The NSK Nakanishi motors and motor controllers use proprietary cables, which are fairly expensive. Lets find out some more about this to maybe save some money. As far as I can tell, NSK has two types of connectors on the motor controllers themselves. Here the connector on an ASTRO E 400
This appears to be just a 8 pin DIN EN 60130-9/IEC 60130-9 connector. For example Lumberg SV81
But also others. Amphenol also appears to make these with their C091A series.
At also looks like C091C and C091D will work, but not C091B - that one uses a bayonet.
And here the connector on an E2530:
This is the connector on the cable going into the E2530. It is also basically a DIN EN 60130-9/IEC 60130-9 connector with a custom pinout.
The pins themselves stick in a fairly simple plastic piece. Many of the connector parts get reused between part numbers. I think I can make this connector from a stock part by using a resin printer for the pin holder. The Amphenol split drawing shows nicely the simple pin holder (pointed to by the arrow).
Of course, we also need a pinout:
One of these connectors has 8 pins and one has 10 pins. The connector on a EM-3060 motor has 9 pins:
So at least 1 of the pins on the 10 pin connectors is unused. Lets open the E2530 to investigate:
This looks like a very clean design, and clearly they reuse much of it for the 2-motor version:
The cables for the motor windings are thicker and go to the transistors. The thinner cables go to the feedback sensing electronics on the board. The second - unpopulated - connector should make it easy to find out which pins provide power. One pin on the connector is unused, as expected.
The cable has the following marking: ЯU AWM E41447 STYLE 2517 105C VW-1 HITACHI
This can be helpful when sourcing replacement cable. This cable marking means that the specs are covered by the UL standard for Style 2517 cables. Maybe this is off-the-shelf wire and not a custom product.
At this point I presume:
The connectors on the ASTRO line of motor controllers (and similar) are off-the-shelf DIN EN 60130-9/IEC 60130-9
The connectors on the E2530 line of motor controllers (and similar) are slightly modified DIN EN 60130-9/IEC 60130-9
The connectors on the NSK motors themselves are fully custom
I don't want to modify my motor controller or existing cable, so my plan is to buy some male and female DIN EN 60130-9/IEC 60130-9 type connectors and see if I can make adapters. The connector on the motor is more difficult, but I will try to make a connector with the resin printer to fit that too. This will not be a clone of the existing metal screw-on connector, but more likely a plug-in type connector.
So, for now, maybe Digikey part numbers 889-2241-ND and 361-1059-ND and see how that goes.
I measured the connectivity of the pins to both the front panel connector and the cable<->motor connection, and then monitored them while the motor was in operation. I think this is what the pins on the internal connector go to:
green - ground
yellow - constant 2.8V. Possibly thermistor.
gray - Hall1. switches from 0<->5V
black - Hall2. switches from 0<->5V
white - Hall3. switches from 0<->5V
brown - constant 9.2V. Probably supply for hall and thermistor.
Here some pictures with more detail:
Travis Mashburn of unlockedcomposites.com shared the following spreadsheet: