My order from RDG tools arrived today. The quick change tool post if T00, or Myford-size, for 12 or 12.7 mm tools, and included three holders. I also got a pack of five extra holders for a total of eight. There’s a set of seven 12mm carbide-insert turning tools, and an internal threading tool for [...]
I’ve ordered a bunch of tooling from RDG (http://www.rdgtools.co.uk/), Chronos (http://www.chronos.ltd.uk/), and CTC (http://www.ctctools.biz/) for the lathe. There’s at least one more of these deep-discount tool stores: http://www.arceurotrade.co.uk/. These stores sell tools of mostly Chinese origin, but I think they will do just fine for hobby use, and the price-level certainly is only a fraction [...]
The lathe-project I bought in November is slowly moving forward. I got an Optimum/Quantum 100mm 3-jaw chuck for it today. Turns out the spindle needs to be disassembled to attach the chuck, so this was an opportunity to look at how the spindle is built. The front bearing seat is machined into the spindle box, [...]
Number of wires from servo-motor to controller on my lathe build: 19. 1: Motor power U 2: Motor power V 3: Motor power W 4: Hall sensor +5V 5: Hall sensor U 6: Hall sensor V 7: Hall sensor W 8: Hall sensor GND 9: Encoder +5V 10: Encoder A 11: Encoder B 12: Encoder [...]
Drilled four holes for AMP-connectors and used a hole-punch to make cut-outs for eight 25-pin D-connectors. The four motor-connectors will provide 3-phase power to the spindle-servo, the X- and Z-servos, and a high-speed live-tool spindle. The servos have three Hall-signals and three(single-ended) or six(differential) encoder signals which will enter the cabinet through the D-connectors. I’m [...]
In 2006 I made optoisolator cards for the cnc-mill project, but now with the lathe I am using servo-drives and a VFD which mostly already have optoisolated inputs, so I will use these very simple breakout boards instead. There are two pitch-standards for the screw-terminals, an imperial one with a pitch of 5.08 mm (i.e. [...]
I put together this small computer which will be used to control the lathe. The components for this kind of box are quite inexpensive: D945GCLF2 motherboard including 1.6 GHz Atom330 CPU, 76 eur Codegen MX31 case including 420W PSU, 46 eur 2Gb DDR2 memory stick, 46eur Samsung 320Gb HDD, 44eur Labtec keyaboard + mouse, 17eur [...]
A bit of progress with the electronics cabinet for the lathe. Some components have been bolted to the back wall of the cabinet. From left to right: a Bonmet servo-drive for the main spindle servo, a Siemens VFD for the live-tool spindle motor, and to the right two Brushless PWM amps for the X and [...]
Most of the electronics I’ve ordered for the lathe has arrived by now. Still waiting for the servo-drive for the main spindle. Bottom left are three switched-mode power supplies: 5V 3.5A (logic etc), 12V 3.3A (brushless amps, E-stop chain, etc), 24V 1.3A (spindle brake) Bottom right are two Chinese 350W 48VDC 7.3A power supplies for [...]
Digikey corrected their mistake and shipped The Real McCoy to me today.