Rule #1
Everything takes a lot longer than you think it will!
Finally getting around to the meat of converting this lathe. What was going to just be a simple hook up mach and go thing got a little more involved.
The machine was hardly used. Which is a good thing, but it sat for almost 30 years. Without any use the way oil never did wash the cosmoline off the ways.
The X and Z were both frozen and the ball screws were covered with fossilized grease. All of the way wipes had to be replaced. To get to the way wipes, you have to
disassemble all the sheet metal. From there the "while I have it apart" mentality took over and now it has new paint as well. Oh well, I never did like the machine tool in drag
look that it had before. I also had to rebuild the powerdex turret I scrounged for it. Whoever had it before did some "maintenance" on it. This person apparently thought that RTV silicone is a miracle substance, good for everything from assembly lube to an overall conformal coating. I'm not joking the whole thing was coated with silicone inside and out!!!
Some of the internals were corroded pretty good, so I guess they were trying to stop coolant from getting into the turret. They might have tried installing all of the O-rings, most of which were missing
. Fortunately most of the damage was superficial and easily fixed (except for scraping all of that #$%*&@#$ silicone off so I could re-paint it. So new seals and O-rings plus lube. The other thing I am doing is replacing the 3 phase AC servo that powers the turret with a stepper. I'll sacrifice speed, but It's a lot easier to deal with on this machine as everything else is run by steppers.
Hooking up the turret is going to be a project. I need more inputs than I can get from the serial port. Maybe the new smooth stepper board will be the way to go!! The turret needs 9 inputs. and 1 outputs in addition to the stepper motor. The input hog is the 7 bit encoder. Does anybody have any suggestions for hooking up the turret? Whats the best way to do it? let a subroutine in mach control it or use a stand alone plc?
Anyway my current focus is getting the turret re-assembled and mounted. By the time I get around to that the smooth stepper board should hopefully be available and I will have made some wiring decisions.
Monty