Have you worked out what voltage the step motors need ?
This for me is the starting point
This will then allow you to select a suitable power DC supply and a pair of stepper drivers
My ORAC needed 70volts so I bought a 68v DC psu and a pair of step motor drivers
The paint was about £45 and the drivers £35ish each
Pair this to a £15 BOB utilising the parallel port a linuxcnc and you are there
Linuxcnc will run quite happily on a very old spec PC either find one on free cycle with a parallel port or get one without and fit one or two pci parallel port cards. eBay at about £7ea also factor in the parallel port cable at about £3. These are 25 pin male to female normally

You need 1 input pin for the eStop
1 for the homing switches
2 for the spindle synchronisation or 3 if you want the spindle to maintain sync when reversion rotation ( I can’t thing of a need for this other than ridged tapping and I can’t think why I would need this on a lathe ) this is know as quadratur (likely spelled wrong)

You can always add another parallel port card for another 14 or so inputs but you will need to work around the option couplers in the BOB
This had be flummoxed for some time as I could never get the second parallel port to work in input mode. It turned out that it was working perfectly in input mode but the BOB was expecting say pin 2 to be an output and as an input pin the option coupler was working the wrong way and not allowing the signal to come through
I only wanted the second parallel port to drive physical buttons so as there was no power to these external buttons I thought sod it and wires the buttons directly to a 25 pin D connector thereby making my own very basis BOB
It’s been working a treat for 12 months

Setting up linuxcnc is not as daunting as it may seem
The DownLoad is copied to a pen drive that you use to boot the PC from. You can trial linuxcnc from it and if you are happy with it you can then install linuxcnc from the pen drive to the pc hard drive. All done in about 20 mins and no scary questions to answer
Using the step configuration wizard in LCNC gets you a basic lathe setup and only takes about 10 mins to produce
It helps if you know your steps per rev on the steppers and the reduction ratio to the lead screws
Take the std pin setup offered by LCNC and wire your stepper drivers accordingly
Pins 2&3 are X 4&5 not used 6&7 are Z
I use pin 10 as eStop
Pin 11 for home switches on x & z
Pins 12 & 13 for the spindle pulse and trigger
Pin 15 is a spare input
Pin 17 for spindle on / off
I also used another output pin for the pwm out that is feed into the lenze isolator board which in turn feeds the lenze to provide swindle speed control. The pin 17 is connected to the BOB relay which is connected to the lenze directly to switch the spindle on and off via m3 / m5. Spindle speed is via m3 with an S positive number say S1000 for 1000 rpm

You need to count the number of slots in the spindle disc and feed this into the calculation in the step confit wizard on the PWM page

Happy to talk you through any of this I can even send you copies of my Hal and ini files

I would use linuxcnc 2.8. It’s just come out but as been in a kind of beta for ages
I have a down load link for mint using LCNC 2.8

Go directly to gmoccapy as the user interface instead of Axis which is the default
Gmoccapy is a far nicer interface and looks like a cnc controller where as Axis looks like a computer screen

I’ve used mach3 and linuxcnc and linuxcnc is head and shoulder better than mach3
It’s also rock solid

I would convert my boxford bid to linuxcnc had I not had invested £200 on a pokeys control board when I thought mach3 was the dogs dangly bits - we all live and learn I guess just an expensive lesson


There looks to be enough room on your 160 to fit the computer motherboard into the electronics area of the machine but you may need to box the PC power supply in a box out side of the machines case
I did this on the ORAC and it makes for a very neat installation, the PC control buttons are brought into the front of the lathe control pane along with control buttons for stop start pause step coolant on off and coolant speed control (I use a peri pump to accurately drip coolant onto the tool)

Hope this gives some idea of what can be done for well under £200 less if you have the PC or can get one from free cycle local car boot sale etc and a little smart shopping

Finally if you are binning the boards removed from the 160 I would like the driver board as a spare for my vmc190 as I chose to reuse the drivers / psu / steppers

Cheers. Paul


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