Messages

1

General Mach Discussion / Re: Dolphin Lathe tool dra files

« on: January 12, 2013, 10:48:48 AM »

I would also appreciate your generous offer.

2

General Mach Discussion / Re: Winter MACH3 get together in FLORIDA ???

« on: November 08, 2012, 10:02:23 AM »

That is certainly close to me. I am north of Ocala.

3

General Mach Discussion / Re: Winter MACH3 get together in FLORIDA ???

« on: November 07, 2012, 10:08:01 AM »

I live in Florida. Born and raised in florida.  Winter weather is ,let me say, "unusual". It can be 90 degrees F one day and 18 degrees the next. My trees don't even know when they are supposed to bear fuit. Last year ,I had golf ball sized peaches in November. Of course they all froze off and then tried to bear again at the normal time in the spring. And a late spring freeze took those as well. It was ninety a couple of days and then 37 just this last week. I rather enjoy the cooler weather so I am good with that. I do hate the heat.
What kind of get together did you have in mind

4

General Mach Discussion / Re: Question about Mach3 Stepper Motor Tuning. Still a few Rough Spots

« on: October 16, 2012, 09:08:54 PM »

If you are running the motors just sitting on the bench top, this is normal behaviour for a stepper motor. The jitters will most likely go away when the motors are mounted solidly.

5

General Mach Discussion / Re: Myford Super 7 - adding ball screws

« on: September 07, 2012, 02:05:13 PM »

I have done two lathe conversions. I did use a ballscrew on both machines. Actually I did the conversion on a 9" SouthBend with the ballscrew mounts that  I clamped onto the ways at the rear of the lathe. I removed all of the mechanisms at the front of the machine(apron?). It worked well until I acquired a Hardinge HLVH that was missing enough parts to make it useable as a cnc conversion only. I pulled the ballscrew from the SouthBend and adapted it for the Hardinge. The ballscrew is mounted on the rear of the Hardinge as well. I am using direct drive to the ballscrew using a 5 phase stepper. I have made a lot of parts with this machine. I am pretty sure that I only used existing threaded holes to mount the ballscrew. I don't like adding holes to machinery. The nut bracket bolts on where the taper attachment would have been fastened.

6

Polls / Re: Depth of cut strategy

« on: August 31, 2012, 10:40:13 AM »

Option one.

7

General Mach Discussion / Re: Lathe Spindle Speed Control

« on: August 30, 2012, 11:07:48 AM »

I converted a Hardinge HLVH to CNC. I haven't done anything toward CSS but there are a couple of options. You could drive the spindle motor with a VFD or ,rather than changing the speed adjustment motor, wire in relays from your break out board to the 2 push button switches on the machine. If they are normally open switches(which they probably are) you could still leave those switches as functional at the machne control.
That leaves you with trying to figure out how to trigger the relays to control the speed. There are folks here that can help with that. I would be interested in that as well,though I probably will put a bigger 3 ph motor to drive the spindle and use the VFD that I use to drive my Bridgeport and other machines to drive the Hardinge. I have had issues with not enough power to the spindle with the original belt drive. Mostly a belt slippage issue. But it spoils a part and often a tool when it happens.

8

General Mach Discussion / Re: G00 not working right

« on: July 08, 2011, 08:20:53 PM »

I have had issues in the past that did the same thing. In my case it was how I wrote or edited a program. In my case, I was hitting the O key instead of the 0. The two keys are right next to each other and if I have the wrong glasses or am in a hurry it used to happen. I finally put a piece of tape over the O key so that i wasn't distracted into hitting the wrong key. This is probably not what is happening in your case but worth checking if you are manually writing your program. You said it did this on the first G00. What about any other G00's?

9

General Mach Discussion / Re: OD Taper Wizard Help Needed

« on: June 28, 2011, 04:45:35 PM »

The way my mind see's it is perhaps why it is not intuitive to me. I understand the positions of x0 being the center of the stockand x.05 being the diametric edge of the piece and z -.5 being a half inch back from the face. It is the start and finish that confuses me. My mind pictures it this way. With a taper to start at x .5 and finish at x 0.0 the tool moves left to right. And to start at z 0.0 and finish at z -.5 is a right to left move. In reality that may not be the intention of the wizard but it is how my mind pictures it, which makes it counter intuitive to me.

10

General Mach Discussion / Re: OD Taper Wizard Help Needed

« on: June 28, 2011, 02:21:22 PM »

I have had some issues with wizards. In particular, direction of cut. I am looking at your settings and it looks,to me (I may be wrong) that with x end at 0.0 you are wanting it to cut to the center of your stock. But your z end is at -.5 which is moving the other direction? Or am I really confused?
Sometimes the wizards are really confusing to me(not particularly intuitive) and sometimes they just will not do what I need them to do and I have to write my own code.