lathe

[pchfurniture]

I have a mill with about a 4ft. x 5 ft. footprint that I do profiling and pocketing mostly with a 690 PC router. I am interested in doing some turning on my machine but not sure how to set this up. I use Mach3 and bobcad v24
Is there equipment out there to retro fit a lathe attachment to my table that I can drive independently from the controller.

[dsnellen]

I have a mill with about a 4ft. x 5 ft. footprint that I do profiling and pocketing mostly with a 690 PC router. I am interested in doing some turning on my machine but not sure how to set this up. I use Mach3 and bobcad v24
Is there equipment out there to retro fit a lathe attachment to my table that I can drive independently from the controller.

Rather than retro fit a lathe to your existing table, you might consider building a standalone CNC lathe. The concepts of construction is the same. In the picture, you can see my A axis located on the left side of the table. It has about a 6" swing by 86" long. The white in the picture is under the lathe to catch stuff not sucked up by the vacuum. The table is overall a 48"x96" but the lathe side reduces the effective X/Y to about 24x96. Material can span the lathe but is unsupported.

On my next rebuild, I plan to make the lathe a standalone machine. It will be about 18" wide by about 10 feet long with a 12"x96" lathe area. Might even build a cover to make it more dust contained. Although it will have a large swing, a 11" x 96" log is heavy and requires a strong two point attachment.

I used 8020 for the rails and salvaged parts from an earlier machine. Unlike most machines, I used a single R&P for the long X axis and 2 screws for the Y axis. The y axis motors actually share a single 5 amp driver. Works fine.

For normal A axis functions, the Y axis is not used. And the G code for lathe operation is different. Z cmds run in the X axis and X is the Z axis. Very confusing. You just have to try it. Also you will use Mach3-Turn for CAM generated code. In the past, I have written the code to use the A axis. Simple things like making logs into round legs, cutting tapers, spiral patterns, etc. I am testing CamBam for more complex shapes. I will be back in the shop this weekend and will let you know how it works out.

I am not an expert by any measure, but will do my best to help when I can.

Dave