Emco VMC100 retrofit

[30tooo]

I am about to get to grips with an Emco VMC100 mill , and was wondering if anyone had retrofitted one of these machines to run on Mach3 or similar . If so , what did you use and was it successful . Many thanks .

[UUU]

I've refitted an EMCO PC 50 mill, so although not the same spindle arrangment, some chassis and X,Y drive parts may be similar.

I couldn't retain any of the control electronics, nor the stepper motors. I bought new steppers from ArcEuroTrade, as these had the same 6mm shafts as the orginals, and I could get the old pulleys to fit these. The mounting holes are on a slightly different spacing, but I found I could fit the new motors to the existing plates by just rotating them a bit and drilling new holes.

Spindle motor was retained, 3 phase now driven from a second hand Mitsubishi S500 inverter, off ebay.

Breakout board is PMDX and stepper drivers are Gecko. This controls the steppers and the inverter. If I was doing this again, I would probably use the all-in-one Gecko unit that seems to be very popular on these pages.

I've retained the original 24V power supply, this is proving entirely adequate.

The whole thing is working really well.

[30tooo]

Cheers UUU .

I am not familiar with your mill although I will have a look . It sounds like you are using Nema 23 motors . The machine I have uses the next size up and has a very complicated toolchange mechanism .

I'm glad your machine is working well and thanks for your reply .

[UUU]

Yes, I'm using Nema 23s to replace the 5-pole steppers that we're fitted originally.

I must admit I've never seen a VMC 100 in the flesh. My reply was prompted by the very siimilar appearance of the main underpinnings, but i've no feel for scale. The spindle and tool changer seems quite unique, though.

I'm sure you'll have fun - the quality of this kit, judging by what I have, is fantastic.