Central-Machinery model93799 CNC conversion spindle help plz

Hello Everyone,

this is my first time posting here I hope I can help some people out and gain some knowledge as well. My problem is I am in the process of converting my mini lathe into CNC. I have a Gecko G540, Mach3, C3 index-pulse card, and 2 nema 23 stepper motors. I am doing ok so far in this conversion got my stepper motors working "not installed yet", Pulse card showing data in mach3, my next problem I am having is trying to figure out what I need for mach to control my spindle speed. I am not sure if the G540 can control my motor controller on its own, or if I need like a C6 speed control board. I am not having any luck with the research I'm doing on how to set this up. I do know that the G540 can do PWM which I have setup in mach and am using a external 12V. power supply to achieve the 0-10V signal, but I'm not sure if I should be hooking this straight up to my motor controller in the lathe or if I need to send this signal to a C6 board to control the speed, or how to wire it correctly without blowing anything up. Any help would be greatly appreciated and in advance thank you for your time. :)


Robert Smith

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Shwagiedo

I do know that the G540 can do PWM which I have setup in mach and am using a external 12V. power supply to achieve the 0-10V signal, but I'm not sure if I should be hooking this straight up to my motor controller in the lathe or if I need to send this signal to a C6 board to control the speed, or how to wire it correctly without blowing anything up.

---

I haven't actually done this yet to my mini-lathe, so maybe someone who has will chime in.

You would not hook up the C6 to the G540 output, rather the C6 functionality would be capable of providing the same function as the G540 (namely, producing a 0-10V output under the control of Mach3), however using the C6 to do spindle control while using the G540 to do stepper control would require some creative wiring to break out the proper control signal from Mach3 to apply to the C6 input.

As far as whether you can hook the 0-10v output directly to the LMS mini mill speed control circuitry, I'll leave that for someone else to address.

I forgot to mention my motor controller is a FC250BJ/110V thanks again for your help :)

I should also mention that you may get better responses if this post can be moved by the moderators to the benchtop machines/mini-lathe subforum at Mini Lathe

(it is currently posted in the LittleMachineShop CNC machines subforum, which is intended for the CNC machines that you can buy from LittleMachineShop.com)

I'm not sure how to do that - perhaps the 'report post' mechanism can be used.