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One of the most difficult
challenges we faced was the spindle motor conversion. There were tow main
issues with this motor. First, the original spindle motor shown above was
equipped with a tapered motor shaft. Since GE Fanuc does not offer tapered
shafts, we were faced with having to design and manufacture a new shaft for
the hob head that would accept a straight shaft motor. We did not want to
specially modify a motor to accommodate the machine which would result in an
impossible to find replacement, so we elected to modify the machine to
accept the GE Fanuc standard. Below is the shaft we hade to design and
install.
The second issue with the
spindle motor was the power rating. The original DC motor was a high
performance system, that on paper at least would outperform any AC spindle
on the market in the low RPM ranges. Finding the proper motor that could
produce the torque, power and RPM ranges of the original DC motor proved to
be quite a challenge, because the physical size of the new motors usually
exceeded the space limitations we had available on the hob head. We finally
settled on a standard GE Fanuc spindle motor and drive that would do the
job, and still fit the space and shaft size requirements. This new motor is
shown below.
Below are
a couple of the axes servo motors we adapted to the
machine as part of the recontrol.
Shown
below are two of our design standards. We always use the
latest IEC devices for our electrical panels. We have
elected to standardize on integral starters and circuit
breakers instead of fuses where possible. This
eliminates the need for the customer to stock fuses for
every circuit in the machine, and also offers a
convenient method of troubleshooting a problem. The
integral starters have built in fault contacts that
indicate different problems, and the circuit breakers
allow quick and easy isolation of branch circuits for
locating short circuits or load problems.
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