I'll start a new thread to document conversion of my Grizzly G0602 lathe to CNC. I actually got the lathe 2-1/2 years ago. Here are a few pics of its arrival and setup (which was a pain given it's weight and being February in New England!).

Attachment 251786

Attachment 251788

Attachment 251790

Attachment 251792

Brings back "fond" memories!

The machine has been great as a manual lathe. I had been putting off conversion to CNC for several reasons 1) the expense of lathe CAM software and 2) lack of time. I've decided it's time to bite the bullet on both! On the CAM software front, my main application will be to turn parts for fishing reels. This is mostly "designer" profiling work that is not terribly easy to code by hand. I had a little CNC'd Sherline lathe and did all manual gcode for it. I need to ramp it up a bit. After evaluating at least 7 options for lathe CAM that were in the $1000ish price range I narrowed down to 2: SprutCAM and Rhino/VisualCAM. I also evaluated the 3D milling CAM for both of these. I am finding an increasing need for 3D. Almost all of my work to date has been 2-1/2D and VCarvePro has served extremely well for that. I was just about ready to pull the trigger when a forum member PMd me and suggested I give a look at BobCAD-CAM. I had actually eliminated them due to their list pricing. I downloaded the demo and also got an online demo. After spending a few hours with it (the new V27) I was very impressed with how well it mapped to the way I work and think. As for the price, all I can say is the BobCAD-CAM sales person made me an offer I couldn't refuse for Lathe, 3D plus index 4th axis and Art. I was able to start doing all of my 2-1/2D mill CAM work in BobCAM in a couple of days with a custom post (I tweaked) for Mach3 and my G0704. I'm looking forward to learning and using the lathe and Art modules too.

Now on to the fun topic: conversion. Here are the raw ingredients - everything ordered and came in this week:

  1. Billy's G0602 CNC Conversion kit with 3/8" couplers
  2. two KL23H2100-50-4B NEMA 23 570oz/in steppers
  3. two KL-5056D Digital bipolar drivers
  4. 48V 7.3A power supply
  5. DynoMotion KFlop motion control
  6. Bellows Z axis screw covers


I decided to go non-parallel port control with this machine. The world is going to have to move this direction as aging PCs no longer have parallel ports. I thought I would test the waters with KFlop, it has a great reputation and following and has some nice features like constant speed surface lathe. I'll use Mach3 for the front end and let KFlop handle the machine control. Once I have the basic lathe up and running I'll convert the motor over to VFD with an index to take advantage of CSS and be able to thread. Here is a great tutorial on VFD conversion for a G0602.

I have one small manual job to do on the lathe this week and then I can clean it up and tear it down for the CNC conversion. Billy's kit is very nicely machined and everything is basically pre-assembled. Should be a quick mechanical conversion. The electronics always take longer. I still need to figure out how best to interface the drivers to the KFlop.

Cheers,
Michael