Re: Swiss turning conversion

Jon,

Don't know anyone personally who's done it. I know there's a
company, whose name escapes me right now, backeast that sells CNC
conversions for Swiss machines.

A local guy has a whole shop full of B&S screw machines he's
converted to CNC by adding a servo to the turret cam shaft and
another one to the cross slide shaft. Quite a few similarities
between Swiss and B&S conversions.

I had a 1/2" Tornos Swiss machine years ago. Only ran one part on
it. A little grooved stainless shaft with horrendous tolerances on
both diameters and lengths. Everything was +/-.0002". Turned out to
be harder to measure than to hold the tolerances. Pretty amazing
machines!! At that time I thought about a conversion, can't remember
all the details, but it seemed straight forward.

The basis of the conversion is to still use cams, except the job-
specific multi-lobe cams which rotate in only one direction are
replaced with a universal high precison single lobe cam which rotates
in both directions under program control. About as simple a
conversion as you could ask for, no precision lead screws needed.

Doug

--- In CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO@y..., Jon Anderson <janders@n...> wrote:
> Do you know anyone that's done this?? Would they be willing to chat
> about the conversion, and programming issues? This is a topic that's
> been on my back burner for some time. I don't have funds nor room
to go
> experiment on a lark, but I've thought for some time that replacing
the
> cams with stepper motors and lead screws might offer some
interesting
> possibilities.
>
> Jon