Friday, October 8, 2010

CNC Lathe conversion

I've made a decision to convert my manual Sherline lathe into CNC controlled one. The idea is to use same control box, which connected to the CNC Mill at the moment. I plan to unplug Mill's steppers and plug in Lathe's steppers. Separate configuration for EMC2 should do it fine, I think. The downside of course is that I would not be able to run Mill and Lathe under CNC control simultaneously. That'll be fine until Lathe get it's own CNC controller. All components are in house at present. Couple of basic steps are completed. Got holes drilled and tapped in Lathe's base to accept stepper mount. Changed lead screw and installed all mounts. It's ready to accept steppers. Couple difficult steps left - soldering of connectors to motor wires and configuring EMC2 to control Lathe. Otherwise the rest seems straightforward.

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