New Build: Another Techno Lathe

[dustboy]

Been wanting a lathe, manual or CNC for a few years. This Techno-Isel CNC Servo Lathe popped up cheap on FB and I jumped on it. It's fully operational and appears to be barely used, but Techno no longer supports it and there are no post-processors to be found. The controller is very limited as it was originally intended for educational use.

So, since I've already done one Acorn/Clearpath conversion on my router and cracked the code, I'll do the same with this lathe.

Here's what is on order:

Acorn Kit w/ Lathe Pro
Clearpath CPM-SDSK-2321S-ELN NEMA 23 98 oz-in continuous
Teknic IPC-5 power supply
EDIT: Intel NUC Micro PC i5-7260U 2.2Ghz

[cnckeith]

cool, thanks for posting looking forward to the project chronicle.

[dustboy]

Clearpath servos mounted, IPC-5 power supply mounted.

Made my own control wires for the servos from CAT-6 cable. Each twisted pair is a +/- signal pair. After a lot of frustration on my router, I found these have much better EMF rejection than any other cable I tried, including the expensive ones that Teknic sells.

[cnckeith]

Nice! thanks for posting.

[Muzzer]

Be aware that if those wires are going to be seeing movement as the table moves, they need to be flexible. Cat 6 cable may fatigue fairly quickly and fail weeks or months down the road.

[dustboy]

True. I did at least use stranded CAT6. The same cable has been working flawlessly in my router for 3 years now. I went through a ton of trial-and-error, time-and-expense to make that machine work, so I'm sticking to the same "formula".

[dustboy]

Ready to turn parts. Got all axes running nicely and spindle speed control is working with 0-10V. Homing from limit switches works. Still need to hookup the spindle encoder. The cabinet is a bit of a rat's nest but I'll get that cleaned up once all connections are complete.

I can't see any markings on the existing encoder, does anyone know what the specs might be?

[suntravel]

Unkown Encoder:

PID screen, turn spindle one turn, difference in counts is the encoder resolution

Uwe

[dustboy]

Good tip Uwe, although I still need to ID the wires. I suspect the green cover is just for dust, and there is a nameplate on the actual encoder underneath. But to access it I'll have to disassemble the entire cabinet. Was hoping to avoid that mess!

[Reedfirst]

The pin outs for the encoders are here...

Hope it helps.

0229_LC_and_Lathe_Board-Callouts-Connectors.pdf

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