[Cartierusm]

So I'm retrofitting my Mori SL1 Lathe. Most of the work is done. Wasn't too difficult. I was lucky in that when I bought the lathe a month or so ago it was scheduled to be housed in Mori's actual show room. What that means is that it was repainted pretty well.

I didn't use any of the old electronics and I removed the old cabinets from the back. What that means is that it takes up a lot less room. I will have to cut a small hole in my divider wall for the X servo.

Using Pokeys 57E and M16 BOB and Mach3. Using DMM Servos 1.8Kw. Made steel adapter plates for the servos.

[fabworx]

Bee a you tee full

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[fabworx]

I will be going down this road very soon myself. What did you end up going with for a spindle motor?

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[fabworx]

I believe it was you over on mach 3's forum asking how to wire up the m16 to a 12vdc relay coil. If so I could probably help with designing a circuit but I'm not familiar with the m16. Do you have a link to its manufacturer or data sheet?

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[Cartierusm]

@fabworx. Thanks.

Yeah that was me over at Mach 3 forum. I know how to wire them, but I didn't know if those BOB has normal relays that I could run regular current through just to trigger a more powerful relay. I just ended up doing it a different way.

What machine are you going to be retrofitting?

For the spindle it's normally a 5HP for this machine and 10HP for a SL-1H, so I went inbetween and went with a 7.5HP vector motor. $350 brand new on ebay delivered.

Originally I was going to use a PLC, as I know how to program them, to operate my tool changer, but the more I look at the Poblocks the more I think the built in PLC should work fine if I can figure it out.

[fabworx]

Right on. I have a 1982 SL1H I will be doing. I'm not sure I want to go with mach 4 just yet. I'm really looking to go towards NCT but that's a bit out of my price range.

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[fabworx]

Were you able to recoup some of your costs with selling the old controls? Mine is still functional. A yasnac GII

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[Cartierusm]

My old controls works as well. I want to sell them just not sure where I should. You have any suggestions?

That's why I'm using Pokeys 57E/M16 with Mach 3.

What's NCT?

[Cartierusm]

The project is coming along nicely. Almost finished. Did have .005" backlash in the Z axis so I sent my balls to measured and should have slightly bigger balls soon.

Here's a pic of the pendent I made. Don't need much for a lathe as I have a touch screen.

[fabworx]

I like it simple and uncluttered. I was gonna just put the stuff up on fleabay but i have no idea what it should get as far as prices. I'm curious who you went to for the z axis ballscrew and price. I havent even started on mine yet.

[Cartierusm]

I was going to sell the stuff, but I don't have the time or the space. I'm having my driveway redone so it had to go. Tossed it all.

As for the Z I got estimates for regrinds. Prices from anywhere from $1000-$2500 with the average being $1500.

I decided to use bigger balls to see if I could forgo the expensive route. Baltec is really the only game in town for balls of any size. My balls measured .2805". I went with .280734" and got my backlash from .005" to .002". So I ordered .280914" and then I'll load the two ball nuts against each other. Hopefully that will eliminate the problem.

[Azalin]

Hi,

How is your lathe going with the M16 and 57E so far?

[Cartierusm]

Didn't re-read through the post so don't know if I mentioned it, but the M16 doesn't work correctly and although Arturo is helpful even he didn't remember certain things about the board. Irony is it's his board; he has it manuf for him.

I ended up using the Pokey 57CNC and it works great. Just like any hardware it takes sometime to get familiar with it, but once you do it's easy to use and works great and is reliable.

I'm only working though one problem with the entire build and that's some bad grounding somewhere that's affecting my spindle encoder for threading. I grounded EVERYTHING to one point and I think that was my error. I should have isolated all the VFDs from other grounds. I'll do that at some point, but right now I've been up and running the lathe for most of this year.

[Azalin]

Interesting. I'm almost same as you. I have a spindle index problem and was thinking to get an M16 board that I though it is better than my C11GS.

My problem is the spindle RPM reading is very unstable. The best I could get is 500 +-5 RPM range. When I try a threading operation the Z axis is hanging like it is waiting for the trigger but it has trigger already.

Watch the video please.

[Cartierusm]

Good also be a grounding problem.

With mine if I touch the body of the encoder to the lathe the RPM numbers go crazy. If ti's not touching anything grounded then i'm fine. So if isolating grounds doesn't help I'll just make an adapter out of HDPE so it doesn't touch ground.

Are you using Mach 4? If so are you sure it's the encoder? When I'm running a program in Mach 4 I get unexpected pauses sometimes and I have to hit cycle start again. Might be because of the bad grounding that it's trigging something.

[Azalin]

Good also be a grounding problem.

With mine if I touch the body of the encoder to the lathe the RPM numbers go crazy. If ti's not touching anything grounded then i'm fine. So if isolating grounds doesn't help I'll just make an adapter out of HDPE so it doesn't touch ground.

Are you using Mach 4? If so are you sure it's the encoder? When I'm running a program in Mach 4 I get unexpected pauses sometimes and I have to hit cycle start again. Might be because of the bad grounding that it's trigging something.

I'm using Mach3.

I have tried everything including a fresh Mach3 installation but I didn't try it with another PC. To find a PC with LPT is a challenge for me at the moment tho.

I'm also thinking of using a shielded cable for the encoder and solder the shield as GND. I don't know if it'll do any good.

[Cartierusm]

You can try. Why not switch to Mach 4 with a Pokeys 57CNC it will work better and make it easier to use with any computer. I loved Mach 3, but had to switch for the same reasons.

[Azalin]

I have two option. Switching to LinuxCNC or switching to Mach4. I prefer LinuxCNC in the first place as it's free. I already did a quick install and setup but didn't go any further. Axes and spindle relays were working but there was a problem on reading the spindle index. I feel like it's something easy to solve tho.

Are you happy with Mach4? Did you bought the parallel port plugin too or do you use ethernet connection?

[LeeWay]

You guys might want to check out Path Pilot.
It runs a lathe pretty well.

[Cartierusm]

I'm really familiar with mach so I'd rather stick with that. Thanks though.

SO far I'm happy with Mach 4. Mach 3 was easier to program special button and the like, but I'm sure mach 4 is more stable.