Igor Chudov wrote: > > What I mean by this is as follows: I would move tailstock and carriage > as far to the right as possible to make room. > > I would take a big aluminum plate and mill it to fit on the lathe > vee-ways, so that if I clamp it to the lathe bed it will stay solidly > in one place. > There was actually a commercial CNC retrofit that worked approximately like that. I think it clamped a small XY (really XZ in this case) stage to the toolpost of a standard manual lathe, but maybe it really just clamped to the bed, I've never seen one. But, it would never be as rigid as the original lathe, and I hate to give up the rigidity of my lathe. The way this thing works now, I get a grin every time I fire it up, just cut material, no need to worry about chatter or anything else.
I think a well thought out CNC retrofit could be made such that it only slightly impacts the manual use of the lathe. Take out the threading leadscrew and half nuts, as you would always want to use CNC for threading. With CNC, you can thread at a much higher RPM, and that is usually a benefit. A servo drive adapted to the X handwheel shouldn't affect the manual use of that axis. With some ingenuity, it should be easy to install the CNC ballscrew where the threading leadscrew went. The only tricky part might be making it easy to connect or disconnect the ballnut from the apron, as it might end up on the back or inside the apron. But, maybe just setting it up with the ballnut to the side of the apron would make that simple. Line up the nut and drop in a couple bolts, and it is a CNC. Pull out the bolts and run the ballnut to the end of the leadscrew, and it is a manual lathe without threading. And, of course, keep all the parts so you could put it back to completely manual use in short order. Jon ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Beautiful is writing same markup. Internet Explorer 9 supports standards for HTML5, CSS3, SVG 1.1, ECMAScript5, and DOM L2 & L3. Spend less time writing and rewriting code and more time creating great experiences on the web. Be a part of the beta today http://p.sf.net/sfu/msIE9-sfdev2dev _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
