Boxford TCL 160

[Saracen]

I've recently purchased the Boxford TCL 160 from Bartell of this parish:



and intend to convert it using a Planet-CNC Mk2/4 board which came with a previous router purchase.

The lathe arrived on Tuesday, sitting on a mini pallet and wrapped in about 20 quids worth of bubble wrap, so survived the trip intact.

A quick play in manual mode confirmed that everything works as expected.

I'm planning on using as much of the electronics as possible, so today I removed the link cable between the processor board and the driver board and made a quick and dirty connection of the step/dir/gnd connections from the Mk2/4 to each of the step/dir connections for the X, Z and ATC motors and all worked perfectly.

I'm a little stumped as to how to connect the motor drive to the Mk2/4 but once I've disentangled more of the cabling I should see what's required.

The overall plan is to remove the processor board and fit an ITX motherboard in its place, with the driver board still sitting at the top of the mounting legs, so that it's in the draft of the cooling fan. That way it remains a stand alone unit, with just a monitor to wall mount and probably a wireless keyboard and mouse.

I also need to connect up some opto-isolators between the homing switches and the Mk2/4, and work out a wiring plan for the various safety switches.

Adrian.