Re: [CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO] Help on Retrofitting LeBlond

brittevalivie@... wrote:

> Anyone out there in the vicinity of central Oklahoma who might be
> interested in taking a look at a Leblond lathe? I am interested in
> possibly retrofitting it to a PC based control,but I have no
> experience in such things. I had planned to use the machine in my
> start-up business before the control(GE-1050HLB)went down.I'm not
> sure if I need the hobbiest type retrofit as this is a big lathe and
> I plan to be doing lots of threading and heavy work on it.I had
> posted earlier and have been trying to get the original control up,
> but it looks hopeless.Just hoping someone might be near me who could
> either retrfit it for me or point me in the right direction.

This is already a CNC machine? I assume it has DC servo motors.
It likely also has resolvers. You would have to replace these with
shaft encoders or get interpolator boxes to convert the resolver
signals to standard quadrature signals. the servo amps may
be reusable, it they are still working.

There are only a couple of PC programs that will handle threading.
I would recommend EMC for most uses, but it is not clear whether
EMC does threading. There are apparently one or two users who claim
that they DO have it threading, but others claim it doesn't.

Going to step and direction servo drives like the gecko drives
should work, but you don't have direct feedback from the machine
to the PC, so you have to re-home every time there is a crash,
fault or E-stop. Not the end of the world, but I feel a lot more
confident with direct display of true position on the screen at
all times.

Do you know what the problem with the control is? If it is the
computer itself, then the servo amps, etc. are still usable.

I'm in Missouri, although close, not close enough!

Jon