Boss Laser just announced it will be selling their lasers with servo motors instead of the stepper motors they have been using. Boss is reporting the max speed of the laser will increase from about 400 mm/sec to 1,200 mm/sec (3 times as fast).
Boss is not offering an upgrade kit to existing owners. So my question is does anyone know what hardware (other than the servo motors) is required to make this upgrade? Has anyone here upgraed a stepper motor system to a servo motor system?
I assume that different motor controllers will be required, I am not sure in the Ruida controller will need to be upgraded or not so any advice on that is appreciated as well.
I also suspect that the belts may need to be upgraded, to allow the higher accelerations and speeds.
So any information on the specific servo motors and controllers would be appreciated.
Using servo motors is opening a big can of worms! You have closed loop and open loop servos which would then decide what kind of a controller you would need to drive it. The power supply is also different depending on size of the servo, load driven, and other specifications. Unfortunately it’s not a drop-in replacement for steppers.
Yep, I understand it is not a easy plug and play upgrade. But obviously it is possible since other Ruida controller machines are using servo’s and now the Boss lasers have made the swap. So there must be hardware available for making it work.
Look at ClearPath servos from Teknic.com. they are ment to replace steppers and will work with stepper controllers. I have a BOSS HP 3655 that I’m upgrading with these
Thank you, that is exactly what I am looking for. The web site for Teknic is very helpful, but I am still not sure about how they are connected. They appear to say it is plug compatible with the stepper cable. But I am not sure that is possible.
I looked into these when I started fooling around with this stuff. I had some minor support in that area and some training in servo systems a few decades ago. They are substantially lower cost than when I was around them. However the motors were about 3 times the price of steppers. Then you had supplies and motor drivers all adding to costs.
I have lightened the head assembly of mine by a substantial amount. I have my acceleration set to 50,000mm/s^2. Haven’t tried to push it past that, yet. I start loosing steps at about 1700mm/s. My ‘speed limit’ in the controller is set to 1650mm/s and it will run that fast.
IMHO, two things can ‘bite’ you here.
At that speed it takes a lot longer to slow down, change directions and speed back up. That time can be longer than the actually engraving time, so the job actually takes more time.
Another issue is now you are now dealing with the HV laser supply response time. I think you could ‘outrun’ a supplies response time. Most only specify <1ms for 90% power, so it could be 0.09ms and be within specifications… If my math is right, a 1ms response time, going 1000mm/s you’d cover 1mm in .001 (or 1ms) or quicker than the supply can respond?
Usually find the best engraving in the 300 to 500 range. It’s great to fool around at 1200mm/s, but it doesn’t really seem to be useful in doing anything in my experience.
Where it does shine is in the range I mentioned, it slows, turns around and gets back up to speed, making most engravings quicker. It is also very quiet when it runs, especially with a rotary.
Very interest in what you decide and how it works out… I decided it was way too expensive for the few advantages it provided. At least for me, but I’m not a company or a commercial user.
