. I have another
mill with a Centroid control on it that I added a 4th axis to. I would
like to use this 4th axis on the Fadal too. But the Fadal uses
resolvers instead of encoders. Does anybody here know if I can replace
the encoder on my home made 4th axis with a resolver, tune the servo
amp, configure the Fadal for 5 axes, and go to town?


The Fadal DC systems also need a tachometer to provide analog velocity
feedback and so it's best to start with a motor that already has a "pancake
type" tach in place and that also has room to mount a "size11" resolver
inside the end bell...

Also, make sure you have an inhibit setup on the rt table that the second
table is mounted on, so as to make it difficult or impossible to damage your
cables etc--this can be done on several ways depending.

As a point of refrence, the axis motors on that machine are ~ 12 amps, but
for a small rotary table you can probably get away with motor/ amp
combination at least 1/2 that size, probably even smaller, depending on worm
ratio and final faceplate diameter.