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View Full Version : NEW MEMBER: Hi from West Sussex



pequod
27-06-2009, 09:54 PM
:wave:I have a mini lathe and recently bought a Seig X2 mill. Already I want to CNC it. I read with interest, comments on this site, and have some questions of my own. Maybe someone can guide me to a site, book or WHY, particularly on compatibility of drivers & stepper motors. The articles on PMinMO.com looked interesting, but I'm still confused. My only advantage in this project is that I use Autodesk Inventor professionally.
Looking forward to many exchanges.
pequod

Tom
27-06-2009, 10:35 PM
Hi pequod,

Welcome to the forum...

I too have a chinese mini-lathe and have found it a pretty handy tool... Much maligned. No mill yet though :thumbdown:

I found the geckodrive (www.geckodrive.com) site very useful when I was planning my router.
This site (http://www.cs.uiowa.edu/~jones/step/) is very heavy going, but has some useful morsels of info in it... I'd start with the gecko site.

There are loads of people here who can help if you get stuck (i'm only halfway through my build so am not a huge amount of use yet)

Tom

pequod
27-06-2009, 10:50 PM
Hi Tom, and thanks. With the lathe....
I'm finding difficulty aligning the tailstock to the headstock. Its the newer tailtock with lever lock and 4 grub screws to adjust. Even with an alignment test bar, I'm struggling. every turn of the screws knocks it out. Any advice?
pequod

Tom
28-06-2009, 11:21 AM
With the lathe....

I've got to admit I've never measured the alignment of the tailstock (mainly out of fear for what I would discover...) Mine's the old type (no camlock), and most people seem to start by remachining the dovetail on the base... Unfortunately I don't have a mill, so that's not an option.

I get away with it because my main use for it is hole drilling with jobber drills. The bores that I need to be accurate are usually large enough to true up with a boring bar (10mm dia+)

My only advice is before spending too much time on the tailstock, just make sure the headstock alignment is OK. Aligning the headstock is a nice excercise, and taught me alot about the lathe.


If you have an X2 then you should check out Daniel Kemp...aka Hoss2006 and see what can be done with it.
I think this is the site Kip is talking about.
http://www.hossmachine.info/

pequod
28-06-2009, 02:33 PM
Thanks again Tom.
Interesting stuff on hossmachine, but that threw me about the headstock alignment - I didn't know you could! So how do I go about it?
Ed