[N4NV]

I have seen very little about converting a Taig lathe to CNC. It was a lot easier that I originally thought.

The reason I converted my mill to CNC was to make it easier to convert my Taig lathe to CNC. The mill took about 6 months, the Taig lathe took two days. I got most of it done last weekend. I still have to add a speed sensor on the spindle. It is running on Mach 3 software with a HobbyCNC driver board. Here is another boring video of the CNC taig cutting a convex shape and some rapid moves:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...30568789772373

Higher resolution here:

http://www.flyingcritters.com/video/cnc_taig_lathe.wmv


Once I get the AMP round connectors I ordered, I will mount the driver board to the rear of the divider. As it is I have to be very careful to keep the chips off of it.

Vince

[Adobe Machine]

Wow really nice...what kind of rapids does your lathe have ?..Wish mine oly took that long to assemble ! really nice job..


Adobe (old as dirt )

[N4NV]

I think it is finally set up at 30 ipm on the Z and 15 ipm on the X. I have not played with it long enough to see how fast I could make it go. As it is, if I do a G00 move and I do something wrong, I don't have time to hit the e-stop. Total movement is about 5" in the Z and 1" in the X.

Vince

Wow really nice...what kind of rapids does your lathe have

[Adobe Machine]

Limit switches yet ? Things look really bad run into a spinning chuck..I know, it looked and sounded real bad..

If you look at tooling that reccomends a feed range of .005 to .012 inch per rev, with a spindle at 2000 rpm that is a maxium of 2.4 IPM..Does the Taig have a max rpm of much more than 2000 RPM ?..The video is super.

What kind of flying critters ?

Adobe (old as dirt)

[N4NV]

Yes, I still have to do the limit switches. I have them, but like my mill it will probably take me 5 months to get them installed.

I think the Taig can run 4000 rpm, I will have to check.

Flyingcritters. I am into flying (I have a C177RG plus hang gliding) and my wife has a lot of critters. At www.flyingcritters.com you can see some of the stuff.

Vince

[LUCKY13]

N4NV, I know this is not on topic but your Solar Energy system is very sweat. The estiment on the amount of gas (3310 gals) that was saved to generate the energy you used really surprized me. If everyone had systems like this the amount of fuel we purchased from the Middle East ( or where ever we may buy it) would drop such a hugh amount. It really surpizes me that this much could be saved & there has not been more steps taken in our country to achive this. The money along saved is one thing but the impact on our world is another. Very nice work & I would be very interested in learning more about achiving this setup at my own home.


Oh BTW, nice work on the mill. Very cool, looks like it will be a real treat when you are finished with the conversion.


Jess

[toneV8]

What kaind stepper motors are.

[N4NV]

What kaind stepper motors are.

They are MCG IS23019 Nema 23 75oz. I purchased them from:
http://www.hobbycnc.com/

Vince

[BobWarfield]

Nice job, Vince. Gonna build a toolchanger for that little booger?

If you could belt drive the cross slide and get the motor low enough you could run it as a gang lathe too, but there's not room for many tools.

Best,

BW