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Author Topic: Mach 3 and a Stepper Spindle  (Read 1547 times)

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Mach 3 and a Stepper Spindle
« on: January 03, 2016, 10:03:55 AM »
I have Mach 3 running my homebuilt mill and I have added a HF lathe bed, headstock and tailstock ala Tormach . The headstock is driven by a large stepper motor with timing belt reduction and works fine as a 4th axis.  It reliably positions and runs the spindle at 600 rpm. However I'd like to be able to run it as a lathe with the stepper running continuously, as I have a Tormach QC Tool Post mounted behind the mill spindle.  However my set up is a Xulifeng USB motion card with 4 axis and supports only a pwm spindle.  Mach 3 supports a stepper or servo spindle using step and direction, however I can't see a way to make the outputs from Mach 3 use the 4th axis outputs of the Xuifeng card as the spindle.  Anyone know how I might do this?  Alternately I am thinking to add a pulse generator to generate spindle speeds and put an encoder on the spindle for threading.

At this point I am so close, and so far!