7x powered tailstock quill

[blades]

Yep, hung another motor on the 7x10 yesterday.

I had been thinking about this, and started looking at it more seriously. After determining what I needed for a motor bracket, I remembered my motor brackets from my would-be CNC conversion on the HF Micro lathe. I added 3 holes, trimmed it off, and bingo, had my bracket. Gotta love recycling, it saved me a lot of work this time around.
I ordered the pulleys and belt, and should have them by Monday.
The motor is another NEMA 17 orphaned from the aforementioned HF Micro lathe fiasco. With a 3:1 pulley reduction, I'm hoping it will have enough power to at least be able to push a small drill through aluminum.

More pics when I get the pulleys & belt put on.

[blades]

Got the pulleys & belt today, so another pic and video is in order
This video was of a simple in & out jog move, not programmed. I will need to see if I can come up with a canned peck drill cycle for this.

[blades]

Wow, a hundred views and NO comments on this?
At least tell me what you guys think.... bad idea or good idea? Seemed like a good idea to me, I've never seen one before. Thought it would be good for drilling operations, if I can figure out how to program it with a peck-drill cycle.

[blades]

Ok my silent friends, I think I've got this. Being a total newb at programming, I just found out there is a G83 code specifically for peck drilling. I don't know if the peck depth is preset in this command, or if I somehow need to specify that when I'm giving the G83 command. Guess I'll find out tonight, and I'll grab another video if it looks worthwhile.

There seems to be 2 different peck drilling G codes, G78 and G83. TurboCNC says the following regarding these commands:

G78 - Peck drilling cycle (general)
G83 - Drill cycle with peck

The difference being??

[kd5ahl]

I like the idea.

At one time I trashed the tailstock leadscrew.

I cut another one on the lathe and when I did, I made a second one with an unfinished shaft for just this reason.

One thing that I always wondered was how to reference zero when step drilling to a finished diameter. especially when the drills are different lengths and you can't touch off onto the part anymore after you drill the first hole.

I also wondered about the usefulness of a powered tailstock when it's pretty darned fast to drill with it by hand...

I'd be interested in what you intend to use it for. Might give me some ideas that I hadn't thought of.

[blades]

Yeah, with only a 1.5" travel, it's hardly a necessity, but it was more of a thought: ".... hey, wouldn't that be cool....". I have no definite plans on what to do with it really, the entire lathe conversion itself is my hobby.

I think the zeroing shouldn't be too much of an issue. Normally, drilled hole depth is not that critical, so you could pretty easily eyeball the drill point to zero it.

I did play around with it a bit tonight, but I am woefully unfamiliar with the formatting of the G83 command, so I was unable to get any movement out of it. Another issue is my lathe configuration on Mach. It has no display option for a 3rd axis, so I have no idea how to zero it out. I think I'm going to try TurboCNC, but I need to wipe out my hard drive and repartition it for DOS and Win XP.

[ninefinger]

Well, if your going to redo your PC why not try putting EMC2 on there as well? http://www.linuxcnc.org/lucid/ubuntu...xcnc1-i386.iso LinuxCNC.org - Installing EMC2
You could put all three on! I think if you give EMC2 a try you'll like it.

As far as G83 versus G73 (G78 does not show up in EMC2) I tried looking them up on the EMC2 documentation and I think its a case of canned cycle (G83) versus not - ie in a canned cycle when milling you call up the G83 once and then all you do on subsequent lines is move to your new hole location and it repeats the drilling action - not sure how that works on a lathe? Also, at least for EMC2, G73 is for Z axis only, and G83 works on the selected plane so if X-Y is selected then Z is moving, if X-Z is the plane then Y moves...etc - seems milling oriented...

BTW what axis is the tailstock configured as? Looking at the above the G73 won't work if your carriage is Z...

Mike

[blades]

I've thought about EMC, and actually installed it on the laptop I'm using right now. It certainly wouldn't be difficult to add another partition for Ubuntu. Might be a good option.

Right now in Mach, I have it configured as axis A. It would be easy enough to configure it as Y though.

[sansbury]

I added a lever-lock for my tailstock, and it seriously changed my life. It makes using the tailstock something I enjoy using instead of loathing. Now I have quick-change tooling everywhere, Tormach QCTP on the lathe, TTS toolholders for the mill, power drawbar, replacing all my keyed chucks with keyless... the list goes on.

For CNC drilling, I want to make a QCTP tool holder for a drill chuck.

EDIT: I run my lathe with EMC and it's great. 100% happy with it.

[blades]

I was sold on the lever lock for the tailstock, I love it, and almost ordered it a couple of times (not sure why I didn't), but not that I have the motor hanging off the back side of the tailstock there's no room for the lever. I'll probably go with a modified short wrench on the nut to make it easier.

I've been seriously thinking about getting a QCTP for my lathe. Makes a lot of sense, considering the repeatability when quickly swapping tools.

I ended up wiping out my HD and repartitioning it, and installing XP back on it. I've got my DOS partition and 2 additional 2 gb partitions (for possible future Linux install for EMC), plus the large partition for XP. I was trying to configure TurboCNC, but having trouble getting it set up properly. Gotta work on it some more I guess. Although I run Ubuntu on my laptop, the added complications with a Linux partition is the last thing I need, at least until I get more familiar and proficient at configuring and programming what I've already got set up.

[RotarySMP]

I thought a bit about putting a stepper on the tail stock, but decided that any job which required repetitive parts would be better served with each of the drills in their own QCTP hoder. Drilling from the cross slide rather than the tail stock.

I am in process of putting a cheap caliper scale DRO on my tail stock.

What would really improve the sieg tailstock is to melt it down and recast it and machine a new one which is acurate

[blades]

I thought a bit about putting a stepper on the tail stock, but decided that any job which required repetitive parts would be better served with each of the drills in their own QCTP hoder. Drilling from the cross slide rather than the tail stock.

I am in process of putting a cheap caliper scale DRO on my tail stock.

What would really improve the sieg tailstock is to melt it down and recast it and machine a new one which is acurate

Honestly, from a practicality standpoint, there isn't much regarding a powered tailstock.

But looking at how easily it was going to be, I couldn't resist.

Mark, you run TurboCNC don't you? I'm in the process of trying to get it up and running. With Mach all I really had to do was configure the steppers per the TPI of the leadscrew. I've done that on TurboCNC, but my steppers jog really slowly. Also can't find where or how to configure my spindle under TurboCNC. I've read through the manual a time or 2, but can't find a good explanation of how to configure it. Any pointers?

- Bill