Messages

61

Show"N"Tell ( Your Machines) / Re: Prima Lathe conversion

« on: December 23, 2013, 01:30:06 PM »

Dickeybird,

The covers are sheet metal with powder coating. Bent and welded with hand tools. Customer is contended with this tool post at this time. I have offered him a Chinese turret tool post though. I'll post more photos after customer's training on it is complete.

Zafar

62

Show"N"Tell ( Your Machines) / Re: Prima Lathe conversion

« on: December 22, 2013, 11:43:55 AM »

vre,

I had limited choice for the ball screws. With this setup I can go upto 20,000 mm/min but it is too much for conventional metal-to-metal contact slides here. So I limited it to 5,000 mm/min to minimize wear on slides. Finer pitch ball screws would have been better here and I could go with less powered servos. With extra power on servos, I can get a high acceleration rate which is useful in machining coarse pitch threads.

Zafar

63

Show"N"Tell ( Your Machines) / Re: Prima Lathe conversion

« on: December 22, 2013, 01:26:38 AM »

Nice job.
Since I am only 3'-6" tall i would need an adjustable stand for the screen, but then, your not building it for me. 

RICH

You can use the same stand which you do for operating the lathe . Have a nice day.

64

Show"N"Tell ( Your Machines) / Re: Prima Lathe conversion

« on: December 20, 2013, 09:51:46 PM »

The lathe retrofit is complete. Getting 0.001 resolution on both the axes and 5000 mm/min rapids. Using Delta servo motors/drives, Delta spindle encoder and VFD, UC300 motion controller, Euchner MPG, custom designed break out board and of course Mach3. Designed new screens for it and using MPG for FRO and SSO. That's it. Here's a photo.

65

Show"N"Tell ( Your Machines) / Re: Prima Lathe conversion

« on: December 16, 2013, 09:42:42 AM »

Zafar Brother, do you have UC100 available. I want to test it with my G540.

Sorry Khalid. It got installed in a machine last month. I'll let you know when I get a few more. UC-300 are available at this time though.

Zafar

66

Show"N"Tell ( Your Machines) / Re: Prima Lathe conversion

« on: December 12, 2013, 05:08:49 AM »

Yes they will work for steppers too. Just make sure that you can connect the drive error signals through the BOB too. Normally we connect it to the external e-stop.

Zafar

67

Show"N"Tell ( Your Machines) / Re: Prima Lathe conversion

« on: December 12, 2013, 01:59:13 AM »

Sorry, I don't have experience with commercial break out boards. I design my own break out boards for each project I make.

Zafar

68

Show"N"Tell ( Your Machines) / Re: Prima Lathe conversion

« on: November 30, 2013, 09:23:05 PM »

Your selected hardware seems ok. The motors on my machine are both 750 W with 1:2 reduction. They run fine with 3000 acceleration in Mach3. I didn't calculate the torque on the screws on this one. Your selected encoder will work fine. Just use a single slotted disk and make sure that the slot is wide enough for parallel port to read. For a spindle running at 1500 rpm max. the slot should be at least 45 degrees wide. You'll have to experiment with it a little. Mach3 won't read the optical incremental encoder at high speeds if it's a fine pitch. And the threading option in Mach requires single pulse per revolution.

69

Show"N"Tell ( Your Machines) / Re: Prima Lathe conversion

« on: November 30, 2013, 11:05:13 AM »

I would select the ball screws first. For a machine this size, 25 - 30 mm dia ball screws would be suitable. A pitch of 5 to 10 mm would fine too. Install the ball screws on your x and z slides and then measure the torque that is needed to turn the screws. Servo motors are selected after you have the required torque and the desired max. rapid feed. For conventional slides that have metal to metal contact, I normally don't go above 5000 mm/min. So if you have 3000 rpm servo motors and a 5 mm pitch ball screw, the timing pulley reduction to get 5000 mm/min rapids would be 1:3. And if the calculated torque is 6 N-m then for a 1:3 gear reduction you'll need 2 N-m on the motor shaft. A 2 N-m, 3000 rpm servo motor would be roughly 750W. This is normally the size of motors on machines this big. The spindle encoder mach3 needs is single pulse per revolution. If you are going for the parallel port setup then make sure that your index signal is long enough for mach to read. With external motion controllers you normally don't have to worry about the index pulse width.

70

Show"N"Tell ( Your Machines) / Re: Where do I start Bridgeport Interact Series 1

« on: November 04, 2013, 07:11:32 AM »

Jim,

I've experimented with touch screens too. With the workshop environemt, greasy fingers, cutting oil mist and all other contaminants, the touchscreens start malfunctioning in a few days. There's an android app for controlling Mach3 PC through bluetooth or WiFi. But I haven't tried that and not sure about it's capabilities.

Zafar

What do most people use as PC's for their mach3 installs. I'm not sure if I'm better off getting a touch screen pc based install and mounting that in the cabinet where my heidenhain currently lives, or just getting my hands on an old panasonic toughbook with touch screen?