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Nov. 16, 2011
I've wanted to put together a small CNC lathe for quite a while. My intention was to convert a smaller manual lathe.
Later, I learned about a few smaller CNC machines that were available from a few sources. Hercus Compulathe, Denford Orac, and Emco Compact 6, and Emco 120. As it turned out, only the
Emco machines were common in the US. After a few months of searching I found a stripped machine locally for a reasonable price. And the journey begins.... |
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I didn't take many photos after it was unloaded, prior to diassembly. |
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The bare spindle, with an adapter plate of some kind. The rod in the foreground was connected to an air cylinder. I was told the previous owner
used it to actute a collet chuck. |
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The tail stock. This machine was equipped with a pneumatic tail stock. There are some limit switches to tell the control of it's position. I will be including it in the conversion. |
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The turret holds 4 OD tools and 4 ID tools. The setting up EMC2 for the turret is intimidating at this point, but I have an example and someone that's offered to help. |
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Nov. 18, 2011
Disassembly begins. Some of the panels have been removed. The amount of dirt in the machine is amazing. Chips and sludge in mounds. The Z axis ballscrew unfortunately shows slop. I'm uncertain of the source.
The X axis feels fine. |
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Jan. 5, 2012
The bare lathe bed and chip pan. There a quite a few panels, cables, etc., to remove to get to this point. I was concerned about removing the headstock to clean the bed casting,
but it turns out there are built in alignment devices to get it set up when it goes back together. There is a Yahoo Group for the small Emco lathes. The ways are slightly stained, but otherwise look good.
I've been colecting the necessary parts for the conversion. The original motor is a separately excited shunt type. This is basically useless without the original control. And even then, no good for me as it
requires 220 three phase and the Emco transformer to boost the 220 to 380. All of these machines require that transformer to run the original control. So The motor is being replaced with an ABB EIC 100 frame motor, and an open loop vector VFD. This should give virtually identical power to the original spindle drive. I've also found some servo motors and I've
had Gecko drives waiting for the CNC lathe project for a while already. I'll be using Mesa Electronics cards for this conversion. I decided on the 7i76 and 5i25. Yes, the 7i76 is geared for steppers, while I'm using Geckos and DC servos. Initially it will run "open loop" like steppers, but there seems to be a way to get closed loop in EMC with steppers these days. |
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Jan. 27, 2012
I spent several hours cleaning the chip tray and panels. I must have pulled out over five punds of grease and chips from behind panels and in the tray before even thinking about washing anyhting.
We had a very mild winter day so I gathered the parts and hauled them over to my parent's house to pressure wash. The sludge stuck on this machine was tenuous. The detergent for the power washer didn't even touch it. I'm sure the balmy 39°F temperature didn't help. I ended up using a spray
bottle and a half of Zep Heavy Duty Citrus Degreaser and scrubbing with a brush, all parts at least twice, blasting away the grime with the pressure washer in between. Now, I have some mostly clean parts sitting in the garage. I wiped the ways of the bed casting dry and sprayed them with Corrosion-X. |
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