GH1440 Lathe Bed Conversion

[Valfar]

Thank you Hanermo2 for the valued information.

I read your concentrated post at least 10x times to understand what's in there, but I think I got there in the end.

I understand steppers driven by belts are not accurate enough, and steppers driven by gears are rigid, suitable for the application, but the problem with these is the backlash. Is that correct? It does make sense, as the belt at the end of the day is made out of flexible material, unlike gears which are made out of steel.

When you say you'll be switching to secondary, do you mean you'll add another servo stepper for the C axis, but driven by a worm gear or a gearbox?

In my headstock I still got there a secondary spindle with spur gears all over it. There's also a clutch mechanism on the front panel which can engage the secondary spindle with the main spindle. So I might be able to direct connect a servo stepper for the C axis to that secondary spindle. But the trouble would be the backlash between the spur gears, and probably less accurate than a belt drive.

Today I grabbed a 2.2kW motor (that was quick!), but don't know many details about it yet. It was free of charge and it's blue :) . Next I'll need to invest in some VFD and play with it to understand the process.

I'll keep reading here in there.

Cheers!

LE Have found this 'CNC Lathe Spindle Encoder' design http://ve7it.cowlug.org/spindle-encoder.html