At my old work we used to have a HAAS CNC mill. Many boring days I'd go out an watch the thing pump out parts at an incredible speed. But one thing I did notice is that the thing was FAST, i mean very fast. To move the milling head from one spot to another at those speeds you need a very fast and powerful motor. I've played around with stepper motors a bit, and they are quite slow.
How do the commercial CNCs do this? Do they use regular motors or servos with the addition of an encoder strip or something? I just cant see how a stepper could provide the power and speed this thing had.
Full Version: Professional CNC motors....What do they use?
QUOTE (MyYz400 @ Apr 8 2008, 02:04 PM) 
At my old work we used to have a HAAS CNC mill. Many boring days I'd go out an watch the thing pump out parts at an incredible speed. But one thing I did notice is that the thing was FAST, i mean very fast. To move the milling head from one spot to another at those speeds you need a very fast and powerful motor. I've played around with stepper motors a bit, and they are quite slow.
How do the commercial CNCs do this? Do they use regular motors or servos with the addition of an encoder strip or something? I just cant see how a stepper could provide the power and speed this thing had.
How do the commercial CNCs do this? Do they use regular motors or servos with the addition of an encoder strip or something? I just cant see how a stepper could provide the power and speed this thing had.
Servo for sure, with attached encoder. But steppers are not at all "slow" per se, yet when paired with the necessary holding-torque-amplifying-screw (leadscrew), their speed is greatly reduced. Steppers are comparatively small. Big PMDC servos have hella torque, but are far more expensive.
This is a "lo-fi" version of our main content. To view the full version with more information, formatting and images, please click here.