Help: Spindle Control in MACH3 - Milling Machine

[phyllis_ave]

Hi everyone,

This is my first post on these forums and from looking around you all seem to know what you're on about so I was hoping somebody could help me out with setting up my spindle control in MACH3.

My spindle motor is a DC motor running off a controller which can use an analogue DC voltage (0-5V or 0-10V) to control the motor speed and I was hoping to do this using the PWM control in MACH3 but I can't work out how to do that. I think its fairly simple but electronics isn't my stong suit. Can I make a converter fairly simply or is there some commercial products out there that I could buy? I've had a look around at electronics sites but couldn't find anything.

If someone could help me out with this problem that would be great.

Thanks.

[LeeWay]

I have been using mine the other way with step inputs.
It works great this way. You have to do some tuning to get it within your speed range, but I was able to get within maybe 5 RPM's on both the high speed and low speed.
That is plenty close.
I used DC06 from Homann Designs down under, so he may be able to help you out with your efforts.

[phyllis_ave]

Cheers I found just what I was looking for on the Homann site. Looks like the DC-03 GX V3 is perfect for my setup. Its even got a few relays built in for the spindle stop/start.

Thanks for the speedy reply.

[bill south]

Art at Cnc4pc(dot com) makes a board that works great and is not very expensive. I use it to control my lathemaster spindle on my home conversion!
Bill