The last video showed my tool post update, and I haven't made any new video yet about the lathe updates after that, but the major things are the following:
1. The servo is now changed to 600W AC servo.
While the 180W 50V DC servo worked surprisingly well, I wanted some more torque and higher RPM, so I bought a 600W AC servo with a driver. This motor will allowed me to change the gearing from 1:3 to 1:1.5 so I will get a maximum chuck RPM of 2000 instead of 1000. The motor is strong enough for me at that speed.
I made some modifications to the S2 servo driver, added three LEDs and a small relay to the four outputs, and also a button to one input. Inside the driver there is more than enough space for the small PCB necessary for this modification. The parameters are set according to the following for this modification:
LED 1: Servo ready
LED 2: Servo motor power on
LED 3: Zero speed
Relay: Alarm detection
Button: Alarm reset
The relay NO output is connected to a 3.5mm contact, which in turn is connected to my eStop so that when everything is fine (no alarm) the relay is energized and the contact is shorted.When there is an alarm from the servo driver the relay will break the circuit and UCCNC will stop the G-code execution and all motors and halt. When the error condition is back to normal, by pushing the button the error flag is reset and the servo driver is ready again and UCCNC can start again. Of course, this condition is emergency stop, so the code can't continue from the same spot where it stopped. This works very well for me, the G code execution stops if there would be a problem, and the servo motor stops immediately also if I push the CNC eStop button, or if UCCNC would crash for whatever reason it may crash (for example network or power failure) so the safety is good.
I have also changed the tool holder saddle plate from aluminium to steel, and I think that increased the rigidity as well.
The recent updates of my lathe turned out to be really worth wile, the 600 W servo is really making magic. Cuts steel as I never could do before and not really thought it ever will. The new servo is also a lot quieter, which is good as well, so I am very happy with it. My future plans are to actually make it a bit wider and maybe also taller. As it is, the "throat" (the space below the chuck) is too narrow, it does not swallow as much chips and swarf as I want to. It is fine for very small jobs, but as soon as I want to make something bigger, it needs to be cleaned a bit too often. Anyway, using it is a real joy now.
This is what I made on it this week:
Here is a link to the video since the forum continues to show only a blank frame for the embedded videos. I don't know why CNCDrive is not able to fix this issue, and allow us to embed a link and expand that automatically, like every other forum I know of.
https://youtu.be/808WNVtjevI?si=KBclNCd8AsEf8aQY
The round bar was not turned down on my machine, it was a 12 mm diameter 48 mm long piece readily available, but most of the work is done on my DIY CNC lathe.