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Pretty much for the fun, I was interested in the challenge and learning what was needed. I did also want to see if I could make a fairly cheap option, I thought the arduino could handle the processing load (and it can) but the memory is too limited. my latest version is now an esp32 which I'm messing with.

@@MakerGeek Excellent. Have you looked at the Raspberry Pi Pico (Pico 2 has just been released!). That has multiple state machines (running at over 100 MHz) and a lot more memory.

@@ChidleyEngineering I've not had a chance to check out the pi Pico. I've used the nano and fill sized in various places. These days the esp32 has been my go to for more power and electronics integrations. Though it's a bit of a pain with it's 3.3v logic, is the pico 5v?

@@MakerGeek 3.3V. It's all going 3.3V these days.

@@ChidleyEngineering yeah, and if makes sense. But all my stepper controllers need 5v signals so it means adding stuff to the circuit where with the trusty Arduino you could just pulse it direct.

Thanks for the feedback. I should probably investigate the right settings in resolv. Audio levels/mix has always been a pain for me, I've had stuff that sounds totally fine/perfect for me that is unlistenable on other setups etc. I really wish youtube gave more/better tools to modify/fix audio after the fact ;-/

the underpinnings are GRBL, with a pretty custom python application on top to give me the various control inputs I wanted. Now that I'm rebuilding I'm considering moving away from GRBL and just doing something direct with accel stepper on an esp32.

@MakerGeek interesting.

oh interesting, is it a straight forward conversion? I feel like they had no stock of the B when I got mine. though the noise doesn't bother me overly. congrats on your 16B

I should probably play more with the face manipulation. I feel like I sometimes struggle to get things back to a coherent solid. But you're right, in a lot of cases I'm sure deleting weird faces and having it just repatch is a fast way to fix things up.

Yes, this. ☝🏻 On any flat surface just deleting a single triangle will give you the same results with far less steps to do and saving your timeline.

the problem with fusion is that the imported stl will not have clean faces for the lettering, lots of little triangles once converted to a body. possibly there is a fast way to clean that up to get an easy extrude, but so far I've found blender to be faster for that sort of thing.

@@MakerGeek That is very true, and is a real pain in the butt. One trick that works most of the time is after converting a mesh to a solid in Fusion, split the body in half (or split it anywhere really). Flat faces will now be free of all those pesky triangles, and you just join the 2 parts together again. Shame it can't deal with curves too :( Apparently the paid version can do better, but I have no experience with that.

yeah I saw the nano els build at some point. though only after I was some way into building my own. I guess I was trying to see how cheaply I could make the setup plus of course half the fun is doing it yourself ;-) glutton for punishment I guess. I can see the temptation to put a bunch of buttons on it, but I'm playing with how little I can get away with and make a functional setup. I can certainly agree that once you've used an ELS, it's hard to go back

@@MakerGeek Im personally not a fan of all the buttons. The chap that makes the controller also makes software called Lathecode which is super nice. It lets you describe the shape using parameters and from this it generates gcode which you can send to the controller. Ive made some really complex parts with it, and ive got a fork of the software where I have implemented support for tool changing by manually swapping a tool in the QCTP then selecting that tool on the controller and having it automatically apply the offsets. Its funny because initially I only wanted an ELS because i couldnt be arsed with changing gears but actually it shows how capable you can make these little machines with some electronics and some coding.

for sure, once you start to put a computer brain on it all sorts of interesting options open up. hard to know where 'improving a cheap manual lathe' turns into just a full CNC conversion ;-) very tempted to move onto sticking a motor on the cross slide also, did you upgrade the screws? or just doing backlash compensation?

That's great to hear, always nice when you can fix a tool and keep on going. good luck with the kitchen

Also, not a bot

Also, your "unidirectional patterns" are actually multi-start threads!

Thanks, they are all features that felt like things I would use. I have to say I've considered the cross slide also, but handling backlash in the leadscrews gets quite complicated, I suspect if I was going that far i'd want to replace them with ballscrews etc. Something I've played with recently that I might look at is magnetic orientation sensors that give absolute orientation in about 4000 increments. One thing though that I think I have to admit is that I reached the limit on the nano. it is certainly capable of doing the job, but the memory is not big enough to have the configuration/customisations I want without running into very inconsistent operation. When I next get time I'm going to switch out for an esp32, which is much more memory/cpu headroom. then rebuild around that. They're basically the same price, but I'm hoping much more reliable.

@@MakerGeek There's a really cool (and open source) one I saw recently on Rotary SMP's channel - video title 'Roll you own DRO / ELS'. He's using a little custom board with an STM32 for the real time stuff, and a raspberry pi and the 7" touchscreen with a GUI written in Kivi (running on the bare metal - no linux underneath, or at least not a full x/wayland display manager underneath) for the UI. He can take in 3 axes of sensors (scales or rotary encoders), and he took it even a step further, where you can drive one axis based on the position of another (all configurable / changeable in real time), so that you can cut helical gears without needing physical gears between an axis and a rotary table on the mill. I'm really torn as to build that one, and implement some of the features you have in yours, and add in 2 axis control (one based on the spindle for ELS, and the other configurable as it is now for all kinds of other crazy stuff like an electronic taper attachment) or just go full out and go to LinuxCNC. I've wanted to do a LinuxCNC project for a long time... decisions decisions...

Something I've learned through CZcams is that different systems/setups can render audio quite differently. So what should fine on my system is rubbish for other people. One day I'll get it figured out

Thank you. I actually started using the second pulse to give me direction detection, but it's a good point that I could use that to improve pulse counting generally. however i believe I have finally run up against the limits of the arduino nano which seems to start becoming quite erratic as you consume more of it's limited memory with program code. when i get time I'm going to experiment with identical code setup but switch out for an esp32 to see how it compares.

@@MakerGeek thanks for the reply! ESP32 has quite a bit of difference in processing power compared to the nano 😎

you mean hook into the pot that controls rpm speed and control that electronically for smoother accel? certainly something I've thought about. though most of the time I can somewhat achieve that manually. it doesn't really matter if I miss pulses before I begin an operation though. and once I start I tend to leave the chuck running at a constant rate throughout.

Cheers. Slight delay on the els front as I hit some unreliability in testing and I don't want to offer something I'm not 100% on. But I've a few ideas to work though it

Just for reference, it worked a treat. It's ridiculously satisfying to be able to 'plip' the boot open! 😁

Great, I'm glad the video helped. I agree, it's a very satisfying upgrade to the car ;-) plus the weather is starting to give us proper top-down days to enjoy.

Just posted a video update to catch up with where I'm at.

The dslr is a canon80D that I've had for years now. I did consider whetherlife would be easier if I started with a newer/lighter camera. but for now I'm sticking with what I have. I'll see how it goes on the video front, I might film some bits and pieces of it in the next few weeks

interesting. obviously, I knew there was some range to the clamping size, but I hadn't really though about the fact that you'd essentially have continuous coverage. that's a great point

I'd love to come to Hawaii one day. cribbage on the beach sounds exactly my speed ;-) I will however have to make another one of these, since this one was a gift.

I have not found this to be an issue. my stepper seems to handle quite happily going from a standing start to getting pulses for most thread pitches. obviously in some conditions you get an acceleration profile for free because the spindle also has to accelerate up to speed. It almost certainly helps that I'm using a servo type stepper which works to catch up with the positions you''ve requested so even if it's an aggressive start it catches up anyway.

That's why a "motion controller" is more complicated than you think. You might need to send motor pulses at non-integer ratios of encoder pulses, and you certainly can't send a "burst" of motor pulses at each encoder pulse. You need to use timers to space out your pulses equally over time in the right ratio to encoder pulses over time coming in. And you can't really work in an acceleration on the motor - it has to line up with the encoder, or else you'll get improper threads if you're using the ELS for threading.

I'm working on making the software side a bit more robust and configurable etc. if only the day job didn't take up so much time :-)

there is certainly a fine line between augmenting a manual lathe and just building a CNC machine! I'm handling the backlash in the carriage/leadscrew digitally but if you were going much further I suspect most people would replace the leadscrews with ballscrews or something. certainly in theory you could mount steppers on the cross slide. a bit more fiddly since they'd need to move/carry cables with them etc. the more you augment the more options you need to be able to manage via the control box etc. not sure it adds enough additional utility on a small lathe.

@@MakerGeek Thanks Dan. Understand your rationale. You've clearly done a great job integrating an electronic leadscrew solution with that WM-180. I'm pretty convinced that's the machine I should purchase. Thanks again for your inspiring videos!

@@terryhowlett1434 it's a great little machine. Can highly recommend.

His leadscrew uses a rotary encoder with a resolution of 600 pulses per revolution, I don't believe a hall effect sensor with a resolution of 12 pulses per rotation would offer any benefit.

I did consider hall effect sensor. I actually started with that as my prototype for the rotary encoder in general. I'm not sure how consistently it would trigger at the same moment. But you're right it would be more convenient as a permanent fix setup.

indeed. for calibration to be useful I just need 1 pulse that is garunteed to be an exact rotation. I have less exeprience with hall effect. I know the optical sensors on the end stops of my cnc are very repeatably accurate.

I'll be honest, my understanding of the compound usage is limited. Essentially you're moving in at the same angle as the thread cutting tip so after the first pass your cutting on the leading edge and not both. If that makes sense. Not sure it makes much difference but it is much easier to track the ins and outs of the total depth cut. I started out with a wood lathe, it's a slippery slope :-)

@@MakerGeek Ok nice - I'll look into the thing about the compound. Without having tried this myself, it's all a bit theoretical at this stage! Yeah, I'm not sure I "need" a lathe (and I need more hobbies like a hole in my head!) - I can justify woodwork tools as I use them round the house regularly, but I need to find more excuses for metal working before I convince myself - either that or just say "it's a hobby" and ignore it's usefulness :)). All the best, Pete

some time ago I accepted that my workshop is essentially a closed eco-system in which i use tools to make/improve other tools ;-) on rare occasion something comes up that also benefits from having the tools. but mostly it just keeps me happy and occupied.

@@MakerGeek - lol, love it!

Mostly a question of options. Most of the time I'm not actually doing a finishing pass, it's just one of many passes that need to be done to dimension down. At which point I'm less concerned about messing up the previous cut. But it's fair to say it would probably be worth being able to toggle between reversing and stopping

It's using an ISR. This does mean i can't tell which way the spindle is rotating. But that's mostly not a problem.

@@MakerGeek Cool, May I ask how you changed pulse width, I've been trying to get my prototype working without accelstepper (it seems too slow but it's probably my code).

@@aaronveale6402 that's just a question of how long you wait between setting the port high and setting it low again. You just need to make sure you're in the tolerance of your stepper driver's ability to detect it. I have been using 5microseconds.

@@MakerGeek so you're using delayMicroseconds? That's what I've been attempting.

@@aaronveale6402 yes. Is it not working for you? What behaviour are you getting?

so at the moment are you just manually controlling speed/direction but without reference to the spindle rpm?

@@MakerGeek Yes that's right, I do have a rotary encoder but not fitted it yet as I haven't had anything to make as I have been busy doing other stuff on my Rose Engine lathe. However, I want to update my RE so will need to get back to some machining shortly.

It's about 820 for me. Which seems like a higher deviation than I'd expect from the theory. But this is why we calibrate

Wow, that is a lot of noise. Worth putting a ‘scope on the signal line? Try to track down the source of you extra ‘pulses’ rather than just compensating for aggregate error?

I've been working on refining it, making it more general purpose and configurable etc. my intention is to make the control box available to buy at a reasonable price. I have considered sharing the code but have decided against it at this time. in my experience open sourcing code leads to a lot of requests for support and changes and not a lot of contribution.

in this video I was just like a normal threading operation with a gearbox. Since this I've made quite a few improvements and now I can digitally stop/move/restart never disengaging the leadscrew. just pulling together a video on the updates now

@@MakerGeek great, thanks.