Hello,

I joined here a few years ago, asked a few questions, but never got the cnc thing going.  My last discussions were with "Hood", he is a great guy with a wealth of knowledge.

What I am wanting is advice on this mill before any purchase is made. From what Rick at Wells-Index told me:  It is  Wells-Index 810 CNC, Sharona conroller, 1981 model. The servos are Electro Craft. It is in good mechanical condition. I was told when they hooked it up to 440v it blew a few things out and smoked. The machine is for 220v only.

The owner of our shop said he would sell it to me and  thinks it is junk.  There is a 4th axis rotary table that comes with it. Although the ballscrews & mechanicals are good, the servos may be doubtful. Since this is my first CNC, I am wondering about going to stepper motors, Gecko Drives, and using Mach 3 on a PC. The servo thing sounds too complicated. After spending the time to convert this machine, I want to make parts, not fine tune or trouble shoot it forever.  Accepting my ability it seems that stepper is the way to go.

1)  What size steppers should I use, oz/in that is ?

2) what power supply?

3) Which breakout board, Campbell, cnc4pc, Gecko, etc & why?

4) Should I keep the belt drive on the ball screws?

I want to be able to mill steel, hog aluminum, and drill bolt patterns, cut keyways, and ridgid tap. 

It would be nice to have something that is straight forward and has a clear wiring diagram for connecting the electronics.

This should also have an Emergency stop, as well as the  " safety charge pump".

Let me know your opinions or if I should save the servos. This mill will never be fast but it would be nice for it to cut as good or better than it did when it was new. Slow heavy cuts are ok.


Thanks in advance,

JAckal

I would imagine it will be DC servos on it, they are easy enough to test to see if they are running. All you need to do is hook them up to a car battery, reversing the polarity will move them the other way.
 I would say keep the servos if they are good, depends on the specs of them but at that vintage I would imagine they are 140-160V. If you got Geckos then you would be limited to 80V so speed would not be the max but may well be adequate. You may need to get different encoders but you wont know that until you know the codes. Have a look at the motors and find out their current (continuous and peak) and their rated voltage, also if you can find out what the drives actual voltage was as it may well have been less than the rated voltage.
 If the Servos are knackered then Steppers will certainly run the mill, they as you say are easy to set up but also Servos arent that difficult to set up. If I had a choice I would go servos.
 Power supply will just need to be a transformer, rectifier and capacitor whichever route you take (servo or stepper)
 I have  PMDX 122 breakouts and also CNC Building Block Acustep (although no longer made   ) Both are excellent boards. I have never had the CNC4PC or Campbell ones so cant comment on them.
 Yes keep the belt drive, will make things easier to connect up and if it was good for the original then its certainly good enough for it now
 Rigid tapping is probably not possible at this point, using a floating holder will be but is dependant on your spindle motor/control.

Hood
 

HI GUYS NEW TO THIS I HAVE MADE A HOT WIRE CUTTER 4 AXIS AND HAVE SOME PROBLEMS

4TH AXIS WORKS ON JOG AND G CODE BUT WILL NOT GO TO HOME
AND MOTORS RUN QUIT SLOW
ALSO I HAVE 4 HOME SWITCHES AND NOT QUITE SURE HOW TO WIRE
 I HAVE NEMA 23 AND TOSHIBA  TB6560 BOARD

CHEERS LAZY MARK