Spindle Speed Control Board availability

Hello - I am after a spindle speed control board to control the permanant magnet motor on my Denford Starturn 4 lathe. The Homann Digispeed board looks ideal but i can't see a UK supplier, shipping from Australia takes up to 4 weeks and they seem to be out of stock anyway. Can anyone recomend an alternative or a more local supplier?

Cheers Andy

There have been a coupleof threads in the last few months about problems with lathe speed controls. Within those posts have been mentions of other suppliers of control boards so a bit of searching should yield the information.

I'm not sure it's a speed control board itself that Andy wants, Bazyle. It looks to me that he is after a board to sit between that and his computer, to get the speed pot under computer control. I'm not into CNC, but I imagine that this involves inputting his desired speed, after which his software compares the blips from a tacho on the spindle with the desired rate of blips as generated by the software, and adjusts the speed pot until the two coincide, through something like a phase locked loop.

(another) Andy

Try here.

**LINK**

Hi Andy (E),
From Andyf's reply it looks like it is not just me that is not sure what you want. I tried to find information on the motor voltage and power rating for your lathe but faiied. I then looked for information on the Homann Digispeed board you wanted to get an idea of the rating but found that this company makes a range of boards so that did not help. If it is a speed contoller board you require do you know what voltage and current rating you require. If it is an interface board you require what type of control signal does the speed controller board require.

Les.

Thanks everyone - sorry I was a bit unclear. As Andyf says I need a board to sit between the existing (original) control board and the computer. The original control has a manual potentiometer that varies between 0 and 5V. There is a tacho on the spindle with a multi-slotted disc. I want to control the spindle from Mach3 - on/off, speed and do threading (give it a go anyway at a later stage after I have got everything else running ).

The motor is 180V, 3.25A, 0.44 kW. Motor goes up to 5000rpm and the spindle up to about 2200 rpm driven by a toothed belt.

John - I contacted Roy at DIY CNC and he said his board would work for me if the potentiometer went from 0 to 10V - I am not sure if that means it is suitable for me (mine is 0 to 5V) but have asked him. His site indicates that his board controls the speed via an inverter which isn't the setup i have. The Homman site does say that his boards are suitable for motors currently controlled by a potentiometer and another person (David Murray on the Denford forums) who has converted one of these machines has successfully used a Homann board.

Thanks for your help - it is appreciated.

Andy