Emco PC turn 55 upgrade..

I probably should have looked for a capacitance tester earlier. So now I'm getting a better multimeter with capacitance and frequency and a bunch of other features. Hopefully I'll be threading with the Emco software by next week. The Leadshines aren't expected until the 21st.

I've read a little of the toolerator info. I was wondering if I can use an Uno instead of the Nano. I think I've got 2 of them around somewhere.

What is the difference from PC turn 50 to 55. I own a Compact5 that is very similar to the PCT50 and know the machine very well.
These 2 machines use strange Berger-Lahr 5 wire Stepper motors with 72steps/turn. If you have the same, I recommend to change it for better at least 200spt types with a matching driver, because with these motors the lowest step in Diameter and length is only 0,0138... mm. The tool turret is controlled with a simple DC-motor which have different currents for for- and backward turn. Forward you have for example 2A and backwards only 200 mA or so, that push the locking disc against the lock bar. You can change the DC-motor with a stepper motor, but I think its easier to switch a relay for maybe 0,4 sek to change
the turret to the next position. At the moment, I don't have assembled my turret, so I can't say, what current it needs for correct function.

I thought I read somewhere that the difference was in the spindle drive or encoder. I thought the 55 was the max swing over cross slide, but that is actually 59mm.

I have the 3 phase steppers and they seem to have plenty of speed and torque. Lowest step is .001mm or at least that's what it says on the screen. The normal rapid is 2000mm/min and maxes around 2250 at 120% feed override. I'm waiting for some new capacitors, to show up so I haven't checked voltages or anything, but I was thinking that I could eventually upgrade the power supply and run the steppers at 45V instead of 30. If I can get the same speeds with LinuxCNC I'll be happy with that.

I finally got the little intel mobo today and loaded the wheezy 2.7. I let it update to 2.7.8 right away. I was able to open linuxcnc from the root terminal. When I try to launch it from the menu it gives me an error saying it needs rtapi.

I dug out my boxes of unloved projects and was thinking I should get my reprap working on the Beaglebone Black first before I mess with the lathe, plus I'm still waiting on capacitors. It seems like that is actually going to be a more complicated project since I want to use the ramps board I've already got with the BBB. So far I haven't even figured out how to change the image into an eMMC flasher image.

jcposada wrote:
The motor used for the axis is a VRDM366/50LHA ( PDF ), and the stepper drivers take differential input. (see page 15 of the PDF).

I'm trying to figure out the motor steps/rev. From this is it safe to assume that these are all 200 step/rev motors? I measured my ball screws at 2.5mm/rev, and confirmed that I've got .001mm resolution. So I would think that the Emco controls are running at 5000 steps/rev, since 2500 isn't an option. Is there a maximum relolution in Linuxcnc?

I replaced the capacitor on the original driver board today. I ran an m6x1 program I had ran before for testing. It seems that things have improved slightly but I still got the z axis error which stops the program.