> I do 90% of my lathe work using a set of macro screens set up for the > conventional operations. You can make a surprising amount that way, > especially when you add automatic tapers and exit radii. > https://forum.linuxcnc.org/41-guis/26550-lathe-macros > > (That's basically your ELS on X and Z) > > -- > atp
Nicely done! The ELS was never designed to be a CNC style controller. It's an augment to a manual lathe. I have a mechanical taper attachment on the South Bend. I've not gotten around to adding a cross slide motor. The ELS isn't large, doesn't take a long time to boot, doesn't need a keyboard, mouse and screen and I haven't had the gearbox on the SB connected for a long time. There's no need to find a home position and releasing the half nut to quickly wind the carriage out of the way happens all the time. It can be configured to read diameter if you want and without a doubt a CNC system will make many things easier. A friend has MACH3 on his lathe. He's told me how much easier his lathe is to run with CNC. Maybe eventually I'll add that cross slide motor and switch over but the ELS runs the cross slide as well and does tapers. So other than ball turning or an automated G-Code program to turn out widgets I just haven't felt the need. BTW, I did test operation on my Gingery Lathe, which has both axis powered, by moving the parallel port cable between a PC running MACH and the ELS. Overall I found the ELS easier to use. But I wasn't cutting lots of widgets. If I ever get a beagle (or something small running LinuxCNC) my plan has always been to replicate the ELS behaviour but also be able to run G-Code. John ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most engaging tech sites, Slashdot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
