[strantor]

1988 Lagunmatic 110
LinuxCNC 2.7.0
Mesa 5i25/7i77

I have retrofitted this mill to Mesa/LinuxCNC from the old Dynapath Delta20 controls.
I am wondering what to do about the knee. When I got the mill there was no motor for the knee but there was a power cord ran to that general location so I assume there used to be one on it but not sure. There is no handwheel, just a shaft sticking out. Do these knees typically have a servo on them? Or just a little gearmotor? or handwheel? Is there typically knee position feedback to the controller?

[Jim Dawson]

Most knee mills have a hand crank, could have a hand wheel. Power feed is optional, but can be installed. Mine has a handwheel with a power feed. People have done all kinds of things with the knee feed from as simple as attaching an electric drill motor to the shaft to full servo under computer control. Just depends on what you want to do.

Normally the knee position is not fed back to the controller, but it could be made to do so. Mine has an encoder on it and reads out on the DRO display, but is informational only and not active in the CNC program.

[strantor]

I have an old right angle gear motor I think I want to hang off it. Just need to find out if it's reversible.

I guess it would be cool though to make it a servo axis so it could supplement z-height.