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Verry interesting
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Replace change gears with a stepper?
- Thread starter ttabbal
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Just as an update for others looking into doing this, "Clough42", on YouTube, has a whole video series on designing and building an electronic lead screw ("ELS"). His prototype is running and he's currently investigating manufacturing a small circuit board. I watched his series and couldn't see how I could (easily) do better, so I'm building one of his, which uses nearly all commercially-available boards, and his sw, which is free. I"m currently adding the servo and encoder to my Takisawa TLS-800 (it came with no change gears).
I've started on that as well. I hope to get the encoder mounted tonight. The servo will be next. I have the electronics set up and working on the bench, other than the interface board. I'm hoping he will sell them soon so I can skip building my own.
I'm rolling my own. I'm using a raspberry pi pico W so I can take advantage of the programmable state machines. Once programmed, and DMA setup the state machine runs with no interaction by the firmware. The firmware only provides the user interface and the engine to compute and program the control words that will be DMA'd to the state machine.
It's working on the bench, and I'm working on the hardware now. Stepper is mounted, encoder tomorrow.
It's working on the bench, and I'm working on the hardware now. Stepper is mounted, encoder tomorrow.
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Would be nice to have a separate read out for both the spindle and stepper and be able to change both independently to adjust the feed rate for turning as well as coordinated for threading.
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Isn't that what the Clough42 ELS does?
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Pretty much. Just about any ELS does that. Saw this thread pop up recently, and immediately thought of an ELS.
I was able to squeeze 4 state machines into the pico. In addition to the threading and feed function, one machine monitors and displays the spindle RPM.
btw... Before working out the details of the design, I was thinking I would provide feed for turning as an open loop operation to simplify things. What I mean by that is I'd monitor RPM and adjust feed based on the RPM instead of locking it to the spindle. My threading function (Feedscrew locked to spindle) exceeded my expectations, so I was able to make feed an extremely fine thread!
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I do love the way quite a few people on this thread who were implementing their own electronic feed/threading systems mostly didn't reply to the posts about preexisting solutions (even as far back as 2018). 
That's no criticism of those people of course; rather a chuckle and a rueful shake of the head, recognising in myself, the tendency to be tunnel visioned by the excitement of my own implementation of a concept and the joy of creation.
I'm definitely going to look at the code side of the open source ELS projects out there; it's a good way to learn about the underlying software mechanics and the maths of an ELS.
But you can bet your ass, if I was going to put an ELS on a future machine, I'd buy the Rocketronics ELS (the basic version not the PRO).
Someone else (i.e. the fella behind Rocketronics) has already done all the tedious testing and integration with hardware donkey work and his customers have done even more UAT work.
That's no criticism of those people of course; rather a chuckle and a rueful shake of the head, recognising in myself, the tendency to be tunnel visioned by the excitement of my own implementation of a concept and the joy of creation.
I'm definitely going to look at the code side of the open source ELS projects out there; it's a good way to learn about the underlying software mechanics and the maths of an ELS.
But you can bet your ass, if I was going to put an ELS on a future machine, I'd buy the Rocketronics ELS (the basic version not the PRO).
Someone else (i.e. the fella behind Rocketronics) has already done all the tedious testing and integration with hardware donkey work and his customers have done even more UAT work.
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At the time of the original posts, I wasn't into machining, so I never saw it. The maturity of computing hardware wasn't that great, meaning they weren't that affordable. I looked into the Clough42 solution and actually tried to source the parts. Unfortunately this was during pandemic times and the great supply disruption that followed. I still wanted the capability, so I investigated other solutions, including Rocketronics.I do love the way quite a few people on this thread who were implementing their own electronic feed/threading systems mostly didn't reply to the posts about preexisting solutions (even as far back as 2018).
That's no criticism of those people of course; rather a chuckle and a rueful shake of the head, recognising in myself, the tendency to be tunnel visioned by the excitement of my own implementation of a concept and the joy of creation.
I'm definitely going to look at the code side of the open source ELS projects out there; it's a good way to learn about the underlying software mechanics and the maths of an ELS.
But you can bet your ass I'll buy the Rocketronics ELS: someone else (i.e. the fella behind Rocketronics) has already done all the tedious testing and integration with hardware donkey work and his customers have done even more UAT work.
As I was enduring financial short falls at the time, I learned that the Rocketronics solution was not turnkey so I decided to make my own, hoping to spread out expenditures over time. Had my circumstances been different, maybe I would have made a different decision. The Rocketronics solution is a fine one, no doubt.
I learned a whole lot while doing my own system. The process stretched my abilities both mechanically and software wise. I learned what was necessary and sufficient to do the job and how to write the code with full documentation in the source, because I knew I would be maintaining it. Since I have the source code, I can modify it or augment anyway I see fit. Towards that end, I made a new branch in git, and am slowly adding capabilities, without messing with the baseline code. It may be the long path towards my goals but hey it keeps me thinking. Don't regret the journey I took one bit.
I'm not responding because I'm taking umbrage with your comments, but only a comment on my motivation. People's circumstances are often different and the circumstances often guide their decisions.
So, do the best thing for yourself. Hope it exceeds your expectations. I admire those here and elsewhere that take on all sorts of challenges and wish to encourage them onward. DIY I personally find rewarding.