RE: EMC and a lathe

[Scot Rogers <scotr-at-bogwell.com>]

Thanks Brian,

The reason that I ask is that I am currently in a mild (some would say)
bind.  I'm in the tail end of purchasing a semi-used (demo) from CMS.  The
problem or dilemma that I'm haveing is that I was planning on purchasing
more machines from CMS, but I'm choosing to cut ties with them after I
either recieve my machine or the $8k deposit back from them on friday.  I'm
cutting ties because I'm getting the runaround constantly from them.

But basically, I plan on starting, in about a year, on retrofitting machines
using emc.  Mainly I use lathes for what I do, so I was wondering if a lathe
controller is comming.

Get ready for the barrage of questions from me regarding emc over the next
few months.  I have a bunch.





~
~
~Hi Scot
~
~EMC as it stands now is mainly for mills I keep hearing rumors about
~adding lathe threading but I dont know how far along it is
~
~so heres MY view of the steps needed for an EMC-Lathe control
~
~first put everything done for mills on the shelf ,it will do nothing but
~make a mess of things to try to convert it
~
~now focus on the primary axis of the lathe ,the spindle
~everything on the lathe is a slave to the spindle ,everything.
~
~add encoder position feedback to the spindle ,this will need to be
~able to track and reset the position on the index pulse and not just
~keep counting up or down forever
~
~once that works the other axes can be slaved to interpolate motion
~relative to the spindle for constant surface feet on X ,feed per
~rev on X & Z
~and threading/scroll cutting on X & Z (these are all related anyway)
~feed per minute is rarely used in the lathe
~
~once that the motion primitives are worked out the interpreter would
~need some major rework for the lathe functions and canned cycles
~for turn,face,grove/cutoff,bore/face grove,thread,scroll (face threading)
~roughing cycles ,finishing cycles
~(both using the same profile-definition-blocks/subprogram)
~
~and add the tool orentation directions and tool nose radius comp
~
~whew... as you can see this is NOT a trivial task
~
~Brian -yes ,I do work in a turning/screwmachine shop ,how did you know ;-)
~
~
~On Wednesday 13 February 2002 07:40, you wrote:
~> Hey there,
~>
~> I was just wondering if there was an EMC based controller in the
~works for
~> a lathe or if there's a set of steps for altering EMC to be more like a
~> slant bed conrol.
~>
~> Scot
~>
~>
~>
~>
~> /?*$#-at-%!&*
~> -------------------------------------------
~> Give me open source, or give me open sores!
~> -------------------------------------------
~