emco v13 schematics

At sears(!?!) parts direct of all places: http://www.searspartsdirect.com/partsdirect/getModel!retrieve.pd?modelNumber=MAXIMAT%20V13&productCategoryId=0728000&brandId=0351&brandName=EMCO&modelName=LATHE

completely bizarre.

Now, if the motor on my v13 would just turn I'd be in good shape.

Just arrived: Emco V13

My "new" emco v13 got dropped off yesterday. It's the long bed version, so has a bigger footprint than the one it is replacing. It seems to be the last model they made: there's a boatload of different speeds (topping at 2,500) and has a couple switches my other one did not. As a bonus it came with a Royal 5c collet assembly.

In the spirit of the holidays,the freight company this time only bent the sheet metal on the back and break the cheap shelf underneath as opposed to ripping a bunch of rods and knobs off with a forklift. I have insurance so we'll see what happens.

There's a couple of negatives. One is that the bed seems more worn than my old one at least judging by the increased torque necessary when you move the carriage from the headstock towards the tail. On the flip side, it has much much less backlash.

The other downside is that there was a non-trivial amount of surface rust on the ways and industrial gunk in all sorts of other places. I've spent the last few hours cleaning all of this off with 0000 steel wool, wd40, and brake cleaner. I had to dump a few pieces in the ultrasonic cleaner.

This one came from a real shop rather than a tech school, so the above problems are not unexpected. Still.

The main challenge was that it was over 12" in the air when the freight guy left, so tonight I spent a bunch of time lowering it and putting it where it's supposed to be.

Here's the start, around 1,500lbs way up high:


First thing is to remove the lowest pallet using a couple of handy little car jacks I got from Kragen:


Then cut away a lot of the 4x4s and then put a way-too-enthusiastic amount of wood to hold up both ends:


Eventually lower an inch at a time all the way around (using a level so it didn't get too far out of wack):


Finally lower it onto a few bars:


And then push it into the right place:

emco v13 cutting 1/2" toolsteel to nothing in one pass

Could go faster, easily. I really love this model, the thing eats SS like aluminum:


 

Fixing a 3-jaw emco chuck

So, among the many things wrong w/ an Emco V13 engine lathe I picked up (not it's fault), the chuck had been sorely abused and required serious cranking to turn the key towards the end. This is a short post on fixing it.

I'd not seen something written up (though I'm sure there has been, many times). And it's definitely not rocket science. However, sometimes it's useful to realize something is not rocket science so you actually do it. In this case fixing the problem made a big difference, though it still remains to a slight degree.

Here's the chuck. V13's have a D1-4 mount:

Adding a modern toolpost to a V13 Emco lathe

My Emco V13 lathe came with a four way toolpost. I'd rather do dishes than use shims, so that had to go. I have a 200 series KDK post with around 8 holders, so that'd be the obvious way to go. Unfortunately the press fit screw used to hold the post in the emco didn't fit the KDK --- too small at top, too large at bottom. I couldn't modify the KDK either --- it's hard enough that it ate some carbide endmills I tried to use to cut it and probably woke the neighborhood. And there's no dovetail on the emco.

So we need to make a new bushing to press fit into the compound rest. It was thanksgiving eve, so it was a perfect project. (I don't have a TV.)

Here's the emco's compound rest w/ the tool post screw sticking out:

Part II: retrofit of an Emco Compact 5 CNC lathe

This is a delayed follow up to the post on disassembling an Emco Compact 5 CNC (http://coltpython.blogspot.com/2009/10/part-i-retrofit-of-emco-compact-5-cnc.html) on putting the machine back together with new bearings, motors, etc. I did this a month or so ago; hopefully this doesn't leave out anything important.

Note: this writing is *way* too detailed for a real machinist. It includes a bunch of very basic steps since that's the level I'm at.

It's currently at around 80%: motors in, everything turns, but still have:

1. hook up limit switches, the motor, the shutoff switch, and the RPM encoder to the gecko g540.
2. do something about the cosmetics: I ripped out a bunch of the stock electronics, leaving empty holes. These will suck up dust and junk, so need to decide what to do.

It's largely straightforward to put things back together.  The two tricky things are:

1. getting the optical encoder to not drag as the spindle turns. It turns out you have to bolt the lathe in and push/pull it back and forth so that the sheet metal of the housing torques until the drag stops. I kept disassembling the spindle head (and trying to seat the flywheel assembly deeper) in a misguided belief that these were the problems.
2. You probably 't just bolt the motors right on and go --- you need to make sure the tension is sufficient. So push the motors away from the timing belt wheel until the belt is tight and then tighten the bolts.

Finally, I still cant' get mach 3 to run reliably on windows XP on a Thinkpad T61 laptop, but this seems to be a known problem.

Part I: retrofit of an Emco Compact 5 CNC lathe

I recently got a somewhat beat up Emco Compact 5 CNC lathe. I spent a bit of time retrofitting it. (Note: "Emco" is Austrian lathe as opposed to "Enco," cheap Chinese) While the manual has a schematic, I didn't see much on taking it apart, which is a bit nerve wracking since Emco doesn't seem to make replacement parts. This is the first chunk of photos from what I did. No guarantees it will help, but perhaps you can at least see things to avoid.

So here's what we have to work with:


Pretty dirty, some rust spots.

The spindle moves if you manually program it, but there's no way to save programs other than a tape player(!) and no way to upload other than typing.

I bought a plug&play CNC setup from dmauch@seanet.com, which includes a set of Nema 23 500oz motors and a GeckoG540 controller. You can drive it using Mach3 or (hopefully EMC2).

In any case: first thing is to strip the lathe down.

Useful post on converting an emco compact 5 to modern hardware

I've been spending a lot of time trying to figure out how to build my own CNC.

This is a nice rundown on how to convert an emco compact 5 lathe by Art Fenerty (he wrote Mach 3):

Just to kick in on costing of such a project ( having converted my emco PC5 last year. This isnt a plug for my software, I retired over a year ago from Artsoft, just info for those interested in such a conversion. )

My costs were..

Motor drivers, about 100.00 each ( 2 required. ), I used some I had from ebay that I got for about 50.00 each, prices vary, but I used 10uStep controllers @ 3amps, 24 volt. Gecko's work great, as will almost any microstep driver.)

Motors ( you can use the ones currently on a pc5, but they are very weak, or mine were anyway. You couldnt even feel the torque detents as you rotated them without power. 500oz inch ( approx) cost me about 50.00 each , but you dont really need that power. ( though its nice to have ). My power more than tripled on the axis, they cannot be stopped by hand at this point, and they are much faster.

Power supply ( the one in the emco can be used, no need for an additional one. You can tap the original power supply for 24 volts for motor drives, and the 110volts for the breakout board power. )

I also added a breakout board for interfacing. The breakout board from pmdx.com fits well in the spot where the original
emco pc com board fits in the machine. Cost approx $129.00 US. The mach3 web based form has photos of the conversion I did,
everythign fits well int he Emco casing and made my pc5 a much more usefull machine.

I also added a sensor for threading, and put a bolt in one of the original slots to trigger the sensor for speed and threading. Mouser electronics 653-ee-sb5v is the sensor I used. About $20.00 for that.

Of course I didnt have to pay for the software. :-)

The emco works very well now, has no file length limitations, and lazyturn generates code that runs pretty well if you have nothing else available. ( free from the mach3 web forum till I end up adding a final finish pass. ). The only possible dodgy part is the
threading. While threading short threads works well, after a couple inches of thread there is a bit of wander that makes the thread imperfect, though nuts do spin on with no binding. This is the result of single pulse per rev threading. Still being worked on slowly, but seems to work well for most threaders, depends on the pc and sensor configuration and setting as to how well it works.

So my total cost was about 350.00US or so ( somewhere about 175 EU ) , adding software would make it about 300EU for a complete conversion.

The same conversion would allow EMC or other software to run the lathe. If one used an encoder for the spindle EMC woudl do perfect threading on it, or if one can figure out the original sensor in the pc5 to feed the software. ( I never could get mine working but it may have been defective from the start, I never used it prior to converting, so I just tore it out and replaced it with my 20.00 sensor..)

Alternately, instead of a breakout baord a smoothstepper device, USB based could be used, the smoothstepper is also known for perfect threads. All I can tell you for sure is the upgrade makes the lathe run much better than stock, much more powerfull, faster, and more reliable. Much depends on what you use it for of course.

Thanks,
Art

And his continuation of the same post:

>>I searched around: is this the thread you mean on your conversion?
http://www.machsupport.com/forum/index.php/topic,214.0.html


Yup, thats the thread.

Wiring isnt as bad as it looks. Where you see I added a pmdx breakout board, is where the emco put their pc interface card. You just rip that out entirely. ( if you have the same machine I do.. ). Your new motor drivers wire directly to the pmdx board, so between the docs for the drivers and the docs for the pmdx, all the wiring is described. Now I added 2 drivers and a pmdx, and 2 motors, the motors wire directly to the drivers ( real easy to wire the motors.. ) , and the pmdx board simply gets a printer port cable which I wired to the pc printer port plug on the back of my emco.. and then it wires to the drivers.. ( step/direction and com ) so 3 wires to each driver from the breakout board. I put 2 7 amp drivers and a PMDX in the same area.. they all went in just fine and with little effort. Chinese drivers or geckos all run about 120.00 I think for pretty high current drivers.

As to the power supply, yell if you like when you get there, its easy to find the 24volt spot on the emco supply. Lots of current available so no extra supply is necessary at least on the PC5 version of the Emco, those two points on the emco ( 24vdc and common) wire to each of the drivers to supply power to them, the pmdx just gets a tap to the 120vac line inside. Again, pretty easy.

Thats it, no other wires really need to be done unless you want threading.. the sensor can be a bit of a bitch to wire if you dont do electronics, but again, yell when you get there, its only 3 wires to the sensor from the breakout board.. and then I put a screw in one of the slots of the slotted wheel, the sensor see's it on every spin. The sensor bolts in the same bolt holes the old emco sensor did as I recall. I can take better pics if you get to that stage. But you can cut fine without the threading sensor. ( I dont cut threads usually..). If your firend can get that sensor that comes with the Emco running, then even better as I do have a special plugin that will use an index slot and multislot timing pulses for threading. Tests show it works well, but there is a wandering after an inch or two. Still holds nuts fine, but with Mach3 dont expect Boeing quality threads unless you use a smoothstepper.. its simply a limitation
of running from Windows. On the bright side, for those that need perfect threads, this described upgrade isnt just to make the emco Mach3 compatible, its also EMC compatable at that point, so if you like linux, you can run EMC as well. ) or pretty much any other step/direction controller. Steve Stallings, the pmdx inventor is an EMC group member and pretty knowledgeable about such things, Im sure many could help you get that up and running.

By the way, the new motors simply bolted in the same spots the old ones did, no work required at all.. you just wire the 4 wires from the motors to the drivers.. pretty easy.. Any basic electronics person will find it painless to do such a job.. ( and many people who know only about basic dc wiring..). Ill post Mach3 settings for the emco if anyone wants them.. it configures pretty easy and runs real well. No limit on file size at all.

Just my opinion, but if one is to upgrade an emco, Id really recommend going this route simply because it makes it compatable
with pretty much any controller that will send step/direction commands. The future will probably bring about things like SCurve controllers, ( which smooth out motion quite nicely), or other advances in technology which , if you go proprietary you wont be able to take advantage of. We all know how long these lathes last.. pretty much forever, so having a standard type of control has its advantages. ( Emco's also seem to sell for more if they are step/dir controlled thus allowing a new owner to pick their favorite software. ). Price wise, it seems if anything quite a bit cheaper to go this route, and then its done and standard, but thats just my opinion.

I usually dont kick in on such discussions as some may feel Im pushing for Mach3 to be used, and since I wrote it Im obviously biased,but I am retired.. I only work on things like future control code these days. So that having been said, you should probably ask as many groups as you can what your best plan would be. Ive never used WelTurn , the specs dont appear to be shown real well so I cant tell you max speed vs EMC or Mach3. At about 900.00US it seems pricey to me,specially if you have to then add new motors, complete conversion to step/direction is about 300.00 to 400.00US if you stick with your emco motors, I just found my emco motors so slow they drove me nuts. Max speed on my machine is set for 554 mm/minute, I could go quite a bit faster, but at 554 I never lose steps unless I jam into material. ( In fact the carriage would snap my hand off if I tried to stop it..), acceleration is set to 91mm/sec^2 and standard setting is 2000steps/mm. ( because I have it set to a high uStep setting, which is nice if your drivers support that. ). I tend to limit my speeds because using max speed rates on something like an Emco does stress it too much, but 550mm/sec seems very doable, and my lathe has no trouble with it at all.

At 2000steps/mm, Mach3's lowest kernal speed of 25Khz can do 720mm/min max, higher kernal speeds could double that quite easily if your motors can handle it, but I dont suspect an Emco can handle a meter a minute. My motors were advertised on Ebay for 750oz in, (Deep Groove) but I dont really believe it, I thing they are 500oz in or less, but I have to admit they are very powerfull, orders of magnitude above the steppers that came with my emco, the difference is not only audible, but amazing and very powerfull, the original motors I could easily stop with one hand, I would'nt recommend anyone trying to stop these puppies with their hands..not if they like having hands. :-)

My only problem is that my lathe has the AC motor driven spindle , which makes it quite low torque, my buddies emco ( You can see Brians on the group forum somewhere as well ) has the DC motor spindle, and Ive seen him do 1/4" of steel in one pass ,
(in fact theres a video somewhere showing it do that at a pretty high feedrate. Perhaps emco's with dc spindle can all do that, I only know the few Ive worked on). To me thats a pretty high rate of speed for 1/4" in one pass. No possible way my spindle could do that, I limit to 1mm per pass or less usually, but since feedrate is quite fast it doesnt seem an issue to me. I cant see any posting of welturn max speeds or step rates on their site, perhaps someone can post their experience in terms of speed and at which point they start to lose steps. Any comparison would be interesting to those considering updating hardware or software.

The welturn software does seem very nice to use from what I can see though, and any software is an upgrade from the original dos version of emco IMO , it seems pretty limiting and pretty non-standard in its Gcodes. CNC is all about standards what with the CAM packages available. Each person has their own requirments though, so check out every option as thoroughly as you can before you make a decision.

Again, this is all just my opinion, I know of many emco's that run Mach3, and several that run EMC, all seem pretty happy. Its not
a conversion project that should scare anyone with $400.00 or so to burn.. took about 3 hours to do mine, of course it may take
longer if your not used to cnc wiring, but its not brain science and very little wiring really needs to be done. Threading seems the only real issue, there are several ways to do it, and performance there will vary with software, methodology, sensor and experience.

While I think of it, the other issue you may want to think about is an auto tool turret if you have one, ( I dont ), Mach, and EMC can be configured for it, the pmdx interface board has lots of spare outputs when used with a lathe, and macro's can be written to
run it, but I havent done any for myself. From what Ive heard when I did support they just used a timed macro to run the motor, wait for a switch to hit, then run backwards for a couple seconds to jam it into position. You can also do things like add lights, blinking indicators that job is complete, relays for various optional functions.. all advanced topics if you do go that route... the various support groups are pretty good with information on such things.

Hope these thoughts help, sorry for the verbosity.

Thanks,
Art

(Sort of) making a longer python firing pin

I've seen various references to longer firing pins, titanium firing pins, and otherwise weirdo modifications. It always seemed pretty exotic and not something you'd ever run into in real life, but it turns out that making such things is actually fairly simple.

I just got an Emco (not Enco! It's Austrian, not Chinese) Compact 5 bench lathe on ebay, so this seemed like a good project to try.

It's right before bed, so results were "OK", but presumably with a bit more focus they will turn out the way they should.

One great result is that the compact 5 is a fantastic lathe. It must weigh less than 80 lbs, but despite not being anchored to anything (yet) and not being leveled (yet) or any of the things a reasonable adult would do, if I cranked the RPMs high and used carbide it would cut the metal I have like butter even on fairly heavy cuts. This thing is awesome. I think I can actually bore out cylinders on it; it's certainly possible to make the bushings that fix endshake.

Here's the lathe, with the steel rod, a carbide cutter, a poor man's digital readout (which I took off) and an A2Z quick change tool holder which I have mixed feelings about:

Damaged Emco V13 engine lathe

[UPDATE: I spent 4 days over thanksgiving going over it, fixed just about everything (yea!) other than the bent leadscrew: new handles, replacing snap rings, etc. Given the lathe's location against a wall it's hard to remove the leadscrew from the machine so I can straighten it. Maybe next holiday.]

Photos of a Emco V13 engine lathe I received damaged by shipping on Friday. Looks like someone doesn't know how to handle their forklift.

In the shrink wrap, speed knob, crosslide knob, plexiglass and lateral wheel broken:

just got a emco (not enco) compact 5 CNC!

I just got an emco CNC compact 5. The good news is that the thing actually works, despite the cheap price. The bad news is that it's the first generation so doesn't even have a place to plug in a cable to the computer.

"Suboptimal" is a charitable view of this setup.

I can't seem to find a reasonable 3 jaw chuck so had to go with collets instead.

In relief news I was able to figure out most of the 12 simple (g code) commands it provides. The manual I have seems to be for the latter versions, so a bunch of stuff they do does not work on mine. Like deletion.

So now I can make it go back and forth, in circles, and other fairly rudimentary geometric shapes. Nothing that would make Euclid interested, but still.

Finally: unimat 3 is up and running.

Finally, my unumat 3 is running. I didn't know much about them when I bought it on ebay and it turns out it had been completely stripped of all needed parts, other than the motor. Finally got the belts today, so put them on, fussed with some other stuff longer than needed (I have the manual, but it remains unread) and then started cutting.

I got 40lbs of carbide lathe tools very cheap recently, and fortunately a bunch of them seem to more-or-less fit the tool holder.

It's so small I'm not quite sure how to use it for colts, other than making slightly larger than stock rebound pins for guns that have expanded holes.

Here it is making nothing in particular besides brass shavings:

emco unimat 3, compact 5 cmc, and south bend links.

I got all three machines, so this is a placeholder for useful links.

Unimat 3:

• parts: http://www.blueridgeshoponline.com/category.sc?categoryId=31
• parts: (in UK): http://www.chronos.ltd.uk/acatalog/Unimat_4_Lathe_accessories.html
• more parts: http://www.tomstoolstore.com/servlet/StoreFront
  
• useful page on changing spindle bearings & etc: http://unimat.homestead.com/techtip.html
  

compact 5:

• parts:http://www.blueridgeshoponline.com/category.sc?categoryId=22
• Parts + people that work on the CNC compact 5 still: http://www.manus.biz/mem/Page_13.html
• cnc writeup: http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICDocs/data/ericdocs2sql/content_storage_01/0000019b/80/1f/9b/05.pdf
• useful site for upgrades, retrofits, etc: http://www.manus.biz/
• Free software to drive the compact 5 CNC (I've not tried it though): http://www.mikesfreeinterface.com/
• users group: the files section has PDFs for a the CNC and PC versions: http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/Emco_cnc_users/messages
• programming manual: http://www.d-and-d.com/EMCO/MANUAL/index.html
• Useful retrofit thread 5: http://www.machsupport.com/forum/index.php?topic=970.0
• Another CNC Compact 5 retrofit: http://www.b26354.co.nz/CNC/index.html

Quality chucks:

http://www.workholding.com/INDEX.HTM