Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System

We're currently in the planning process of upgrading a reasonable number of the motor controllers at our beamline (~60 channels worth of motors, both stepper and servo). One option we're strongly considering are the GALIL DMC-4080 and DMC-4183 controllers. I know these have robust EPICS support, and are used by a number of people in the community.

I was hoping folks would be willing to chime in with what amplifiers and drivers you're using with these controllers, particularly if they're compatible with our use cases (see below). 

Our applications are pretty simple. We have ~30 stepper motors, the majority of them don't have encoders and are run open loop, but ~10 of which are encoded and I'd like to run them closed loop. The stepper motors are a combination of two phase bipolar and unipolar, but the unipolar ones are 6 lead and could be rewired to run as bipolar if needed. Voltage and current requirements are ~2.5-6 V and ~0.5-2 A depending on the motor (and unipolar vs. bipolar drive mode). Microstepping is necessary, but doesn't have to be really fine (around 1/8 to 1/16 is okay). When present, we have either a/b quadrature or BiSS encoders.

We have ~30 brushed servo motors, which need to be run with a linear current drive mode, rather than PWM. They're all 24 V, with current ranges from ~0.1-1.4 A (mostly on the lower end). They're all encoded with a/b quadrature encoders.

I have looked at the GALIL internal amplifier and drive options, particularly the D3140, D4040, D4140, and D3547. The stepper drives seem like they'd probably be fine, but the servo drive doesn't quite deliver the voltage desired (or, for a couple of our motors the desired current). If anyone has particular feedback on these, that would also be appreciated.

We're currently using Step-Pak SPD-6B and SPD-6U drivers for the steppers, and Delta Tau Amp 1 amplifiers for the servos. At the very least, because of the limited microstepping, we're looking to move away from the Step-Pak drivers. I would consider using the Delta Tau Amp 1 amplifiers with the GALIL controllers, but I haven't looked into how feasible that is.