NSK Nakanishi Motors, Controllers, Cables and Pinouts
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:
