A Small CNC Mill - A Huge Education

[MontanaAardvark]

I also have a sherline mill and lathe that I have been running with LinuxCNC but have been wanting to change over to Mach3. I have looked at the Warp9 smooth stepper board and it looks very good. Can you tell me what you are using for the motor controllers between the smooth stepper and the stepper motors on your lathe and mill? Do you use one port on the smooth stepper for each machine or do you have to swap cables?

Sure. I have a cable for each machine and use a separate port for each machine. That was probably my biggest reason for going to the Smooth Stepper. I used to swap cables, but wanted the seamless approach of just having a start up option for each.

On the Sherline lathe and mill, I'm using Xylotex hardware. The Mill has a 4-axis board and the lathe actually has his old three axis controller. Both of them are pretty old hardware. Either he's pulled down the new hardware sales portion of his website because of overload with the holidays, or something bad, because the website just returns an email address for support.

Hope that's helpful.

 

[wudwlkr]

Sure. I have a cable for each machine and use a separate port for each machine. That was probably my biggest reason for going to the Smooth Stepper. I used to swap cables, but wanted the seamless approach of just having a start up option for each.

On the Sherline lathe and mill, I'm using Xylotex hardware. The Mill has a 4-axis board and the lathe actually has his old three axis controller. Both of them are pretty old hardware. Either he's pulled down the new hardware sales portion of his website because of overload with the holidays, or something bad, because the website just returns an email address for support.

 

[wudwlkr]

OK, sorry, don't know how I screwed that up. Thanks, your reply was very helpful. I was thinking that since the Sherlines didn't have limit switches and speed control and etc. that alot of other machines had that a single port on the smoothstepper would be enough for one machine. I'll try and research on the Xylotex board and look at some others also.

 

[MontanaAardvark]

OK, sorry, don't know how I screwed that up. Thanks, your reply was very helpful. I was thinking that since the Sherlines didn't have limit switches and speed control and etc. that alot of other machines had that a single port on the smoothstepper would be enough for one machine. I'll try and research on the Xylotex board and look at some others also.

No problem with the mixup.

Any CNC machine is a trade of how much time and effort you put into it for the payback. Sherlines are too small for Tormach-style tool changers, too, but I get along OK without them. There are ways to control spindle speed (KBIC?) and it's always possible to add limit switches.