Re: CNC Taig lathe video

Not a whole lot to it. I like to do just enough with what I have. I
had 1/4" stainless tubing so that is what supports the motor mounts.
They are held in place with 8/32 screws. I replaced the rack and
pinion with a lead screw I found at a liquidator ($10, don't ask me
unless you are in San Jose, CA, they don't do mail order). It looks
like a ball screw, but has a plastic nut. That nut is held in place by
the aluminum block you see mounted to the cross slide. The block is
slightly shorter than the nut and I can take up backlash by how much I
tighten the block against the nut.

I used the same cross slide screw that came with the lathe. It has
about .007" backlash compared to the .002" on the lead screw. The
cross slide screw has a 6/32 thread on the end which screws into my
coupling and is held from turning with a set screw. Due to the very
light weight and low loads of the lathe the set up is more than rigid
enough. With a tenth reading scale the repeatability is about .0003".
At first I was worried about backlash but then I realized than unlike a
milling machine, a lathe is always cutting in the same direction, so it
doesn't really matter so much.

Since the video I set the stepping of the controller board to 1/16th.
In the video it was at 1/2. It runs so much smoother now. With Mach
3's 45 kHz setting' I was still able to keep the rapids at 13 ipm on
the x and 30 ipm on the Z.

Vince

> Other than your videos and pictures, do you have any more details on
> how you performed the conversion and how the conversion operates?
>
> Thanks.