How do you setup stepper as a spindle?

Ive looked through one related post in the forum about someone trying to use a stepper as a spindle and someone mentioned something about changing the hal file a certain way.

I am trying to set up a lathe with a stepper as a secondary spindle driver when I want to do threading.

I am not too sure where to start. I used stepconfig wizard to setup a lathe but the spindle doesnt allow for stepper control. Someone mentioned in the other post about adding a 4 axis conventional mill setting and then swapping out the a axis for spindle?

Anyway I am just stuck and wondering if someone can teach me how its done, so that EMC2 can control the spindle speed and even direction if need be when the spindle is driven by a stepper.

Cheers

Hi

Did you see this, TimG seems to have his sorted and it has hal and ini snippets in the post

www.linuxcnc.org/index.php/english/compo...iew&catid=16&id=3518

Also according to the release notes from July 2010, pncconf: support stepper as spindle was included, albeit I have never used pncconf, but Chris should be able to advise.

regards

I took a look at that thread already but I cant get it to work? Not sure how to configure it yet?

That seems an odd way to do it, why not fit a spindle encoder and thread in the normal way?

Perhaps with live tooling and 3d work where you want the spindle to act as a A axis and be able rotate small amounts both forward and reverse?

Rick G