Well the time has come to cnc my PM 12X36 lathe. Ive had the lathe for about 9 months now so its due date is here, lol. I luv this lathe as a manual machine and was going to scratch build a lathe to soot my needs and keep this one for use as manual. But now Im swamped with work and need a cnc lathe bad. So i made the decision to convert the PM. I ordered what should be the remainder of the parts i need last night, so hopefully next wk we convert. I cant wait.
I will be using 220w servos running at 48v driven by gecko 320x drives. The x axis ball screw i ordered is 16mm x 430mm with a pitch of 5mm. The z axis ballscrew is 20mm x 1200 with a pitch of 5mm. Both screws will be driven by a timing belt with a 30t pulley on the screw and a 10t on the motor.
I went fairly cheap on the B.O.B with a CNC4PC c35 quick setup board. I havent looked into spindle control too much yet but i think i should be able to just switch the relays in the stock control via another relay for now. When the funds are available i will swap out the spindle motor for a 3 phase motor driven by a vfd to give mach more control. I will be using something for a spindles index pulse, but i cant recall what its called at the moment its off a treadmill though.
Once all the parts arrive, hopefully next week. I am hoping to get it running cnc in a couple days. I will then add the appropriate covers and enclose to keep the chip at bay.
I think thats about all for now. I was going to upload a picture of the lathe as it sits but my card reader is not working for some reason so i will have to do that later.