Hi All,
I am working on a lathe retro-fit and have a few questions about spindle feedback in Mach. I currently have a little lathe running now on Mach with just a spindle index for feedback into Mach, one pulse/rev. The spindle motor/drive is a cheap 3HP hitachi, no feedback into the drive. It works amazingly well for cutting threads...
The big lathe I am working on now has a 15HP DuraPulse Vector drive with the encoder feedback option. There is a quadrature encoder with an index pulse on the spindle that spins at the RPM of the chuck and there is an auto lo-high in front of that. I was considering just running the spindle's encoder to the feedback card in the DuraPulse, and the index pulse to Mach3. I have a few questions about the setup:
1- Is rigid taping on a lathe an option in Mach?
2- Can/should the encoder go to just Mach, just the drive, or both?
3- This is probably more of a question for automation direct, but how will the drive work with encoder feedback after a gear-shift? I may need to change the way I command the spindle speed based on the ratio between the motor and the drive.... Anybody out there done this?
I am going to try to post some pictures of the machine in the "show'n tell" section if anyone is interested...
Thanks!
Dustin