[Lil-Cleetis]

Has anyone looked into converting their 770m or 1100m (without servos) to a BT30 spindle using Tormach's BT30 kit? This kit is intended for the 770m+ or 1100m+ servo mills but I wonder if it could be used on the 770. It looks like it comes with everything you would need to mechanically get a BT30 interface. So two questions - could the new BT30 spindle kit be installed without the servo kit and then be used with BT30 tooling? And to take it a step further, what else would be needed aside from the included encoder to enable rigid taping?
Link to kit: https://tormach.com/bundle-bt30-spin...70m-mills.html
Link to installation video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4JHbKKr_60

[soofle616]

I have wondered the same thing. Mechanically and electrically I don't see any reason why the BT30 spindle can't be used without the servo kit. Watching the installation video, the encoder is wired directly to the control board and the replacement VFD uses all the same wire as the original so my guess is you can make the new spindle work but you would be limited to the same functionality as the TTS version, just with the different tool holders. The machine is going to think it's a base M model so I suspect the programming will ignore any signals received from the encoder. I would similarly expect that it will throw an error if you try to run the spindle at 10k (in the 1100) because it doesn't know that speed is available. Since the servo option removes all the stepper drives and runs the servos directly off the ecm, I would also expect that if you tried to change the configuration to an MX to enable to new spindle functions, you will lose all control over the movement axis because the machine will send signals through the ecm to the servos that aren't there and will ignore the stepper drives. All of this is speculation as I have not tried this myself. I have to believe that someone well versed in python and/or linux could edit the source files to allow the M to see the encoder and run up to 10k rpm but that's beyond my skill set.

All of that said, since I too want the BT30 spindle, I recently upgraded to servos as a first step. I expected to feel as though the money was wasted but the reduction in noise from the axis motors, plus the massive increase in rapid speeds has made me feel much better about my purchase. Granted it happened at an opportune time when I'm doing a lot of parts that have a lot of rapid moves between passes (lloooong reaches with small tools so doing a lot of light and shallow passes at high feed rates).