On 13 June 2013 00:22, Kirk Wallace <kwall...@wallacecompany.com> wrote:
> If I may, my vote would be to restore the Rivett back to the original > condition. It seems to me to be the shortest path to having something of > value. If you need a CNC lathe, sell the Rivett, and buy an HNC or CHNC > which would be a much better CNC project, but I'm biased. I already have a CNC lathe, though I mainly use it for one-off and experimental style work. In fact the CNC aspect for me is mainly an extension of conventional power feed that returns to the start point and takes another cut until completed. I do 95% of the things I do on the lathe just using the same 6 macros. So, I have concluded that what I need is a conventional lathe, with a large spindle bore, a set of rests, and that will fit in a small space. In fact what I need is probably a Harrison M250, or better still the M280 CNC trainer version. I only really bought the Rivett because they have fascinated me since I saw them on the lathes.co.uk page. I paid £120 for it, which at the moment isn't a great sum of money to me. I spent £99 on a ballscrew for my milling machine only a week ago. However, I do want to make the Rivett useful and usable again. It was bought as "for parts or not working" and I am determined that it won't leave me in the same state. It needs a motor and drive system, and underdrives always look neatest to me with the flat-bed lathes, so that is decided. I don't have any of the changewheel or screwcutting gearbox parts (other than the quadrant). Finding the parts seems unlikely, certainly at a sensible cost. What would make a lot of sense would be to replace the original changewheel arrangement with an electronic leadscrew drive. (this could easily be a second motor inside the cabinet, and a toothed belt drive, and would be effectively invisible. This could be nothing more than an Arduino with an LCD display. Add three gear-tooth sensors inside the backgear cover, and the machine suddenly becomes quite useful. (Though I am also short of a threading indicator) -- atp If you can't fix it, you don't own it. http://www.ifixit.com/Manifesto ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ This SF.net email is sponsored by Windows: Build for Windows Store. http://p.sf.net/sfu/windows-dev2dev _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
