Rhino ST6 CNC Lathe Upgrade

[Aaron Powter]

Hi Guys,

I recently purchased an old Rhino ST6 CNC lathe (ex school stock). It was built in the USA and runs on 115VAC. I don't have the 240VAC inverter or software for this machine so I've decided to gut all the old electronics and replace them with new steppers, drivers, boards and power supplies. I will run it on a modern PC and control it with Mach 3 / lazy turn etc...


The original Rhino ST6 from the Rhino Robotics Brochure

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[Aaron Powter]

The Rhino lathe as found in the back room of the school (June 2013)



Finally got the little lathe home. Managed to squeeze it into the back of my car. Had to bring the table home separately (August 2013)



Opened up the back of the machine to check out the electronics. All this has to go! (August 2013)

[Aaron Powter]

Attachment 233134

First thing to do was cut down these legs, weld plates and add castor wheels to the bottom (April 2014)

Attachment 233138

Now that has made life much easier. I can easily turn the little lathe around in my little man cave to work on it.



This is my little machine shop (Man Cave) that I built myself at the rear of my house. It is just over 4m long and 2m wide (that's approx 13 x 6.5 feet for my USA friends).

[Aaron Powter]

Time to have a close inspection of the original Rhino ST6 spindle motor (April 2014)



God damn it, the motor is 90vdc and will have to be replaced!



I got this new motor today from eBay. It's a 240vac 3 phase motor and will be controlled via a VFD. I have a friend who is an industrial electrician and he get me a quality VFD for nothing ;-)

[phomann]

Hi AAron,

Nice lathe.

You may want to consider keeping the DC motor. You can use a KBIC-240DS to control the 90Vdc motor of 240Vac. This is what I use on my 90Vdcspindle motors

I did a quick search on ebay and there a number of 240DS units there.

kbic 240DS | eBay

Cheers,

Peter

[Aaron Powter]

Hi AAron,

Nice lathe.

You may want to consider keeping the DC motor. You can use a KBIC-240DS to control the 90Vdc motor of 240Vac. This is what I use on my 90Vdcspindle motors

I did a quick search on ebay and there a number of 240DS units there.

kbic 240DS | eBay

Cheers,

Peter

Hi Peter,

nice to hear from you mate. Thanks for the information, I really appreciate it. Actually I was speaking to my old mate yesterday, (Tony Pugatschew Intellecta technologies), and he told me to contact you and ask your opinion on this conversion. I might give you call sometime through the week to speak to you about it if that's ok?

Cheers, Aaron

[phomann]

Hi Aaron,

Yeah sure. Call away.

Cheers,

Peter

[Fastest1]

I was going to suggest the KBIC too. That motor is perfectly good.

[Aaron Powter]

I was going to suggest the KBIC too. That motor is perfectly good.

Hi and thanks for commenting. I forgot to ask Peter Homman, but I'll ask you if that's ok? Do you know if you can you use the use the KBIC board with CNC control via Mach 3? As I need to control the spindle on the little lathe for threading etc...

[phomann]

Hi Aaron,

Yes, you can.You can use a DigiSpeed DC-03 to control the speed of the KBIC in place of the manual speed potentiometer.
DC-03 DigiSpeed GX V3 [DC-03]



Cheers,

Peter

[Aaron Powter]

Hi Aaron,

Yes, you can.You can use a DigiSpeed DC-03 to control the speed of the KBIC in place of the manual speed potentiometer.
DC-03 DigiSpeed GX V3 [DC-03]



Cheers,

Peter

Hi Peter, thanks for getting back to me on this. You're a wealth of information regarding CNC electronics. Do you plan on getting any of those KBIC controllers in stock sometime soon? Another question if you don't mind. In your opinion, is it better to keep this DC motor on this lathe. What are the pro's or con's etc... Thanks, Aaron.

[phomann]

Hi Aaron,

Sorry, I missed this post.

I haven't looked at getting hold old of more controllers. The last batch were New old stock that I acquired.

I would use the motor that is on the lathe. It would seem a waste to change it. Then again, I'm always on the lookout for good DC spindle motors.

Cheers,

Peter.