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  1. #21
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    Default Re: Need controller purchase advice for a new project.

    Quote Originally Posted by DICKEYBIRD View Post
    Yup, been running an old XP box & Mach3 with a PP myself for several years now. I can tell you from my experience that my lathe will thread pretty well in acetal & aluminum but is iffy on steel in general & for sure above about 5/8" diameter. The spindle speed is just plain not steady enough to allow the Z to track accurately enough on single pulse per rev indexing. If you have a hugely torquey, rock-solid low speed on your spindle, it's fine. Otherwise you need to jump right past single PPR indexing & go straight to a proper encoder. I'm setting up my Acorn with a 2000 line/8000 PPR encoder. I'm sure the Kflop, CSMIO, Galil and maybe a couple others can do it with Mach and a proper encoder but I was SO READY for a complete move away from Mach. I don't have the conversion completed yet but the ones I've seen on the web look great. YMMV
    Yes, I was very interested in Acorn but buying a new Win10 computer is adding too much bloat to this project. If I simply add a stepper to the mill spindle I can do what I want by using my existing lathe controller and drivers with no feedback needed. It's just going to be a pain coming up with the correct ratio the first time because I have to program linear movements and speeds for two rotary axis's. I can change both axis's to rotary but they will make no more than one turn and stop. I need this thing to keep running however long it takes me to hob the gear. However, once I get the speeds correct on the first gear I should be able to change gear pitches and # of teeth with simple math I think. That is if my ancient controller can make 100's or 1000's of revolutions and stay in perfect sync with each other. Should, it's digital right? Accumulative errors in the processor? Guess I won't know for sure until I try it.



  2. #22
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    Default Re: Need controller purchase advice for a new project.

    I decided to first try and use my lathe controller to synchronize the spindle and dividing head but need to do some tests first. There are 3 non-removable V-belts driving the Hardinge spindle and I wanted to see if the stepper I plan on using has enough butt to run the spindle. The motor ran it well and I couldn't make it stall by grabbing the arbor with both hands. There shouldn't be any heavy cuts involved. Luckily the pulley and mill arbor were both 1".

    I had this setup on the quill of my Bridgeport for a repeat production job that I no longer do and it was a simple matter of unbolting the plate and removing the taper-lock pulley.

    The next test will be to install a stepper on a dividing head and make sure the spindle and head remain in sync for extended run times. 99 inches of travel is the max that I can program and I experimented with some ways during this test to keep it running long enough. Setting the steps per inch to a ridiculously high number was the easiest.




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Need controller purchase advice for a new project.

Need controller purchase advice for a new project.