Hi
Anyone out there know anything about the D & M 5 CNC lathe? Like swing, X & Z travels, ability to be modified to be run with Mach2 or TurboCNC. I'm wondering if one would be a good basis for a retro-fit project or not. Can't find much except Lab-Volt took over from them and they're not too helpful. Their website won't even work on my computer.

Thanks in advance for any info

Mark

Do you have a link to a website for info in that machine?

This is the only thing I've found here:
http://www.cnczone.com/forums/search.php?searchid=58539
www.lab-volt.com doesn't work on my computer. something about Java that I can't figure out.
Really nothing much on the web

thanks,
Mark

Hi
Anyone out there know anything about the D & M 5 CNC lathe? Like swing, X & Z travels, ability to be modified to be run with Mach2 or TurboCNC. I'm wondering if one would be a good basis for a retro-fit project or not. Can't find much except Lab-Volt took over from them and they're not too helpful. Their website won't even work on my computer.

Thanks in advance for any info

Mark

www.lab-volt.com was a scam. Please use www.labvolt.com (no hyphen).

Mark,

I've got a D&M5 in my garage now. I'm going off memory now, but I think it does something in the range of 5" over bed, and less than 3" over cross slide. Between centers looks to be about a foot, but I've had a few beers since I've looked at it, so I could be wrong. It's got cute little ballscrews on both axes, a ~1 HP PM DC motor, and was sold with an auto toolchanger and autochuck available, but I don't have either. I think they came with a Dickson type S00(Zero-Zero) QC toolpost, at least that's what mine has on it. Tailstock is MT1. Mine is the version without the built in CPU. I've wired from a breakout board into the existing stepper driver boards, and I've got them moving pretty much where they are supposed to at slow speed and no load with Mach3. I'd have it running now but for burning up the spindle motor control board somehow. Probably going to replace it with a KB board. The gibs are set-screw adjusted, and I've cut shims to make it a bit better. Cast iron bed, telescoping spring ballscrew covers, limit switch on -Z, optical speed pickup for the LCD tach, and also for threading operations. Mine came with a live center as well.

Before I started the conversion, I picked up an ISA controller card off of eBay, and LabVolt sent me the software that ran it, gratis. Old DOS based stuff, was able to make it work with manual coding and also with the supplied test program. A bit too clunky for my tastes, and I can't ever leave well enough alone.

Sorry for the rambling nature of my post, but I'm just writing down everything as it spills out. If you have any other questions, I'd be more than happy to help, but I probably won't be on here much until after New Years.

Have a good one,
Adam

Please note that D&M 5 product was dropped years ago, as newer versions were developped. Any inquiry may be sent to services@labvolt.com


Phil Ranger
Electronics and Electromechanical Systems Product Manager
Lab-Volt (Quebec) Ltd.
www.labvolt.com

These are somw sources I found - I have a D&M 6 mill that we are trying to get up and running, after the dos machine that ran it died.

http://www.eaziform.co.uk/phpwcms/index.php?welcome

http://www.desktopcnc.com/out_of_prod/old_labvolt.htm

http://doubleduck.com/DandM.html

I converted a d&m 5 to run on Mach3. Just a little soldering and a couple of filtering caps, a parallel port connector and away ya go. No new drivers needed, just ran the existing drivers right off the parallel port.

If you are really seriously interested let me know. I did this last year for the local high school. They hadn't really gotten any use out of the machine due to the cryptic efforts to run the dos based program and they just let the machine set around until the old pc was obsolete and lost all the interface boards.

I can go in to the High School and trace out where I injected the step & direction signals to their original driver boards and let you know.

Arnie

I actually have two D&M 5 lathes in my basement that are dying to get converted to something modern like Mach 3. I just don't have the time to study what I need to do to get them running. Any help would be most appreciated....parts, wiring..etc. I have been waiting for someone to reply on this forum with experience in D&M lathe conversions.

Basch,

Are you good with a soldering gun? Have you had the machine apart yet and looked inside? Take a picture of inside the back section, so I can tell if it is the same as the one I modified. Email it to me at aminear@wyomingwireless.com, if it is the same it is a fairly simple mod to get your step and direction working to mach3, also the speed indication is an easy one to get over to mach3. The harder part will be to control the speed from mach, that will require a F to V, or PWM to V circuit.
I just left the one I modified to a manual speed control pot. I took all the limit switches and sent those to mach to do an estop. I sent the manual jog switches to mach3 for jogging, and used the existing speed pickup for mach's index, and I can do single point threading. The hardest part was figuring how to limit the noise generated by the motor controller from inducing a step signal into the drivers. This was accomplished by using a small filter cap on the driver cards. After you send me the pictures of it, I will get into the high school soon and review what I did, and the cap sizes I used.

Arnie

Arnie,

You mentioned that you are able to thread using the existing D&M speed pickup. My unit had a single pulse-per-rev pickup on the spindle itself and a multiple pulse per rev encoder on the motor, which unit are you using for speed input to Mach3? How low of an RPM can you control the spindle speed down to, and what speed do you use to thread? I burnt up the original spindle motor controller and replaced it with another unit. I'm using the single Pulse-per-rev pickup and am having trouble controlling the spindle speed to below ~200 RPM.

Thanks,
Adam

Adam,

I am using the single pulse pickup that is right on the spindle. As far as the speed control, I am just controlling it using a manual pot (the school didn't want to spend much money on this). I also burnt up the original controller and went with a miniark dc speed control on it. It takes a 0 to 10 v input for the speed control or manual 5k pot. I assume you are doing a pwm to voltage to your speed controller on the motor.

I do use the speed control on my Sieg lathe at home, but when threading, I go to manual pot also because it can be a little unstable at low speeds.

Arnie