Myford 7, 3 phase motor other CNC questions.

Old single phase motor isnt sounding too great and likes blowing the garage fuse.
Im convinced by the merits of the 3 phase conversion that lots of people have done.
Newton Tesla do a 1HP kit for the myford at £470

http://www.newton-tesla.co.uk/index....ry&path=74_143

However ive a few questions for people who have done a similar conversion or are "in the know".
Im happy to do any wiring so dont necessarily need "pre wired" kit, therefore is there a cheaper way to get same result?
Im hoping to have RPM cnc controlled, will the newton tesla kit allow this?
If not what kit/inverter should i be looking at?
Ive been on https://www.inverterdrive.com/ and based on their prices the Newton Tesla setup seems a litte steep, but i dont mind paying a premium for the convience if it will do what i want at a later date, i.e CNC controlllable spindle speed.
Ive tried to speek with Newton Tesla but the tech guys are real busy and i havent been able to get one on the phone.
I know the Myfords have a B56 mount but what is closest alternative, there is very little in that old mounting available and other motors are much cheaper.

Also has anyone converted there myford with Ballscrews? I havent been able to find any guides.

I have searched but may have missed, if this is answered somewhere else please shoot me a link.
Thanks Joe

You could probably pick up a 3-phase motor from somewhere that would do the job. My Myford is pretty flexible when it comes to motor mounting but it would be worth checking yours as they might have changed the motor mounting plate. Although seems a bit unlikely - Myford? Change?

If you download the manual for the Mitsubishi inverter that Tesla seem to provide, it does say that it can use an external 0-10V input for speed control so it should work fine in a CNC setup with a suitable breakout board or similar. After that, it's down to how much you want to put the control box together yourself with emergency stop, fwd/rev switches, speed control pot, etc. Price doesn't seem too bad for a reasonably put-together "bolt on, plug in, go" setup but I'm sure you could do it for less sourcing parts individually.

I use https://www.inverterdrive.com/ myself, most inverters will allow external 0-10v control and as Neale said with the right interface board your away. I suppose it should be easier to install using the kit but I don't know what's involved with the Myford.

I fitted a standard 3 phase, foot mount, TEE branded motor to my Super 7 about 10 years ago, I had to file/cut the mount holes in the plate and use thick washers on the nuts but it's held up for those 10 years (and so has the second hand Siemens drive that runs it), it will take 4mm OD reductions on 2" stainless with (using indexed carbide tooling) little curly blue chips flying everywhere, all for £165 ;-)
I'm using a Siemens Inverter Drive but on other machines I have ABB and Mitsibushi, any of the big industrial names should give good performance, documentation and life.
All my drives either have a potentiometer built in or have front panel buttons to give speed, jog and direction control, these can alternatively be set to external controls.
If you buy a decent drive and read the documentation the programming isn't Rocket Science, if you buy a drive with a Chinglish manual you might struggle,
Regards,
Nick

Went for this package from transwave on ebay. It's about the same price as the newton tesla kit but it has a "better inverter" in the sense that it can be cnc controlled whereas the standard package from newton tesla didn't have this ability.
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/1hp-IMO-Ja.../161503539660?
Lets hope it arrives over christmas whilst i have time off to play..

Main thing to check would be the shaft size on the existing motor and make sure the new one has the same diameter to fit the pulley.

The new ones a 5/8" shaft, so should be a direct swap. Saying that i didn't actually check the one that's currently fitted.
Ill have a look in the morning...

http://www.mycncuk.com/attachment.ph...id=14167&stc=1http://www.mycncuk.com/attachment.ph...id=14168&stc=1
Hi Joe, I've converted my Super 7 to CNC with a ballscrew on the cross slide so far. These two pics show the fitting. I made a new bracket to fit on the end of the Xslide as I wanted to be able to convert the lathe back, so not start hacking any Myford bits. I think the PXF S7 is easier because the normal feedscrew is larger than the standard ML7 or non-PXF S7, so there is quite a large "tunnel" through the slide body which will pass a 12mm x 5mm pitch ballscrew (from Arc). In order to mount the nut I milled up an ali block which you can see at the back of the nut - this is first screwed onto the saddle using the normal feednut mounting holes, then the flange of the ballnut is bolted to it. This was an interesting job for my little CNC mill. What you can't see is that on the back of the block is a spigot to locate it in the feedscrew tunnel. As I'm using a 12 mm screw I think I can get away without a support bearing on the other end. At the drive end the screw is turned down to 8mm, it's direct driven from the motor through an Oldham coupling, and runs in a needle roller bearing in the end plate with a couple of roller thrust bearings either side of the plate.

I'm using the standard leadscrew at the moment, with the stepper bolted to a 6mm ali plate in turn bolted on another 12 mm plate that picks up the row of machined holes along the back of the bed. There are slots to allow for belt tensioning. The stepper drives the leadscrew through a 1:2 toothed belt. It's crude but effective! I generally followed Tony Jeffree's conversion on the leadscrew but didn't bother with boring out the hole in the bearing, just fitted roller thrust races which self-align quite happily.
http://www.mycncuk.com/attachment.ph...id=14169&stc=1http://www.mycncuk.com/attachment.ph...id=14170&stc=1

There was a chap exhibiting at the Midlands exhibition who had a very nice conversion of a non-PXF S7, and I believe he is planning to make a kit available. You can see it on YouTube at cncyourmyford, and his email is cncyourmyford [at] btinternet.com. He does a proper job on the cross slide with bearings at both ends of the screw but has to use an 8mm ballscrew since the non-PXF slide has a smaller hole through it. He also fits a ballscrew in place of the leadscrew, by dropping off the Apron and fitting a new one from an alloy casting. I am thinking of doing something similar but fabricating a new apron.

thanks for sharing this JohnHaine; very much enjoyed reading it.


Jconway651 I have nothing much useful to add; other than keep the thread posted with whatever you decide.

F*ck it, Im way out my depth here but I have seen one of these cheap huanyang vfd's used to power a 3 phase motor.. You would have to read up on whether its a suitable application for you but may save you some money. Im not sure if it would be any use.... I think there are some ways of controlling the speed via mach aswell.

<span class="username">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ln0UW8RJVSI

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/NEW-VARIAB...item3a76ff32da

John Haine: Those are some useful pics, my setup will be similar im hoping.
Im assuming you were talking about ArcEurotrade? Is that where you got the ballscrews? They dont have them in there catalogue or online anymore it seems.
The leadscrew on my myford was bent when i got it so i will be going to ballscrews on both axis straight away.
Ive seen the cncyourmyford youtube videos and was quite impressed, although im assuming for his screw cutting he has spindle driven by stepper motor, like in Tony Jeffree's where he has an electronic division master.

Kingcreaky: Im sure this is similar to the inverter ive ordered, and im not to pannicked about the initial wiring and getting it running. However im sure the process of controlling spindle speed through mach will confuse me plenty.

Joe,

Yes you're right, I see that Arc don't sell ball screws any more. I have ordered other stuff from Zapp Automation who seem to be very good, and they offer machining services for ball screws I think.

No, he doesn't use a stepper driven spindle. Nor does Tony I think? IIRC Tony uses an electronic lead screw driver - http://medw.co.uk/wiki/index.php?page=ELS+Price+List - which uses a spindle sensor and synchronises the z drive to it. Frankly I don't see the point when you can use a full cnc system for not much more money.

Mach 3 and LinuxCNC both accept spindle pulses and synchronise the feed for screw cutting. Cncyourmyford uses LinuxCNC as this seems to give better results, as it has two sensors, giving one pulse per rev to sync the thread, and a larger number of pulses per thread (e.g. 64) to monitor the spindle speed. His package includes a ready configured LinuxCNC image. I use Mach3 and so far haven't had much luck with threading, I'm going to try the Linux version sometime at least on the lathe. Mach has only a single pulse per rev sensor and can't cope very well if the spindle slows when the cut starts.

John
Have you seen a link to cncyourmyford kit I have watched all the vids sometime ago but I never found a link to the kit he goes on about. I have a Super7 that I converted to cnc but used the original screws and I am thinking about putting ball screws on it. ..Clive

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Jconway651

Kingcreaky: Im sure this is similar to the inverter ive ordered, and im not to pannicked about the initial wiring and getting it running. However im sure the process of controlling spindle speed through mach will confuse me plenty.

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No, if you ordered same as you said earlier you have a Jaguar drive, quite a good brand actually. Have you ordered a breakout board etc. yet ?

Hi Clive, no I haven't but the email address in my post above reaches him and he has a brochure.

Na i havent ordered a breakout board yet, was waiting for it all to arrive before ordering anything else.
Im not really sure what i need to be buying in terms of the breakout board.
I had planned to just get the motor fitted and working so i can continue to use lathe whilst i buy other bits ill need.

Hi Joe, FWIW the one I have is this:

http://www.diycnc.co.uk/html/uniport.html

Does the job nicely, and he also has a ton of other components for diycnc (as you would expect!).

John.

J.

Just checking as i've had a little bit of progress and i'm after some more advice...
So three phase inverter and motor are installed and working very nicely. Set up and wiring was really simple and took all of 30 mins including remote control box.
Been machining titanium on the myford and the new motor has been more than man enough to take decent cuts.

I've just recently bought/ordered a R2005 ballscrew to replace the leadscrew which was slightly bent.
Id have preferred to use the R1605 but wasn't large enough diameter to be machined down for bearing diameter at the gearbox side.
Does anyone have any images of how they mounted the ballnuts the the carriage/apron assembly?

I'm planning on using nema 23's and had seen this kit over at CNC 4 YOU
http://www.cnc4you.co.uk/Stepper-Mot...3.1Nm-x-2-Axis
purely for ease of buying it all at once.

Or theres the SYS42MCFK kit from DIYCNC at £301
http://www.diycnc.co.uk/html/cnc_systems.html

Is there a better or cheaper way to do things, should i avoid either of these kit for any reason?
Thanks in advance.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Jconway651

I'm planning on using nema 23's and had seen this kit over at CNC 4 YOU
http://www.cnc4you.co.uk/Stepper-Mot...3.1Nm-x-2-Axis
purely for ease of buying it all at once.
Is there a better or cheaper way to do things, should i avoid either of these kit for any reason?

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The 3.1Nm steppers from CNC4you are excellent and seem to be the cheapest around, so I'd go for those, but the kit is not much use as the power supply voltage is only 36V. You want about 75V for the motors to perform well.

Can you recommend somewhere that does suitable 75V supplies. Most hobby cnc sites dont seem to go past 36V.
Will the difference between the 36V and 75V be that noticeable?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Jconway651

Can you recommend somewhere that does suitable 75V supplies. Most hobby cnc sites dont seem to go past 36V.
Will the difference between the 36V and 75V be that noticeable?

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Yes. You could build one or see this http://www.zappautomation.co.uk/elec...er-supply.html you can get it with a 12v or 5v integrated power supply ..Clive

Jconway, I think the best way to mount the leadscrew ball nut is to drop off the apron completely and replace it with a fabricated bracket. It just seems too fiddly to adapt the Myford apron design.

Ah yeah, hadn't even considered that, yeah seems like a reasonable way to go about it especially since the handwheel assembly becomes redundant when the ball screw is installed.

Though I am thinking of adding an MPG to the bracket when I do this to give a "virtual handwheel" to drive the Z axis in the place where one naturally expects it - possibly also one for the X axis too.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by JohnHaine

Though I am thinking of adding an MPG to the bracket when I do this to give a "virtual handwheel" to drive the Z axis in the place where one naturally expects it - possibly also one for the X axis too.

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Nice idea. I am watching this with interest:applause: ..Clive