CNC Lathe Info

[Gary Campbell]

Guys...
I've just acquired a Boxford CNC Lathe/Mill combo, as shown here: https://youtu.be/daLXcUWRvKo

http://www.crystalcnc.com/images/DUET.pdf

Of course it is brain dead, that's why I can afford it.

I'm looking to find a source of information or documentation for axis orientation and general operation of CNC lathes. If you guys that know about this side of machining could point me to a book, document or website it would be greatly appreciated.

Are there lathe users using UCCNC? if not, which control would you suggest?

Thanks for your time, GC

[Derek]

Based on the priorities of development there may never be a true lathe module. The user base is just too small. There are attempts being made by users to make some workarounds with macros but that probably isn't going anywhere until there is some way to have tool offsets in the Z and X axis.

I use Mach3 turn and I can make decent parts with it. The linux cnc is also an option.

[Robertspark]

You can always buy a UC motion controller, and use mach3 for the time being, and then uccnc in the long run.

Normally I'd recommend a uc300eth (faster MCU plus loop, better noise immunity (Ethernet against usb)

...but then there is the option for the lower cost uc100 which offers uccnc, mach3 and mach4 as a crossroads cover all bases options.... Catch is.. it only offers one lpt port.... Which may be ok for a lathe as you only have two axis (normally)... And you can control your spindle speed via modbus with the right vfd

http://cncdrive.com/UC100.html

Won't work so well if you have an auto tool changer or a driven tailstock or other encoders and mpgs required

In all honestly no I cannot see an official release of uccnc turn for some time even though I don't think it will be much required to at least provide the minimum requirements, we as users can write the macros same as what was done with mach3

Choose your motion controller carefully that is all I can say.

It would be nice for a uc300(Ethernet) to be offered for mach4 too ... Everything covered then

[cncdrive]

Gary,

It will probably take more time for us to come out with a lathe version of the UCCNC than the time you want to wait with your lathe project.

Rob,

The UC300ETH already has a Mach4 plugin for I think about 2 months now and the Mach4 plugin for the UC400ETH was also released about a week ago.
So, all of our motion controllers already support the UCCNC, Mach3 and Mach4.
However with Mach4 basicly the only thing which non of our motion controllers support at the moment is thread cutting, so it is not an option now for lathes.
It is not supported yet, because we could not make the spindle syncronous motion to work with the Mach4 API ... later we will make more attempts to make it work, because the Mach4 version which we used for the development probably had a bug with the thread cutting as calling those function did nothing else than freezing Mach4 and so we gave up on it at that time and we did not have time to try other versions/releases yet...

[Robertspark]

Thanks balazs,

Gary, there you go.... I'd go uc300eth and you've got your bases covered!

If you use other motion controllers (or motion controller type devices in linuxcnc) you are going to be much more limited to one CNC software (mach3, mach4 or linuxcnc)

[Derek]

FYI the UC-300 plugin breaks some of the input DROs in the built in turn wizards. They must share the same numbers or something. I never bothered to report it since I was hoping on getting UCCNC lathe to work and then I just ended up going back to Mach and the PP. Ultimately I wanted the UCCNC for encoder feedback threading.

Here are some screen shots.

These are the wizards.


Rouging Depth DRO is stuck at 1008



Simple threading pitch DRO same problem.



There may be others but I quit trying and rolled back to the PP.

[cncdrive]

It is probably bugs in Mach3, because as far as I know plugins generally do not have access to DROs on wizards like this.
I can ask my collegue to look after it, but I'm not optimistic that it could be resolved, because it does not look like a plugin related issue, but something to do with Mach3 handling things incorrectly when motion controller plugin is loaded (I mean I'm assuming this if this thing works OK with PP). But we have no oversight of the source code of Mach3, so we can only guess about what is happening with the wizard...

[ger21]

You can easily change the DRO numbers in a screen editor, and edit the VB code using Operator > Edit Button Script, and clicking the Post Code button.

I don't have my UC300ETH connected, but I have the UC300ETH plugin installed, and I don't see what you are seeing when I just tried the wizard.

[cncdrive]

I don't have my UC300ETH connected, but I have the UC300ETH plugin installed, and I don't see what you are seeing when I just tried the wizard.

If it is someking of Mach3 bug then it could be Mach3 version dependent. Maybe you have a different version of mach installed than what Derek has. I did not try the wizard yet though with any versions yet.

[Gary Campbell]

Good info, even tho it will take me a while to digest. I have a couple UC400eth controllers and a UC300eth (plus UB1) on the way.

I think that I omitted the "wood" portion of "lathe" in my original post. I do not think this machine would be robust enough to perform metal turning. I also am not sure that I care to throw oats at any of the Mach products. Short of threading, I see no reason that for game call type turning that anything one would want to do could be done with Cut2D posted to UCCNC.

I'll let you know once I get the thing up and running.