Bill M's Pm1340gt Setup

You could absolutely set up the z with a stepper and jog for quick up/down or MDI for precise input. It would be a little messing around, but I'm sure there are plenty of us who would have info to help. If you were just using it as a programmable DRO of sorts for one axis, you could skip the e stop and limits and make it at least 1/2 as complicated as the whole cnc sheebang.

I guess I'm the one who opened the door for hijacking your lathe thread into a mill thread.
 
On a lathe related note... I have been having decent luck keeping my PM white "DZ clean" with tub o towels.
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Oh...very nice! I'll have to get some of those, thanks. :)
 
wrmiller19 said:
The tailstock doesn't support arbors with tangs on them very well. If you use one like the one I received, you loose 20mm right from the start.
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Every single lathe I have ever used has been like that. It makes it so the taper is self ejecting, which can be a good think, as a Morse Taper can get stuck.
 
The big Japanese lathe I learned wasn't like this, in that you simply backed up past zero to eject the tool, but it's the only one outside of the ones I've owned that I have any experience with. I will either shorten the tang or the ejection bolt a bit. Depends on how ambitious I am at the time. :)
 
wrmiller19 said:
Interesting that you said that. Charter Oak has a motor drive kit for the Z axis, but I don't want to loose my ability to manually fine tune the position of the head which I was told their kit will do. But there has to be a way to have both. I'll have to think about this some more.
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Bill, that is exactly why I spent a couple of months designing a completely new type Z-axis drive, I can go from 3 axis CNC to full manual in seconds. I looked at all of the retro-fit kits, only one had a provision for disconnecting and it was cumbersome at best. As far as I know, it's never been done like mine before. It's probably patentable, but I'm not going to do that. There is a way to do yours also, it's just a matter of figuring out the best way. Too bad my system won't bolt on to your machine, I'd be happy to give you or anyone else the drawings for it.
 
It may not bolt onto my machine, but it doesn't mean I couldn't derive a modification or two that might make it (or something like it) work. :)

If it's in some CAM/CAD format though I probably can't open it though.
 
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