Hi Ralph,

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I think you just answered your own question with your statements.?

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Back when we formed the E-Leadscrew group to discuss the potential of some sort of replacement for the FROG Electronic Gearing system the reaction from the CNC groups was similar.

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"Now that I have CNC on my lathe and know how to use it I can't imagine a lathe without it" or something to that effect.? Some of the dialog was far far more _aggressive_.

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Before I took the lead and started building an electronic gearing system for my Gingery Lathe I looked around at what was available.? I certainly didn't want a full PC with glass screen monitor and keyboard/mouse dwarfing the small Gingery lathe. ?Remember this was before inexpensive LCD displays and BeagleBone with MachineKit or Pi3.

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Since I had MACH2 on a WIN-98 system I took the time to learn how CNC worked and specifically how MACH generated the stepping pulses.? Then simulated the basics with a small PIC board I had on hand.? That ended up being an article in Circuit Cellar Magazine.

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And with what I learned I developed the ELS.

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There's an expression that applies really well to self-taught people.?

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"You don't know what you don't know so it's difficult to know what to learn"

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Most people then generally learn only what they think they need to learn to solve their immediate problem.? And then stop and go onto something else.? Many of the basics are left out so the next problem is quite often done the same way.? Over time they do eventually develop the same broad knowledge but it takes a lot longer.

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The advantage of a teacher who is an expert in their field is they do know what someone needs to learn to be able to solve future 'unknown' problems.? In fact the first 4 years of University are really still just rote learning of the basics.? It's once a student starts a Master's program that they suddenly discover that the professors tell them almost nothing.? At the end of a Master's program and thesis they've learned how to learn what they don't know.

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And the PhD takes it one step further with original research learning the unknown.

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So we have the Bull S#&t Diploma, the More S#&t Diploma and the Piled higher and Deeper Certificate.? But they do have their value even if just for fertilizer.

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To sum up, a friend of mine saw the ELS on my South Bend and decided to convert his lathe.? He never did convert to the ELS.? Just kept going to MACH3.? He uses his MPG a lot for manual operations.? He can turn out some pretty nice stuff when he uses the CNC but mostly he still uses it for one of operations.? He's 77 years old.

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And I've been presenting the idea of interoperability.? Some people will say "I never replace a 59 cent lightbulb".? After all, each time I go to buy the replacement there are new ones with different socket configurations and the one I have is 60 years old;? out of date. ?So when the 59 cent bulb is out I always buy a new lamp with a new socket.

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There are benefits to standards.? If you decide you never want CNC on your lathe then go for it.? Wire directly to the control system which means to try CNC on your lathe is so much work that it's easier to just say you never want CNC on your lathe.

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But a system designed to use a standard parallel port configuration with a user interface that has a lot of short cuts isn't any more out of date than a standard base light bulb.? After all now you can buy RGB LED modern technology light bulbs with BlueTooth or ZigBee that still screw into the _exact_same_socket_.? No need to rewire the house with low voltage wiring or even new wiring so all the lamps dim together from one control.

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That break out board provides that common interface to limit switches, encoder, axis motor drives and spindle speed control along with coolant pump and coolant mister.? The parallel port connector (DB-25 or 26 pin ribbon) connects to the control system that issues spindle speed, axis motion, ESTOP, Coolant ON/OFF etc.

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However I don't think that's my point, any more than I could convince CNC users on the merits of an Electronic Lead Screw.? There are lots of systems out there where all the motor control signals etc are run to the back of the box. ??There are people that swear by these types of systems and they don't have a break out board.

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For example, I just prefer a Break Out Box and moving a single cable to be able to learn how MACH3 does things compared to how LinuxCNC does things.? With the PC parallel port I didn't even move the cable.? Once I switched into the higher step rates sent to AC/DC Servos I needed the external 7i92H or USB Smooth Stepper.?

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That entire learning experience (which was very valuable) was only undertaken _because_ it was so easy to switch between the two systems;? sometimes every 5 minutes.

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So I'll reiterate my initial point.? If you don't want to learn how to use CNC on your lathe and prefer electronic gearing then a break out board is not pointless but not really needed. ?So I agree with you.

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But that doesn't make a Break Out Board with a parallel port interface old or out of date.

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John

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Hi Ralph,

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If you never ever want to have full CNC on your lathe then your approach works.? But I've run into a lot of people who started with an ELS and moved away from it onto MACH3 or LinuxCNC.?

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There are a few ways to do CNC on a lathe.

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1.????? Buy a unit complete with LCD screen, MPG knob etc.? Connectors on the back.

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2.????? Buy a break out board combo with PC Bus connection and run LinuxCNC

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3.????? Or maybe you like the Raspberry Pi?

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4.????? What I have for the mill does require a separate break out board.? This one uses Ethernet from the PC to the BoB and is the cheapest route if the BoB is from China.

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And MESA has other options but other than option 4 are all restricted to that wiring implementation.? Only #4 allows you to change your mind with no effort other than moving a cable.

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5.????? Now if you want MACH then the Ethernet Smooth Stepper is one option that doesn't require a parallel port but does require a Break Out Board.

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6.????? There is also the Pokeys for MACH.? I have very little knowledge about this one but it's not expensive and again like the MESA for LinuxCNC, once you are committed to this solution you can't change without rewiring everything. Also a very low cost solution.

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For my mill I used the MESA 7i92H and the USB Smooth Stepper with a dual boot PC.? I can run either MACH3 or LinuxCNC.? Lately I've only been running LinuxCNC and the USB SS is back onto the CNC router with MACH3.

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The down side of LinuxCNC for the lathe is that it requires both an index pulse and a second sensor with multiple pulses per rev.? A gear with 60 teeth apparently works quite well. So the lathe hardware would need this even if not used by my ELS and you can run that little Sherline all the way up to 6000 RPM for tiny clock work CNC.

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The MACH3 software runs with a 1 PPR sensor like the ELS so transferring the parallel port cable across from the ELS over to either a parallel port card on a PC or Ethernet SS means no wiring needs to change to do CNC when you need it.

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As the above list (and it's a very short list) shows that if you never ever expect or want to run CNC on your lathe, then a dedicated wiring solution is inexpensive but fixed in place and tedious to rework.

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If, OTOH, you want an ELS and the easy option to upgrade or temporarily run CNC the easy and inexpensive approach is to design with a Break Out Board isolating the control system from the physical motion system.

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If you only want an ELG? (Electronic Leadscrew Gearing) where the leadscrew motor is driven by the encoder pulses then the roll your own Arduino systems are there too.

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But as you can see the parallel port option is neither old or outdated. If the PC has a bus then there are parallel port cards that work with either LinuxCNC or with MACH3.? If you want MACH4 along with a license cost then yes, you need an Ethernet style interface that is either dedicated or goes back out to a parallel port connection.

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What I am working on over the next year or so once I am more comfortable with my LinuxCNC mill and everything is working well is an ELS-MILL.? The PIC32 or an ARM based ST or TI processor will be the engine behind that.? It will have two DB-25 connectors for two break out boards or a common one like the PMDX-126 I have on the mill. ?

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With graphical LCD display, higher res MPG, multi-line spindle encoder support it will behave like a combination DRO for 4 axis and 4 axis power feed with pre-set BEGIN/END positions for each axis.? Maybe even simple features like my Shumatech DRO-350 and 550 but with the machine control included.

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And ideally, with an Ethernet port and drivers to connect to either MACH4 or LinuxCNC.? That option then gives you manual control over the mill with local display and operation but if you need that CNC pattern or need 10 of something it can temporarily be that too.

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But, it may well be that instead of the LinuxCNC AXIS User Interface that instead an ELS-MILL user interface be developed for the Pi4 and an MESA Ethernet or SPI based BoB.? A panel with an HDMI LCD display and up to 64 buttons and MPG.? Now depending on how you start LinuxCNC on the Pi4, it runs LinuxCNC with the AXIS interface and G-Code or it runs ELS-MILL as the front end user interface and is a manual mill with DRO and power feed and a few wizards for holes, bolt patterns, surfacing etc.

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When we formed the E-Leadscrew group on Yahoo so many years ago it was because the CNC groups were not interested in an ELS.? The attitude was just toughen up and use CNC.? As the evidence shows, a lot of people don’t want CNC.? At least not right away.? What the E-Leadscrew group did is give people a choice by simply moving a cable. ?Not insisting that the CNC was the only way or that Parallel ports were out of date etc.

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Simply an option to change easily and inexpensively.? For the Arduino based ELG's to get that option you just add an Ethernet connector and write the driver and perhaps user interface for LinuxCNC or MACH3/4.

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Or go for a system that uses a BoB and move a single cable and not write any software.

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John Dammeyer

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Hi Ralph,

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The design philosophy behind my ELS was that you could not use the on board stepper driver and use external ones with a break out board that also connected to the 1PPR sensor on the spindle and any limit switches and ESTOP buttons.

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Those would then come out the standard parallel port DB-25 from the Break Out Board to the ELS.? Or to a PC running MACH CNC.? In fact that's how I tested how well the ELS functioned.? At the time it was still MACH2 and then later MACH3.

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I'd move the cable over to a PC and run a thread or taper with MACH G-Code.? Then move the Parallel port cable over to the ELS and run the same thread or taper.?? So if a user needed to make 10 of something or something with an odd profile they could use CNC.? But for regular 'manual approach' usage people would go back to the ELS.

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So the original ELS as I designed it could be stand alone with Z axis control only.? Designed to provide threading to a lathe that didn't have gears and metric threading to an imperial lathe.? That I can produce 1.5mm x 50mm threads on this arbor without a powered cross slide on a 1942 vintage lathe shows just how simple it is to operate with that concept in mind.

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But I've always said once you move to two external stepper drivers perhaps because you need more than 3A and 48V on the Z axis a Break Out Board is always the wise choice for simplicity of wiring and for possible migration to CNC.

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At the moment my South Bend still only has a 3A motor with 2:1 toothed belt drive to the lead screw.? The gear shift lever and tumbler lever are all in neutral and the lathe is therefore very quiet. ?I haven't engaged the gears in probably 5 years or more.? And if I didn't have a taper attachment on this lathe I'd have added X axis control almost immediately.

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Anyway.? Attached photo shows a small bit of 6 degree taper done on the south bend to fit the spindle pulley.? Then the 50mm x 1.5mm thread also done on the imperial south bend with the ELS..? Finally, because Bob in Australia was having issues, I chucked the tapered end into the 3 Jaw on the Gingery which is very light 7" lathe with major vibration issues due to inadequate bed way design and then cut an oversize MT-3. ?The material is a casting riser that is very porous and soft hence all the little pin holes.

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John

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Hey Ralph,

"Old system" is relative.? If I were to design it all over again today I'd still have at least as many buttons.?

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There's nothing more annoying than the current crop of 3D printer controllers or most Arduino projects that are only capable of a couple of buttons so they are used to scroll through selections.?

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I suspect if you were to go back to your flip phone that had a standard keypad and required tapping each numeric key up to 3 times to select a particular letter for sending texts you'd be pretty frustrated.

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Those discussions were had over 10 years ago with respect to an ELS user interface. ?One particular one went on for a while where the poster claimed all that was needed was a couple of buttons, and a rotary knob to do all the selections.? He proved his point by creating a simple ELG (Electronic Lathe Gearing) that worked like that.?

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I can't speak for anyone else but I use the numeric keypad on my ELS all the time.? Mine also has what HP at one point called soft keys so the 4 buttons right under the display change personality depending on what you are doing with a description on the second line.

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If anything I'd add a few more buttons since the hardware does allow up to 64 and a 4 line display so more information could be shown while still maintaining the soft keys.? I'd like the high speed slew buttons for X.? The new software at least now uses ALT- X^ and ALT-Xv to move at fast speeds and you can release the ALT key once movement has started and just hold the X direction.?

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And whenever I look at a real CNC system like a HAAS etc. they have not regressed to the toy approach with 2 buttons and a knob.? I doubt many HAAS or other CNC operators would like to use a CNC system with only a few buttons.

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The latest development for my ELS is that the software has been ported to a PIC32.? Once I finish a couple of other projects I'll procure one of the PIC32 family devices that has hardware quadrature encoder support. ??For now in case I haven't posted it on this group here is a photo of the PIC32 Automotive Development Board with a ribbon cable to a 3.3V to 5V level translation board and from there a 40 pin ribbon cable to a 40 pin socket that replaces the PIC18F.?

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One thing I'm planning on building is a small board that has a PIC32 that plugs into the PIC18F socket.? So instead of installing a new 8 bit 40MHz PIC18F with upgraded firmware one plugs in a much faster PIC32.? With the same software the interrupt routine that used to take about 35 micro-seconds now takes under 3.5 micro-seconds.

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John Dammeyer

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