Multidisciplinary Project

What at first was going to be just a little cleaning and polishing has become a monster of a project. After a good hard think I decided to bring my 20th century CNC lathe into the 21st. First up is a stand or bench to hold all the bits together.

The picture was taken last friday and I've spent a lot of time on it since then so it's mostly finished by now. You can see the lathe in the background. It has lost it's control cabinet and I've taken it to pieces (right down to individual screws) to clean and adjust it. While I was at it I've painted some bits black beacause, well... because I think a black machine looks the part. Old Henry Ford and I would've agreed on one thing>> You can have it any colour you like as long as it's black!

Here's a list of improvements I want to bring to the machine.
- Replace the outdated DOS platform by a modern computer running Linux and EMC2. If anyone reads this and they have experience they'd like to share about EMC2 I'm keen to learn. I'm especialy troubled about the HAL component of EMC2.
- Fit and wire up a breakout board so the computer can talk to the lathe.
- Replace the stepper drivers to modern microstepping Geckodrives. I've bought these allready.
- Possibly replace the Slo-syn stepper motors with modern 200 step NEMA23 motors.
- Fiddle with the spindle drive circuitry to enable computer control of speed and start/stop and reversing. This bit is underway.
- Figure out an encoder arrangement on the spindle to enable "spindle synchronised motion" like threading.
- Add a coolant pump and attendent circuitry. Under computer control no less.
- Fabricate a coolant/chip guard on the front of the machine.

I think I'll be busy for a while yet.