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electronic lead screw
- Thread starter greenail
- Start date
found his site - nothing re ELS there! Searched Youtube under his name - couldn't find it. Are U referring to the expensive but slick Rocketronics.de ELS4?
Am new to this forum, found this page & joined.. Am trying to find Jon Bryan, & more details other than the youtube clips re his amazing touchscreen ELS,
Can anyone assist please? (I am very keen to load the f/w into a Arduino Mega & test it, but need much more detail first, like backlash compensation, electronic gearbox steps, range, etc).
Thanks Dabbler Admin., converting EU to Oz $ plus freight, might as well use Mach3! But yes its slick as, best bit is X axis motorised.
ELS4 Pro even slicker / dearer, when released.
Jon Bryan's also very nice but no X axis drive.
I am hoping to rotate spindle slowly as well for cutting long curves, so an electronic indexer, married into Z feed, all as a standalone, for those oldies who cant use mach3 or PC's, with stored settings,memory. Probably too hard..
ELS4 Pro even slicker / dearer, when released.
Jon Bryan's also very nice but no X axis drive.
I am hoping to rotate spindle slowly as well for cutting long curves, so an electronic indexer, married into Z feed, all as a standalone, for those oldies who cant use mach3 or PC's, with stored settings,memory. Probably too hard..
- Joined
- Jun 16, 2016
- Messages
- 221
You found me. I don't have any backlash compensation because it's not CNC, just a programmable "gearbox". The number of pitch selections is arbitrary. I've implemented every pitch that I could find in online pictures of lathes, and every tap available from McMaster-Carr. I stopped short of having an arbitrary programmable option, but it would be possible. I did limit it to 4tpi just because I have a small lathe. That's getting to be some serious depth of cut, and I have already noticed some "hiccups" cutting an 8tpi Acme thread in 1144. I'm waiting for more timing pulleys and belts so that I can gear it down from the current 4:1 ratio between the stepper and the screw. I'm planning to test it at 5-, 6- and 8-to-1.
I still have more to do. The touch screen is great for a lot of things, but on-the-fly feed direction control needed something more tactile, so I've added a toggle switch mounted in front of the headstock. I quickly programmed it to control the direction, but have to add jogging support still. I just got sidetracked by actually making some things.
I think it would be cool to do cut knurling, so I'm also thinking of adding support for multi-start threads, but that's a ways off yet. I've only used half the RAM on the Mega so far, so there's still room to squeeze more features in
. I promise to make at least a basic version of the code available at some point when I'm satisfied with it.-Jon
- Joined
- Jan 2, 2019
- Messages
- 7,150
Yes, a bit of a learning curve here but not sure it's more than doing an ELS.
LinuxCNC
LinuxCNC: an open source CNC machine controller. It can drive milling machines, lathes, 3d printers, laser cutters, plasma cutters, robot arms, hexapods, and more.
linuxcnc.org
Cheers,
John
- Joined
- Oct 11, 2016
- Messages
- 4,006
The issue for me isn't just learning Mach3. there's the entire toolchain to learn. I programmed at all levels for 40 years, and -for me- those days are over. So I want a nice, pre-programmed solution that will up my game without retooling my brain for Fusion360, mach 3, dealing with feeds/speeds and other minor annoyances of CNC. The ELS feels more like what I do manually, but reducing the operator-error possibilities.
I am following the various ELS threads on youtube as well as here. It may be I can home-brew my own, but right now I'm leaning toward Rocketronics ELS in their largest size (My target lathe is 15" LrBlond).
I am following the various ELS threads on youtube as well as here. It may be I can home-brew my own, but right now I'm leaning toward Rocketronics ELS in their largest size (My target lathe is 15" LrBlond).
- Joined
- Jan 2, 2019
- Messages
- 7,150
For sure there are challenges with homebrewing any of these systems and the Rocketronics stuff looks like it will be good and it should be available any day now.
I'd only wonder about two things, first will it actually be easier than a DIY solution and second, what happens if the manufacturer goes out of business and the device breaks down. If I did it myself I'd have the skills to fix it, purchasing something in a black box I'm not sure....
Sure it's a relatively small cost ~$250 but you still need to do all the electro/mechanical bits like hooking up the steppers to your machine so it's not plug-n-play by any stretch of the imagination. I'd be more inclined to try the Clough42 ELS since it's opensource and available on github but that's just me (I am typing this on an Ubuntu workstation right now
).Neither product is actually available for purchase right now so there's time to do more research before laying down your hard earned dollars/euros.
I'm following because although I have almost all the change gears for my Seneca Falls 9x5 I'd rather punch in a number than fiddle with them for doing feeds and threading.
Cheers,
John
- Joined
- Jan 10, 2019
- Messages
- 1,220
Well, the Clough42 "product" will only be a small board that combines several functions that several separate off-the-shelf products already perform. The CPU, display board, servo, driver, encoder, and power supplies are also off-the-shelf products. I have it running now as a cobbled-together mess, just to prove it runs. The idea is to get his board when it's done, but all that will do is eliminate a couple of the individual boards; it doesn't really do anything new.
I guess what I'm saying is that if you want to build one now, you can without needing to wait on anything.