Shesto cadet lathe

Also known as a Connect 123 lathe.?

I rescued one recently and have it polished to a nice sparkle. Now I need two bits of (simple) electrical information. Can anyone help?

Good morning blowlamp.

1. The big driving motor for the spindle is supplied from it's own circuit board which has terminals for armature and field etc. How is the speed varied? Do you feed a digital or analogue signal into some of the other terminals? Do you need to have the tacho connected also?

2.The two stepper motors are made in Italy (MAE Offanengo) and have 4 pairs of wires. The wires of 2 of the pairs are joined together. How do the wires connect to the coils inside the motor?

HI all,thanks for your interest. I'll tell you what I know about this lathe,or rather what I think. I may have got it all wrong.

The bed is a bar diameter 1.5 inches which protrudes 19 ins. from the headstock. The carriage and tailstock both ride on this.

It started life as a Connect 123 or 121, possibly in USA. They were bought in by Shesto engineering who did some work on them and rebadged them as the Shesto Cadet. They were CNC lathes. The original software ran on the old BBC Micro computer but was specific to this and does not transfer easily to modern computers. Also the motor drivers run in the old resistance limited mode. So I would plan to scrap all that, keep the motors and get new drivers and software. I expect that would mean a new driver board for the spindle motor as well.

There is not much information about them on the net and the little there is, is from way back. Perhaps they did not sell well?

Thank you Les for that link. It should keep me out of mischief for some time!

Good morning each. Thank you John S. for setting the record straight. I guess Alan Timming's involvement explains the watchmaker style round bed.

Re the software problem,your links give a lot of new information and open new possibilities. Very interesting!

Thanks everyone for your helpful input. Best wishes to all. Colin.