Bill M's Pm1340gt Setup

wrmiller19 said:
Hey Jon, where the heck have you been dude? :)

Yea, Matt sent me a brand new motor (I didn't even ask...) to replace the dinged one. I'll likely use parts off the single phase to repair it and keep it for a spare. I had some stuff I wanted to make on the new lathe right away, so didn't want to start tearing the lathe apart until I got those done. I basically got serious about the change over a week ago.

But I'm struggling a bit with the change-over to 3 phase/VFD. I haven't done any electrical rework in over 20 years so I have nothing to do the work with, and never having done this exact stuff before, I didn't know what I needed until I needed i,t and it's another week waiting for something to arrive. :(

I have a large NEMA-1 box that I'm mounting to the side of the stand near the lathe head. When I ordered it from Automation Direct they suggested a sub-panel, and at the time I couldn't figure out why I would need it so I didn't get it. I figured out why I need it last Saturday morning. It should be here sometime this week (Bill drumming his fingers on his desk). There have been a string of events like this. :cussing:

So far, I've managed to make a new control panel for the front of the lathe and have switches on it for E-stop, JOG (fwd and rev), Frequency/motor speed, and Braking. I need to finish making the wiring harnesses for the front panel (waiting on colored heat shrink tubing for that), and start mounting pieces on the sub-panel when it arrives. I'm literally taking the fiber board with the bus-bar and 24v transformer and transferring it to the larger box. The original electrical box is completely empty. I put it back on the lathe to give me more room for laying stuff on top of the headstock. :grin:

Oh, and I have to mount the braking resistor inside the big box as well. This last weekend had me changing out the single-phase motor for the three-phase, and mounting the large box on the lathe stand. Hand drilling the five 3/4" holes in the bottom of the box with a cheap import drill bit was a little more excitement that I wanted...

Then once everything is installed/mounted I need to re-read the instructions in the manual for changing control parameters in the VFD, because I want to do this manually from the front panel the first time so I know exactly what is in the VFD. That and I figure I have a bigger chance of screwing things up if I try to do a config file download to do the initial programming. I'll probably have all of the electrical done this next weekend.

If I didn't forget anything else.

Mechanical mods are SO much easier.
Click to expand...

Hey Bill,

I thought I was the only one who had not finished wiring their 1340GT and had it running on the VFD...
Looks like I have company. :apathy:

My issue was the AC business got to hopping, I did not get into my shop much the whole month of April... :faint:

Over the last few weeks, I have all my wiring done. I left the 240V-24V AC transformer in the lathe elec box... and put the main relay Mark suggested in that box also. I mounted a NEMA plastic box below the headstock on the right of the cabinet; it has the main power switch, VFD, a couple of terminal strips, and a cooling fan arrangement (intake screen and fan with screen).
I put the brake resistor on the back of the cabinet, and used stick-on velcro to put a power strip next to it for 120V accessories.
For the front panel, I put a new lighted E-stop, new jog button (not directional), and the POT (variable resistor)... and left the factory white light-bulb in the left hole, not used at this time.

I need to do as you mentioned... study the programming procedure and manually input the parameters.... then hope to hit the power and pray I do not let the magic smoke out of anything.... :chemist:

I still need to fit the QCTP Matt sent me... not sure if I am gonna use the T piece that came with the lathe (it sure looks nice, yet would take a lot of machining), or fire up the mill and make a new one.

Then on to alignment and making parts/chips... or is that chips/parts... :dunno:

Will be out/town over the weekend at a Gyro-Copter gathering in NC... so probably will not get much done until next week. :dancing banana:

I found the wiring was tedious... I kept changing my mind about where to mount something and re-doing it. Probably took twice as long as it should have... yet I am happy with it now... :geek:

Looking forward to hearing you have yours running, as I would like to have mine running also... :grin:

Bill, send me a PM, my ability to start a PM conversation does not seem to work... THX

John/GA
 
Last edited:
Sorry for the confusion guys. In math ther are three Cardinal planes X, Y, Z. On paper the Y axis is up and down on the paper, the X axis is left and right and the Z axis comes out of the paper toward the viewer. If you align the Z axis with the Z axis on the machine you can see why they are labeled as such. Take a look at a CAD program and you will see the X,Y, and Z labeled as I have described. You can also pull out a math book and look at the section on planar geometry.
 
Hey Brooks, I am quite familiar with geometry I just couldn't figure out what or how the conversation happened here. :)
 
darkzero said:
Lol, my quoted post from #44 is clear as day with the diagrams attached but I'm a bit confused what Brook is trying to say. :)
Click to expand...

Oh...OK. I get it now. Just couldn't figure out how my status post ended up in 3 dimensional space... :grin:
 
wrmiller19 said:
Hey Jon, where the heck have you been dude? :)
Click to expand...
I've tried to be around, but ever since the new style forum seems like all the posts I was following went cold or I didn't get notifications or something. I also have been using my machines a bunch which leaves little time to root around the forum.
If your taiwanese machine is as much better as expected than a chinese one, you are going to be pretty happy. I love my PM-1440. As far as timeline goes, I've had my 12z for over a year and haven't even started the cnc conversion yet, so I guess you're doing all right.
 
Thanks for the words of encouragement. :)

When I had the tailstock off the lathe I noticed the bottom was entirely hand scraped. I've not owned a machine like this. I am going to get spoiled. CNC'ing the 12Z? Probably won't do that unless I want to do short production runs on something to sell and that won't happen until I lose the day job and get settled somewhere else. Then I'd have to hit Matt up for a 9x49 mill. Have to have a manual mill... :)
 
That's one of the neat parts of this hobby, many people can solve the same problem using different solutions, and all be right (enough). I want to do too much weird one off crap to stick with manual on the mill, but don't really see any advantage for me to have a variable speed lathe. I'm sure that it helps that I have no clue what I'm doing though ;)
 
There is no reason you can't have a CNC/manual mill all in one machine. You just need to set up the Z to easily disconnect from the drive. The X and Y can remain connected to the motors.
 
JimDawson said:
There is no reason you can't have a CNC/manual mill all in one machine. You just need to set up the Z to easily disconnect from the drive. The X and Y can remain connected to the motors.
Click to expand...

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.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top