Can you home 2 Kinetix 5500 servos with one sensor?

[Blueshard]

I have 2 servos that is moving a gantry. I am planning to use one to follow the other using an MAPC command, but when I home, could I tie the home sensor to both amplifiers, or would this cause unexpected issues?

Thank you for your help.

 

[collinsd70]

if in doubt you could always use the sensor to pull in a relay and have the 2 circuits for homing completely isolated switching through the same relay?

 

[Steve Bailey]

Since the purpose of homing is to drive an axis to a known, repeatable position, and ensure that the encoder reports that position, I have my doubts. But I suppose it could work given the right design.

 

[James Mcquade]

this might work IF, and i say IF, both gantry's remain the same distance apart,
never drift, the drive belts never slip, or break, OR BUBBA NEVER gets to work on it. Lots of if's in there.
james

 

[Blueshard]

Thank you all for your input. I did get the opportunity to discuss it with Allen Bradley as well. They did say it could be done with one sensor, but the second amplifier would have to be geared 1 to 1 and provide a mark of some kind to verify the 2 servos were parallel. They also suggested I monitor the current from each amplifier and make sure they produced close to the same value. If the value got too far from each other, there is the likely hood one motor was leading or lagging behind the other.

Saying all of this, they did suggest the best solution would to add a second sensor. When homing, move the (A servo) in to home while (B servo) is a slave. Move back a few inches, switch master and slave and home the other servo completing the homing procedure.