[dreeewman]

Hello all,
I have been a long time member but have not been on for a while. I have posted a youtube video showing the first part of my Boxford 160TCL benchtop lathe restore and retrofit.



I hope to use the machine for small jobs where creating the geometry would be difficult on my manual machines. I have retrofitted a Centec 2 mill with CNC a few years ago so I am not a complete beginner.

you can see form the video that so far i have cleaned, derusted and painted the machine. Turning it on I could jog the axes but the spindle did not run.

Ideally I would replace the control board with a BOB, fix the drive and run the machine with mach 3 or equivalent - spending as little as possible but still getting the machine to produce useful part (albeit slowly!)

I would be interested to hear from anybody who has retrofitted a similar machine. I have searched the threads and most of the retrofit activities on this are a good few years old. I would also be interested if anybody has some pointers for trouble shooting the drive - it has the Lenzes 53(4?) drive. do these have weak points that it would be good to check before condemning the drive.

for those of a machining and making bent some of my other videos may be of interest.

thank you all!

[binfordw]

Its a Lenze VFD? does it have a display?

If no error codes are displayed- Check the for an enable/run circuit on the control terminals of the drive. I'd guess it probably has a run input, a fwd/rev input, and probably some kind of enable/safety wired up.

I'd find a manual, jump out any safety/ enable circuits necessary, and set the drive for local/manual function assuming it has it, to try to run manually from the drive to see if it works.


Good luck

- - - Updated - - -

Its a Lenze VFD? does it have a display?

If no error codes are displayed- Check the for an enable/run circuit on the control terminals of the drive. I'd guess it probably has a run input, a fwd/rev input, and probably some kind of enable/safety wired up.

I'd find a manual, jump out any safety/ enable circuits necessary, and set the drive for local/manual function assuming it has it, to try to run manually from the drive to see if it works.


Good luck

[metalmayhem]

judging by the adjusting plate for the pulleys I'm guessing emco had a hand in that lathe ? If thats the case then it may broaden part searches and you may be able to find a replacement control for your spindle on ebay . A lot of emco parts come up on ebay and it may be helpful if they share some of the same parts . Personally I'd pull it and replace it with a kb board to run that dc motor , at least for the short term to get it up and running .
I'd avoid mach and go with linuxcnc to run it . Mach lathe is a turd and linuxcnc is much better for running lathes in my opinion

[dreeewman]

judging by the adjusting plate for the pulleys I'm guessing emco had a hand in that lathe ? If thats the case then it may broaden part searches and you may be able to find a replacement control for your spindle on ebay . A lot of emco parts come up on ebay and it may be helpful if they share some of the same parts . Personally I'd pull it and replace it with a kb board to run that dc motor , at least for the short term to get it up and running .
I'd avoid mach and go with linuxcnc to run it . Mach lathe is a turd and linuxcnc is much better for running lathes in my opinion

Thanks metal mayhem. The prevailing opinion seems to be to avoid Mach for serious lathe work. I like the idea of using Mach to get started and then dive into Linux and see how I get on. The kb drive looks interesting. I assume it has a voltage ‘speed demand’ input?

[dreeewman]

Its a Lenze VFD? does it have a display?

If no error codes are displayed- Check the for an enable/run circuit on the control terminals of the drive. I'd guess it probably has a run input, a fwd/rev input, and probably some kind of enable/safety wired up.

I'd find a manual, jump out any safety/ enable circuits necessary, and set the drive for local/manual function assuming it has it, to try to run manually from the drive to see if it works.


Good luck

- - - Updated - - -

Its a Lenze VFD? does it have a display?

If no error codes are displayed- Check the for an enable/run circuit on the control terminals of the drive. I'd guess it probably has a run input, a fwd/rev input, and probably some kind of enable/safety wired up.

I'd find a manual, jump out any safety/ enable circuits necessary, and set the drive for local/manual function assuming it has it, to try to run manually from the drive to see if it works.


Good luck

Thanks for the advice. I will track down a diagram and ensure the drive has power and demand.

[metalmayhem]

Thanks metal mayhem. The prevailing opinion seems to be to avoid Mach for serious lathe work. I like the idea of using Mach to get started and then dive into Linux and see how I get on. The kb drive looks interesting. I assume it has a voltage ‘speed demand’ input?

The kb boards are pretty basic and are controllable with a potentiometer for speed . If you buy a board which has the addon board then it'll be built in . I cooked the motor on my emco compact which was an ac motor and it's been temporarily replaced with an emco dc motor , and the kb board does a good job of running it . Key thing is to have the right resistor to match the hp of the motor , they are cheap . At least this way it is a cheap temporary fix til you can find a proper driver for your lathe

I've been running linuxcnc on my emco for quite a few years and it works great . I tried mach with 2 of my more recent lathes and after a couple hours of farting around with it I installed linuxcnc and am better for it . It installs easy and it's easy to work with . The wizard will pretty much walk you through the setting up