Denford Orac CNC lathe

I have the chance to aquire and old Denford Orac CNC lathe. An

information on its capabilities would be apreciated.

Archi

-- amcne

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amcnee
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What information are you looking for? I am an electronics tech at the University of New Brunswick in Canada; we have 1 of these lathes, and the manual. Currently, we are trying to configure it to communicate with a pc via an RS232 cable, so that part programs can be sent to it rather than entered manually. The manual is sketchy at times in the information it contains. If you let me know what specs you are interested in, I will look it up and let you know. Be specific; I don't run this equipment, just fix it!

Heidi

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Reply to
Heidi Morrill

I was really looking for information on how useful the lathe could be.

have not seen it, just a photo but there don't seem to be any manua controls so everything needs to be done using the CNC controller. I a currently learning to use a mini lathe and can get the Denford for th cost of transporting it home. According to the specs I seen, it weigh around 650 pounds so it should be much more substantial that the min lathe.

I used to be involve in connecting up CNC controllers to computer running a software package called Edgecam but I just did th communications side. I new little about the software or th controllers. Its unfortunate that while I was doing this, I had n interest in model engineering and now that I am interested, my jo doesn't involve any CNC work.

I think that I will just clear a space in my garage for the Denford an see what I can make it do.

Archi

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amcnee

Denford CNC lathes seem to fetch silly money on Ebay, so even if you decide it's not any use to you, it would still be worth fetching it home just to sell it on.

Regards, Tony

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Tony Jeffree

Reply to
Andrew Mawson

Andrew

I should get my Dendord(s) next week. I can get a second machine which doesn't work so your upgrade looks very interesting. I can attack the non working machine at my leisure while playing with the working one. Did you use any of the existing electronics or is it all new? e.g. The spindle motor speed controller circuit.

Archie

Reply to
amcnee

Archie,

I stripped out everything including power supplies and started from scratch, only retaining the stepper motors and spindle motor and the sensors. If you look at the circuit I pointed you to you'll see I integrated a conventional inverter motor drive for spindle speed control with a digital to analogue circuit driven off a second parallel port.

AWEM

Reply to
Andrew Mawson

Andrew

I have a couple more questions.

What VFD drive did you use? I found your Turbo pascal driver for TurboCNC. Presumably you need t include this in the source code and compile it??

I noticed that the link to Turbo pascal 7 on dakeng.com is broken.

Archi

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amcnee

Talking of silly money, there's a Boxford slant-bed lathe going on Ebay at the moment - item # 7518642916 - current price is £1220. And still 7 hours to go...

Time I refurbished the two I've got ;-)

Regards, Tony

Reply to
Tony Jeffree

Reply to
Andrew Mawson

I have been looking to CNC a small lathe for some time. I came acros

the Denford Orac and that seems to be a good bet as a startin platform. As it already has ballscrews, I can upgrade the electronic to run from one of the popular CNC PC programs and Stepper drives Unfortunatly, I cannot find any in New Zealand. Does anyone know where I can find one or two runing or not (one for spares)?

Alternativly are there any other options (but not the Emco type) would want heavier duty.

Thanks Wallac

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marsheng

Heidi,

I have recently acquire a Denford Orac and am desperately looking fo manuals and hook up information for the RS232.

Please let me know if you get this message by e-mailing me at: snipped-for-privacy@hartco-eng.com. I am new to these user group things and don't kno exactly how they work.

Thank you in advance for your timely reply.

Car

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Hartcoeng

Did I get this?

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Hartcoeng

Hello Cary

Have a look here

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manuals.zip contains scanned images of the manual.

Archie

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Archie

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