I've had good luck with the stepper kits for CNC conversion on eBay, from Wantai or Wantmotor or Longs Motors. These are Asian imports, but the quality is good. You get the stepper motors, motor drives, DC power supply to drive the motors and a parallel port card. You can buy kits with as many axes as you need, and whatever size stepper motors you need. For the 9X30 lathe, I'd try to use medium to large sized NEMA 42 motors.
Try searching eBay for NEMA 42 kit. Here's the first thing I found. You may want larger motors with more torque. www.ebay.com/itm/321370356701 I always get the kit versions with one motor controller per axis, rather than a single board with all the motor drivers together. It's a bit more device mounting and wiring, but I like the modularity. I've never blown up a stepper driver, but I want to be able to quickly replace a single driver and get back to business. Speaking of downtime and replacement parts.... Most times, I'll buy a kit with one more axis than I need, so I have spare parts. Many times, I'll install the extra motor driver in the electrical panel. It's hard to lose the spare that way, and it's awfully handy a year later when I decide I want a 4th axis on a mill or a homemade bar feeder on a lathe. For stepper motor CNC conversions, I've always found the parallel port I/O to be good enough, fairly easy and inexpensive. Mostly, I keep doing what I know how to do. However, a good case could be made that a PCI card for I/O and motion control is much nicer and only a little more expensive. Chatty Post Ramble: I'm heading back into CNC mode myself. I have a few unfinished CNC projects to wrap up, but I suddenly developed a business need that is pushing the 24"X24" CNC router ahead of the partially finished projects. I have a new product that requires me to machine ABS plastic shells from 24" square sheets and... this is the geeky cool part... use the CNC router to 3D print RTV silicone like a low resolution 3D printer. The prototyping looks promising. I'll post a video when I get it working, probably in a month or two. Today's project - I have 150 lithium batteries arriving for the electric bike I'm building. Perfect e-bike timing. It's 12 F outside. #GeekLife On 01/13/2016 11:09 AM, Rick Lair wrote: > Hey Guys, > > I have never dealt with stepper motors/drives and one of the guys at our > shop is kicking around converting and old 9x30 Southbend lathe to cnc > using Linuxcnc. Are there any recommendations on maybe some kits with > all the power stuff (motors, power supplies, cables, etc,) that anybody > recommends. I am up in the air on the control hardware, but I can handle > that, I just don't know where to start on sizing/selecting the stepper > stuff. > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Site24x7 APM Insight: Get Deep Visibility into Application Performance APM + Mobile APM + RUM: Monitor 3 App instances at just $35/Month Monitor end-to-end web transactions and take corrective actions now Troubleshoot faster and improve end-user experience. Signup Now! http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=267308311&iu=/4140 _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
