LinuxCNC, MESA & servo-conventional milling

Hey,

I just recently stumbled over the Knuth servo-conventional mill / lathe and beside the ability to do CNC on my milling machine, I miss manual milling a lot. I own a jog pendant, but that doesn't nearly feel like it - turning the handwheels, standing in front of the machine and still beeing able to mill manually, kind of.

I was thinking about enabling servo-conventional milling on my CNC conversion (an Optimum MH25V) - when I converted the machine I bought a 7i76, 7i85, 7i74 and 7i73. After reading the documentation about how many handwheel encoders the 7i73 supports I came to the conclusion that it should be no problem to mount three to four additional handwheel encoders in place where the original handwheels were, just to mimic the manual milling. Am I right?

I probably don't need the features like having three +/- soft limits set per axis, but that might be a nice feature, too, to easy the process. Everything should be doable somewhat easy and without heavy scripting, I just have to wire the handwheel encoders and connect them in LinuxCNC to their very specific axis, maybe adding some potentiometers for feed rates, maybe the Joysticks for rapids, and stuff?

Best regards,
Pierre

look here this tread is exactly what you like to do on the 7i73

pl7i92 wrote: look here this tread is exactly what you like to do on the 7i73

Did you miss the link out?

Immutef wrote: I was thinking about enabling servo-conventional milling on my CNC conversion (an Optimum MH25V) - when I converted the machine I bought a 7i76, 7i85, 7i74 and 7i73. After reading the documentation about how many handwheel encoders the 7i73 supports I came to the conclusion that it should be no problem to mount three to four additional handwheel encoders in place where the original handwheels were, just to mimic the manual milling. Am I right?

Yes. I have a 7i73 in the apron of my lathe, and have MPGs in (roughly) the original handwheel positions.
photos.app.goo.gl/RQZPDWeU8b353c337

Woah, what a monster of a machine! That looks exactly like what I want. Thanks for the replies so far!

On my 4 axis I have 4 handwheels. Not more selector on the wrong axis
Based on 7i76e and 7i73. Works like a charm.

Have you ever removed the cap of such a handwheel encoder? I wonder if its a big deal to attach a real [big] handwheel, maybe the original ones from the mill [120mm diameter].

Immutef wrote: Have you ever removed the cap of such a handwheel encoder? I wonder if its a big deal to attach a real [big] handwheel, maybe the original ones from the mill [120mm diameter].

I turned 120 rings and fitted them over the hand wheels with a bit of epoxy.