Re: NEW member Suitable conversions?

I'm new to the list.

I have a couple of projects in mind, they are probably at 2 extremes.

I just wanted to get a few pointers and opinions as to suitability.

First is an electronics manufacture Glue dispenser.

It is a rather general purpose units, about 2.5' square.
It is a flat bed Plotter type unit with a Z? or Y? axis tool holder
that has about 4" travel.
The question about the axis, is how they are defined.
I would call it Z looking down at the bed, I've been told the
"Correct" axis is defined looking at the machine from the front,
making it Y.

Overall the usable area on the bed will be 18" Square.

In a quick and dirty test, I rotated the steppers, and counted the
full revs, it takes ~11.3 to travel the entire width or length of the
bed.
The bed travel is about 18" or ~457mm
The steppers are 1.8 Deg units for 200 steps/Rev.
Half stepping them would be easy, that would give 400 steps/rev or
about 4520 / full stroke of about 457, I'm hoping real measurements
after things ar up and running will show it to be calibrated at
.1 mm / 1/2 step. that would make life easier.

The intended use is plotting etch resist on circuit boards, and
drilling them after they are etched.

The unit contains all the electronics to drive the steppers, and I'd
like to use the driver ICs, they will take the usual direction / step
inputs.

Does this sound reasonable?
Any red flags or problems at the outset on making something like this
work?

The second project is a Wasino Gangster.
It is a CNC Gang type lathe.
IE. to the right of the lathe chuck is a table like on a mill.
The tools are bolted down on the table like work is on a mill.

The controller is as large, and 5 times as heavy as a refrigerator.

The lathe itself has a 4 speed induction drive motor, not a variable
speed CD one.
There is an absolute encoder on the spindle.

I don't know anything about the drive motors for the table.
I think they said DC on them and I don't recall much else aside
from the fact they were probably 1 foot long and 6 - 8" in diam.

This may be too general of a question, but how are such motors
"Usually" encoded to determine rotation?

Are the more likely to be optical step or absolute encoders, or
analog resolvers of some sort?

The controller is a Fanuc 5T if I remember.

The motor controllers appear to be somewhat modular, and may be
usable seperate from the rest of the controller.

I'd REALLY like it if I could get the info on driving them directly.

I rather not get into hard core heavy duty electronics any more
then necessary. I can if necessary, but these are very large,
high voltage, and smoking something could be pretty serious I
would imagine.

How good would EMC be at running a lathe?
Everyone seems to be dealing in mills.

Marc