[lostinglass]

looking for the best way to synchronize two drive motors.
what is the easiest, most reliable and cheapest way to do this?


-more information: i am in the design stage of building a glass lathe. the basic idea is the same as a metal lathe with the addition of a live center. basically there are two head stocks that turn the same speed any slippage results in either cold glass breaking or hot glass twisting both are undesirable. (except in certain applications you might want to slow the rotation of one side to twist the hot glass.) the spindles are large with 4" or larger through holes so the glass tubes may pass through. I am interested in driving both of these spindles at the same rate. essentially locking them in a synchronous rotation.

any thoughts about how this can be achieved would be great. thank you for your time.

-Austin

[Al_The_Man]

Easy, cheap, and reliable, do not always go well together!
It sounds like you have, or need a double ended lathe, with synchronized spindles?
You need a system that implements axis gearing, i.e. one axis is geared off the other at an optional ratio.
This can be done with a system utilizing a Galil motion card, or other DSP control system that supports gearing option such as Dynomotion.
Both respective heads would need to be driven by a servo type drive that implements encoder feedback.
Al.

[jharvey407]

The fist thing that comes to my mind is a couple of stepper motors, but I am not sure that they would work for this application.

Or maybe one motor driving both ends.

looking for the best way to synchronize two drive motors.
what is the easiest, most reliable and cheapest way to do this?


-more information: i am in the design stage of building a glass lathe. the basic idea is the same as a metal lathe with the addition of a live center. basically there are two head stocks that turn the same speed any slippage results in either cold glass breaking or hot glass twisting both are undesirable. (except in certain applications you might want to slow the rotation of one side to twist the hot glass.) the spindles are large with 4" or larger through holes so the glass tubes may pass through. I am interested in driving both of these spindles at the same rate. essentially locking them in a synchronous rotation.

any thoughts about how this can be achieved would be great. thank you for your time.

-Austin

[lostinglass]

Yes i am after a double ended lathe with syncronized spindles. The servo set up sounds like what i want where cani find out more about this option? And where can i buy the hardware. What is the cost likely going to be? What size servo motor will i need?

I have a machine currently, that employs the use of a drive shaft to mechanically synchronize the two spindles i would like to get away from a drive shaft if possible. I would like to have two motors act like they are conected by a drive shaft. Thanks for your feed back and i am open to more sugestions.

[Al_The_Man]

As you do not really require a full blown CNC front end, I would be inclined to look at a 2 axis stand alone Galil Card programmed in native commands together with a small operator interface, such as Maple 2 line displays.
You can buy these on ebay as they are fairly pricey to buy from Galil.
The Legacy 1500 would do it.
One other alternative is Dynomotion, lower cost, but probabally longer development time.
As to motors, there is probably not alot of pressure on the chuck as there is in turning, probabally fairly small motors, it will depend on the size of the driven spindles etc.
Al.