Re: Servo as a Sherline spindle motor ?

Hi Alan,
You may wish to review the specs on of the Sherline motor currently powering
your lathe. http://www.sherline.com/dimen.htm Look at the bottom third of
the page. You seem to have selected a replacement motor that's almost
identical to the motor you wish to replace. :-)

By the way, Mach3 supports spindle encoders just fine. There are many who
are doing this now and I'm in the process adding it to my lathe. There are
some trade-offs, depending on whether you're using a PP, SmoothStepper, or
other interface device. Short story is that it works well enough for the
production guys to speak well of it.

Thanks,
Andrey Lipavsky
Essex Jewelers
490 E. McMillan St.
Studio 205
Cincinnati, OH 45206
Phone (513) 826-0240
Fax (866) 653-9702
www.essexjewelers.com


From: CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO@yahoogroups.com
[mailto:CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Alan Rothenbush
Sent: Sunday, December 21, 2008 2:39 PM
To: CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO] Re: Servo as a Sherline spindle motor ?

Many thanks to all who responded.

One more question, if I may, near the bottom of this note.

After examining the various comments, I did a little bit more digging in
the parts box and found another motor, a 6000 RPM 1/4HP 90 VDC "exercise
equipment" motor (B4CPM-060), and sitting right beside it, a Leeson
SCR-type DC motor speed controller already mounted in a pretty enclosure.

Motor specs are here, about the middle of the page

http://www.servosystems.com/servo_motor_amp_specials2.htm

The motor is

. the perfect size physically for what I have in mind,
. should surely have enough power for the task of powering a Sherline
spindle doing Sherline-sized things (I have a SouthBend for bigger things)
and
. will be trivial to implement, mechanically and electrically.

So for now, I guess I'll try the "encoder on the spindle" route for
threading and see what happens.

So here's the question

what software supports this option ?

I know the DeskCNC HW/SW combination does, and that IS an option, albeit a
bit of a pricey one.

And I know that Mach3 has this option, but the demo version of Mach3 does
not and I'm reluctant to spend the $200.00 CDN or so just to find out if
the whole thing works or not.

(I'm currently a CNCPro user, continue to customize the CNCPro source code
and have found it entirely adequate for my simple needs, so $200.00 is a
bit much to spent on an experiment ... )

Is there anything else out there ? Preferably available as a demo ?

Again, thanks in advance for any thoughts.

Alan



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]