The ball screw nut on the outside of the cross slide is a really smart idea. I have a small lathe with not much room for a ball screw nut. So making it stick out a bit more toward the user is a good enough compromise. Thanks for sharing.
Check out my most recent video: goo.gl/Jj7cU1 The weather is turning cold here and it's time to come inside and get back to work in the shop. More of Billy's work can be found at www.bdtoolsusa.com/
Sweet little grinder. Great comments about buying a conversion kit and both learning from someone else’s design and that the time to DIY could be better spent in other places.
Welcome from Instagram! :) Time was pretty limited in 2017. Gave up TV, work from home to eliminate the commute, but still not enough hours in day. So, time is always near the front of my mind. Maybe I could have worded the opinion better, after all if one loves doing their own from-scratch conversion, absolutely go for it.
Thanks Sam! By the way, I love your videos. I sent one to a friend at Intel and he was impressed. Wondered if you were building a fab in your garage. :)
You should seriously look at the new Centroid Acorn controller. Professional CNC interface by a CNC manufacturer. BTW keep up the great work! Love the 3d printed videos!
Thanks, a friend got one after Franco demoed the controller on his channel. It would sure be simpler and cleaner than using a PC and breakout board. I've replaced the breakout board with a Pico USC, like I'm using on my mill, and now am well past the Acorn (and Masso controller) cost. Others have been saying I should try the Clearpath motors, and that's easier to do on the lathe with only two axes, but that drives the total cost way up. I ordered 1/2" tooling from Tormach. They have inserts for steel and polished inserts for aluminum, and I've added them into Fusion360. I'll try to do an update mid-December. Thanks for commenting, and have a great weekend!
You're obviously a good man. That book has special meaning; I always dreamt of taking a motorcycle trip to the Black Hills with my dad. If you enjoyed Pirsig, have you read Shop Class as Soulcraft?
No. I didn't. Many years ago I tried to read Pirsig a second time but decided to stop and to leave the very good memories from the book alone. I always remind me of this quote, "'We take a handful of sand from the endless landscape of awareness around us and call that handful of sand the world." After you mentioned Alan Watts, that I didn't know, I googled him and listened to one of his speeches. Arete and thanks for letting me dive into this experience :)
great video, it must have taken so much planning to cover all parts in the video, I get too excited and start making stuff and then think where is the camera and I should have covered it :(, great job Kent
Thank you very much. The raw video is something like eight hours to pare down. In the end, no one knows what was left out or the number of times the camera stopped recording. BTW, I'd love to review your product on a mill and lathe. In particular, to see if it's a good option for those who want clean, simple, and dependable electronics and interface. Best wishes, Kent
+Adventures in Fabrication Hi Paul, do more wooden pawn pieces count? :) For a CNC lathe, the pawn seems to be the equivalent of Hello World to a programmer and a new language. I have a simple part in mind, but am going to try to first add a spindle encoder. I'm heading your way mid-December, delivering an instrument to Dallas.
+Adventures in Fabrication Texas is a BIG state. I drive to San Antonio once, thought I could do it in a day, got to Waco and looked on the map and found I was only half way.
Iowa, about a 12hr drive, and hoping for good clear roads. Stay for a couple of days and fly home. Renting a U-Haul because FTL freight delivery has a lot variability. The big names give better delivery estimates, because they have the volume to fill the trucks faster, but the cost goes up too. If you have a better suggestion, would like to hear it. I used U-Ship last time. Great price, but the deliver estimate was something like four weeks +/- two weeks! Had to wait till delivery and then arrange flight. Actually learned about U-Ship from a boat maker that I sold my original lathe (Grizzly G4016) to, ten years ago, also in the Dallas area.
I wonder if instead of replacing the main lead screws and nuts one could simple keep the original ones and then set the LinuxCNC backlash compensation. I've never use this LCNC feature. Have you tried it? If so, do you think it could be able to handle such large backlash?
I do believe this would work. While an earlier attempt, I did experiment with backlash comp and using backlash compensating nuts but didn't have sufficient torque in the motors I was using at the time. I have an earlier video on a 3D printed CNC lathe conversion that demos this a little. That one didn't use LinuxCNC though. I was thinking then to only make an electronic leadscrew.
Neat conversion kit! The finish on the aluminum parts, seems like the parts are tumbled? Reminds me that I need a tumbler.. That bench-grinder! I have some tools from my father, working with them always results in flashbacks. And the flying parts.. Working with wood and plastics in the lathe always seem to surprise at the most unexpected moments!
Hi Rene, it's hard to know how much time Billy saved me, like David did with the PM25 kit. But the mechanics are part of the puzzle. Someone might do well to make an electronics kit. Even with controllers like the Masso, there's still work to be done, especially if one wants to have a nice enclosure. I would like to create a nice enclosure for the lathe electronics; I never did that for the mill. Having said that, today's project was mounting new electronics to a piece of plywood. "Temporary" things have a tendency to become permanent.
Question, if I may. I have a 1605 ball for my x axis. I'm using the bearing housing that generally comes with it. It's always a pain to deal with. Does Billy's kit just come with a with a bore for a bearing alone, within the 1 to 1 housing. I saw you pull it apart but can't make out what is on the inside, beyond your timing pulley. Thank you
Hi Shannon, take a look at the "More Photos" link at the following URL. Let me know what you want a better picture of and I'll get it to you. kvvcreates.com/sb1001_cnc_lathe/
@@kentvandervelden Thank you. You showed me the stepper motor pulley in the housing. I'm curious what's in the opposite end of that pulley and belt. The shaft end of the ballscrew. It is a bearing, i'm assuming? Your setup looks sharp and clean.
@@shannonbelcourt1402 Check the same link again, I added a zip of Billy Dirks' kit. The end of the X-axis ballscrew is tapped and a screw and washer are installed. The ballnut is attached to the front of the cross slide and the ballscrew floats under the cross slide, and while unsupported is short. There is little room in the channel to install a ballnut without using a small diameter ballscrew. The lathe is a joy to use. I hope this helps :)
Thank you Linus. For sharing between computers, I have a NAS with CIFS/SMB and NFS support. (I mostly program on a Linux computer but review results on a Windows computer, so I'm frequently moving files around.) A NAS should not be needed though. Without a NAS, I would try creating an open share on Windows and mount that on the Linux machine with mount.cifs. Mach3 was easy to setup and use. But with the last mill, I wanted to be able to dig into the code of the controller, extend and manipulate the controller, etc, and LinuxCNC provides all that. I had no problem finding compatible hardware for Mach3 but LinuxCNC was pickier. If using LinuxCNC, I would just commit to getting hardware that's known to work. (Some parallel port cards work. I used the Pico Systems USC on the mill and will install one on the lathe. Hardware from Mesa is common but I've had a hard time figuring out what's needed.) Tormach recently stopped including Mach3 and made PathPilot starting with a LinuxCNC core. I like that LinuxCNC is open about their technology, and I have more confidence in Linux not doing something unexpected. OK, those are the differences that were important to that come to mind. Try both if you have time, and pick the one that meets your needs. Have a great weekend!
Hi Anwar, your suggestion could have worked. The existing rack and pinion quality was unknown but probably good enough. There was considerable backlash but that could have been solved. The ballscrew setup is pretty simple and the long travels and high speeds of a CNC router was not required. Hope this helps.
Hi can you please tell me where you downloaded the post processor for Linuxcnc to use with fusion 360. I am just trying to get my small cnc lathe up and running whilst also learning Linux and Fusion. Many thanks and great video.
Thank you. I downloaded the post processor from cam.autodesk.com/hsmposts the direct link is (as of today) cam.autodesk.com/posts/post.php?name=linuxcnc%20turning I made a few changes to it. Send me an email and I'll send you the one I use, and then you can compare too. Put the post processor in your cloud library to protect it and make it available on multiple machines.
@@d.c3363 Glad to help. The mill post processor is a little different, in case you need it. I'll check later what changes that I made and let you know if they are useful in general or simply something odd that my setup needed.
I'd buy a turnkey CNC lathe and keep the manual lathe manual; they are not substitutes. Kits are great if seeking the DIY CNC experience. A DIY CNC from scratch, unless for research/education, only makes sense for something that can't be bought. It all takes time and that time could go into project enabled by the CNC.
Hi Shehan, it's nice to meet you. Please tell me a timestamp showing the code you're interested in. I put much of this on my GitHub page, but I've probably overlooked something.
@@dgengineers Oh, that's a utility that LinuxCNC provides. You can find it here: wiki.linuxcnc.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?Parallel_Port_Tester All the information at wiki.linuxcnc.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl is great. The forums are great too. I continue to be impressed with LinuxCNC and the work of this team. Best of success to you!
Tool lengths are set by taking a cut, without moving the tool along X, measuring the cut diameter, and entering the radius. Can do this with boring bars too, for inner diameters. With repeatable tool holders like the Alrois, only need to do this once per tool. There are inductive sensors for homing at extreme +Z and +X locations.
Probably to keep the installation simple. Existing bolt holes are used by the kit. To mount to the rear of the cross slide, new holes would need to be added, and the cross slide clamp would need to changed too. Certainly possible and would be nicer, just harder to install.
The ball screw nut on the outside of the cross slide is a really smart idea. I have a small lathe with not much room for a ball screw nut. So making it stick out a bit more toward the user is a good enough compromise. Thanks for sharing.
Check out my most recent video: goo.gl/Jj7cU1
The weather is turning cold here and it's time to come inside and get back to work in the shop. More of Billy's work can be found at www.bdtoolsusa.com/
Build something that no-one else has seen yet? Now there's a real challenge!
It is, but you can do it. An incremental improvement is enough. Best of success! Thank you
Sweet little grinder. Great comments about buying a conversion kit and both learning from someone else’s design and that the time to DIY could be better spent in other places.
Welcome from Instagram! :) Time was pretty limited in 2017. Gave up TV, work from home to eliminate the commute, but still not enough hours in day. So, time is always near the front of my mind. Maybe I could have worded the opinion better, after all if one loves doing their own from-scratch conversion, absolutely go for it.
Nice work, Kent. Great to watch your progress. You make the LinuxCNC bit look so easy!
Hi Murray. LinuxCNC is closer to my comfort area - software :)
why only 381 likes? The video like this deserves so much more.
Staying humble here, super thankful and amazed for the 381 :) Thank you
Awesome! thanks for sharing
Thanks Sam! By the way, I love your videos. I sent one to a friend at Intel and he was impressed. Wondered if you were building a fab in your garage. :)
You should seriously look at the new Centroid Acorn controller. Professional CNC interface by a CNC manufacturer. BTW keep up the great work! Love the 3d printed videos!
Thanks, a friend got one after Franco demoed the controller on his channel. It would sure be simpler and cleaner than using a PC and breakout board. I've replaced the breakout board with a Pico USC, like I'm using on my mill, and now am well past the Acorn (and Masso controller) cost. Others have been saying I should try the Clearpath motors, and that's easier to do on the lathe with only two axes, but that drives the total cost way up. I ordered 1/2" tooling from Tormach. They have inserts for steel and polished inserts for aluminum, and I've added them into Fusion360. I'll try to do an update mid-December. Thanks for commenting, and have a great weekend!
I use centroid controllers at work. I absolutely love them.
Great youtube channel. Thanks for sharing your insights and lessons learned. I especially like your honest and calm approach. Seldom nowadays :)
Thank you very much Stefan :) Maybe a sign that listening to hours of Alan Watts lectures is curing an otherwise type-A personality?
oh - you also might want to look at it like curing yourself by "The art of Lathe Maintenance" ... borrowed from Pirsig.
You're obviously a good man. That book has special meaning; I always dreamt of taking a motorcycle trip to the Black Hills with my dad. If you enjoyed Pirsig, have you read Shop Class as Soulcraft?
No. I didn't. Many years ago I tried to read Pirsig a second time but decided to stop and to leave the very good memories from the book alone. I always remind me of this quote, "'We take a handful of sand from the endless landscape of awareness around us and call that handful of sand the world." After you mentioned Alan Watts, that I didn't know, I googled him and listened to one of his speeches. Arete and thanks for letting me dive into this experience :)
great video, it must have taken so much planning to cover all parts in the video, I get too excited and start making stuff and then think where is the camera and I should have covered it :(, great job Kent
Thank you very much. The raw video is something like eight hours to pare down. In the end, no one knows what was left out or the number of times the camera stopped recording. BTW, I'd love to review your product on a mill and lathe. In particular, to see if it's a good option for those who want clean, simple, and dependable electronics and interface. Best wishes, Kent
I look forward to future vids where you are making something on the lathe.
+Adventures in Fabrication Hi Paul, do more wooden pawn pieces count? :) For a CNC lathe, the pawn seems to be the equivalent of Hello World to a programmer and a new language. I have a simple part in mind, but am going to try to first add a spindle encoder. I'm heading your way mid-December, delivering an instrument to Dallas.
Sure, wood counts, metal is expensive way to practice/learn. Dallas is a good 200 miles away from where I'm at in Houston.
+Adventures in Fabrication Texas is a BIG state. I drive to San Antonio once, thought I could do it in a day, got to Waco and looked on the map and found I was only half way.
Where are you coming from?
Iowa, about a 12hr drive, and hoping for good clear roads. Stay for a couple of days and fly home. Renting a U-Haul because FTL freight delivery has a lot variability. The big names give better delivery estimates, because they have the volume to fill the trucks faster, but the cost goes up too. If you have a better suggestion, would like to hear it. I used U-Ship last time. Great price, but the deliver estimate was something like four weeks +/- two weeks! Had to wait till delivery and then arrange flight. Actually learned about U-Ship from a boat maker that I sold my original lathe (Grizzly G4016) to, ten years ago, also in the Dallas area.
I wonder if instead of replacing the main lead screws and nuts one could simple keep the original ones and then set the LinuxCNC backlash compensation. I've never use this LCNC feature. Have you tried it? If so, do you think it could be able to handle such large backlash?
I do believe this would work. While an earlier attempt, I did experiment with backlash comp and using backlash compensating nuts but didn't have sufficient torque in the motors I was using at the time. I have an earlier video on a 3D printed CNC lathe conversion that demos this a little. That one didn't use LinuxCNC though. I was thinking then to only make an electronic leadscrew.
Neat conversion kit! The finish on the aluminum parts, seems like the parts are tumbled? Reminds me that I need a tumbler.. That bench-grinder! I have some tools from my father, working with them always results in flashbacks. And the flying parts.. Working with wood and plastics in the lathe always seem to surprise at the most unexpected moments!
Hi Rene, it's hard to know how much time Billy saved me, like David did with the PM25 kit. But the mechanics are part of the puzzle. Someone might do well to make an electronics kit. Even with controllers like the Masso, there's still work to be done, especially if one wants to have a nice enclosure. I would like to create a nice enclosure for the lathe electronics; I never did that for the mill. Having said that, today's project was mounting new electronics to a piece of plywood. "Temporary" things have a tendency to become permanent.
Question, if I may. I have a 1605 ball for my x axis. I'm using the bearing housing that generally comes with it. It's always a pain to deal with. Does Billy's kit just come with a with a bore for a bearing alone, within the 1 to 1 housing. I saw you pull it apart but can't make out what is on the inside, beyond your timing pulley.
Thank you
Hi Shannon, take a look at the "More Photos" link at the following URL. Let me know what you want a better picture of and I'll get it to you.
kvvcreates.com/sb1001_cnc_lathe/
@@kentvandervelden Thank you. You showed me the stepper motor pulley in the housing. I'm curious what's in the opposite end of that pulley and belt. The shaft end of the ballscrew. It is a bearing, i'm assuming? Your setup looks sharp and clean.
@@shannonbelcourt1402 Check the same link again, I added a zip of Billy Dirks' kit. The end of the X-axis ballscrew is tapped and a screw and washer are installed. The ballnut is attached to the front of the cross slide and the ballscrew floats under the cross slide, and while unsupported is short. There is little room in the channel to install a ballnut without using a small diameter ballscrew. The lathe is a joy to use. I hope this helps :)
What kind of a NFS share do you use on your PC? Would you recommend to go with Linux CNC or March 3 as an controller? Great Video!
Thank you Linus. For sharing between computers, I have a NAS with CIFS/SMB and NFS support. (I mostly program on a Linux computer but review results on a Windows computer, so I'm frequently moving files around.) A NAS should not be needed though. Without a NAS, I would try creating an open share on Windows and mount that on the Linux machine with mount.cifs. Mach3 was easy to setup and use. But with the last mill, I wanted to be able to dig into the code of the controller, extend and manipulate the controller, etc, and LinuxCNC provides all that. I had no problem finding compatible hardware for Mach3 but LinuxCNC was pickier. If using LinuxCNC, I would just commit to getting hardware that's known to work. (Some parallel port cards work. I used the Pico Systems USC on the mill and will install one on the lathe. Hardware from Mesa is common but I've had a hard time figuring out what's needed.) Tormach recently stopped including Mach3 and made PathPilot starting with a LinuxCNC core. I like that LinuxCNC is open about their technology, and I have more confidence in Linux not doing something unexpected. OK, those are the differences that were important to that come to mind. Try both if you have time, and pick the one that meets your needs. Have a great weekend!
Hi
I saw in cnc routers using rack and pinion drive
My question is why you don’t use yours machine rack and pinion as drive
? Thanks 🙏
Hi Anwar, your suggestion could have worked. The existing rack and pinion quality was unknown but probably good enough. There was considerable backlash but that could have been solved. The ballscrew setup is pretty simple and the long travels and high speeds of a CNC router was not required. Hope this helps.
Kent VanderVelden thanks 🙏
excellent channel!
Thank you! :) Have a wonderful day
Hi can you please tell me where you downloaded the post processor for Linuxcnc to use with fusion 360. I am just trying to get my small cnc lathe up and running whilst also learning Linux and Fusion.
Many thanks and great video.
Thank you. I downloaded the post processor from
cam.autodesk.com/hsmposts
the direct link is (as of today)
cam.autodesk.com/posts/post.php?name=linuxcnc%20turning
I made a few changes to it. Send me an email and I'll send you the one I use, and then you can compare too. Put the post processor in your cloud library to protect it and make it available on multiple machines.
@@kentvandervelden Thats brilliant thanks very much for your help. I will have a look tonight hopefully.
Regards
Dave
@@d.c3363 Glad to help. The mill post processor is a little different, in case you need it. I'll check later what changes that I made and let you know if they are useful in general or simply something odd that my setup needed.
If you were to do this today, where would you suggest one to buy a kit. Specifically I have a Sb 10K
I'd buy a turnkey CNC lathe and keep the manual lathe manual; they are not substitutes. Kits are great if seeking the DIY CNC experience. A DIY CNC from scratch, unless for research/education, only makes sense for something that can't be bought. It all takes time and that time could go into project enabled by the CNC.
Hi 👋 Kent,
Can you share the codes which used in command prompt with us.please.
I am new to linux cnc
From Sri Lanka 🇱🇰
Thank you
Hi Shehan, it's nice to meet you. Please tell me a timestamp showing the code you're interested in. I put much of this on my GitHub page, but I've probably overlooked something.
Kent VanderVelden
Thank you for quick reply.
08:23
@@dgengineers Oh, that's a utility that LinuxCNC provides. You can find it here: wiki.linuxcnc.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?Parallel_Port_Tester All the information at wiki.linuxcnc.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl is great. The forums are great too. I continue to be impressed with LinuxCNC and the work of this team. Best of success to you!
Great!
How to set tool pls? Does it have home?
Tool lengths are set by taking a cut, without moving the tool along X, measuring the cut diameter, and entering the radius. Can do this with boring bars too, for inner diameters. With repeatable tool holders like the Alrois, only need to do this once per tool. There are inductive sensors for homing at extreme +Z and +X locations.
@@kentvandervelden thank you!
why didnt he just put the motor on the opposite side of the cross slide?
Probably to keep the installation simple. Existing bolt holes are used by the kit. To mount to the rear of the cross slide, new holes would need to be added, and the cross slide clamp would need to changed too. Certainly possible and would be nicer, just harder to install.
@@kentvandervelden fair point
😁I was wondering what object did you make?😬🤣😂🤣😂
A chess piece. Probably what everyone makes first. The Hello World program of CNC turning.