Hi all.

I'm in the process of setting up my lathe (a Warco GH1236) for a full CNC conversion. So far, I've bought as well-matched a set of components as I've been able - I've got a 12Nm NEMA34 motor for the Z axis, and a 3Nm NEMA23 motor for the X - they're both hybrid steppers, so they've got integrated encoders for fully closed-loop motion. I know enough about working with steppers to not have any major problems with tuning them, although dealing with the encoder side of things is a bit new to me. Either way, so far so good.

My main problem is with the fact that I had the bright idea of buying a servo motor for the spindle. In principle, I get what servos do and roughtly how they do it. I am confident that I'd be able to get the servo entirely under my control using an arduino or a similar microcontroller, but the CNC interface I've bought is a little obtuse to my mind. I have the NewKye 990TDb (the SZGH version of the manual can be found here, which is an impressively comprehensive piece of kit (it even allows you to edit the onboard PLC structure, which I was most definitely not expecting for the money I paid). The manual is, as is traditional, in weapons-grade Chinglish, and the pinouts are somewhat cryptically labelled. There is a pretty well-translated version that was rewritten by (as I understand it, the now deceased) John Stevenson, but it's still fairly close to the source material in terms of not really breaking down I/O functions and explaining them all that well.

What I'm struggling with the most is the fact that there's no apparent capacity for running the Servo in pulse/dir mode on the 990TDb - it only really offers the option of using an anaolgu voltage. not a problem initially, but the servo controller is expecting a full range from -10v to +10v, whereas the TDb only offers 0v to +10v I'm not sure how to either tell the servo that 0-10 is all it's getting, or to convince the TDb to treat the spindle as a pulse/dir-driven motor.

The spindle controller is the same as the AASD30A (manual can be found here) - I've had a general skim-read of it, but until I can print it out, I'm not going to be able to go over it in detail.

Has anyone worked with this kit before, and can shed some light on it? I'm still at the 'figuring out how best to wire it up' stage, so now would be agreat time to tell me if I'm doing it all wrong. I'll include diagrams of how I'm wiring this as soon as I get home and can start drawing it up coherently.