Member postings for Tony Jeffree

I would agree - if you are planning on going full fat CNC then the PlanetCNC option looks very attractive. In my case, an easy to use ELS that provides the basic functions (threading, facing, turning, tapers, ball turning...) is pretty much all I need.

Does indeed look as if G-code support is a work in progress. One attraction to me is that it supports a shaft encoder, rather than a single pulse-per-rev encoder, so the threading support shouldn't suffer the problems that can occur with 1PPR encoders. I bought one of the early John Dammeyer ELS kits and this aspect of its operation wasn't good.

The fact that it doesn't need a PC for the more straightforward operations is a plus too. At the price I'm tempted to give it a go.

There is a bit more detail here:

https://github.com/kachurovskiy/nanoels/blob/main/h4/README.md

A couple of points...

Running immersion heaters of any kind without a water jacket is asking for trouble - they are designed on the assumption that they will be in contact with water and will potentially overheat if they are not.

Heating up a brick in your oven simply increases the amount of time it will take for the oven to heat up - there are no free lunches there I'm afraid.

If you get 300W worth of sunshine during the winter months (very far from certain I'm afraid), the best you will manage is about a couple of units (1 unit = 1 killowatt-hour) of stored heat - so equivalent to having a convector heater on for about an hour. Bear in mind that the heat will be given out over the full 24 hours. I doubt if you would see much benefit TBH.

A couple of other alternatives that I have come across recently, and that both appear to support a spindle encoder:

https://www.masso.com.au/product/masso-touch-lathe-cnc-controller/

https://kachurovskiy.com/products/4-axis-electronic-lead-screw-controller

No experience of either.

...and of course, let's not forget the famously unpronounceable Worcestershire...

It is a matter of what you are used to. I've always pronounced it Jib but I know some engineers that use the hard G Gib.

A similar problem can occur with the G in Giga - Gigabyte, Gigabit etc., which in my usage (and all the techies I know) takes the hard G, but my brother insists on pronouncing it Jiga... very grating on my ear.

True enough, but that doesn't stop it being a perfectly good name for the cafe that avoids the apostrophe debate, which was the point

...or Jameses cafe (as in "keeping up with the Joneses" )

Edited By Tony Jeffree on 20/09/2023 08:28:40

Edited By Tony Jeffree on 20/09/2023 08:28:58

Edited By Tony Jeffree on 20/09/2023 08:29:15

Edited By Tony Jeffree on 20/09/2023 08:29:32

Easiest solution - rename it as Jim's Cafe...

...and remember, any noun can be verbed...

Its all Greek to me...

Maybe I should take a leaf out of your book John and give the wizards another go!

They are a great company to deal with in my experience.

I bought one of the early Newton Tesla conversion kits for my ML-7 a good few years ago. At the time they routinely set the VFD's frequency range to 0-60 Hz. I was planning to upgrade the headstock bearings/spindle to bronze shells and hardened spindle, so I asked them to programme the VFD for 0-120 Hz, which more than doubled the speed range of the lathe. I have been using that configuration for many years now and it works very well indeed.

Simon

I would second what you have said - I converted my ML7 to CNC a few years ago, and I have to admit that the number of times I have used it under CNC control, other than to prove that it works, is small. I deliberately converted it in a way that makes it dual purpose - manual or CNC - and that was a very sound choice.

Regards,

Tony

Boards now sold!

I bought one of the Clough42 "C4228 ELS PCB Control Panel Combo Kit"s in a fit of enthusiasm having seen his videos, but it is increasingly clear that I won't ever get around to building anything with the bits. The display and the interface board are both in their original unopened antistatic bags. Seems a bit of a waste for them to gather dust, so if anyone fancies having a go, an electronic £25 note secures - contact me via the forum's messaging system.

The kit consists of:

Box it came in

Display/keyboard unit

Cutouts for the display

Buttons & hardware

C4227 board

I discovered another "Spirograph" sim that allows drawing the path of points outside the rolling circle. Unfortunately it only allows you to draw the effect of a circle rolling round the inside of another, larger one, but a bit of mental straightening out of the containing circle gives you the idea.

The red trace is of a point on the circumference of the rolling circle, so this is our familiar cycloid form. The blue trace is at half the radius of the rolling circle (R/2) - clearly not a cycloid. The two green traces are of a point at 2*R and 3*R - as shown in Michael's image above you get the "curlicues" added where the trace loops back on itself - again, clearly not cycloids. It is quite an amusing toy - https://seedcode.com/SpirographN/sgn.html

Edited By Tony Jeffree on 10/09/2023 22:13:15

I believe I answered that with the diagram I posted on 07/09/2023 13:41:13 and subsequent posts. The diameter of the roller has to be equal to the effective length of the pendulum, otherwise the bob *does not* follow a cycloid.