ELS and more standard on a Hobby machine

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

This video of the latest offering from Weiss just popped up on Youtube. If you are quick you might just have enough time to ask Santa for one.

Has ELS Electronic taper turning and electronic ball/radius cutting.

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

Impressive!

Though for that sophistication I’d expect a separate feed-shaft to reduce lead-screw wear.

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

Too much play in a feed shaft and apron gears & rack for it to do some of the simultaneous 2-axis stuff

Would be interesting to know if it has a conventional lead screw or hopefully a ball screw.

[BazyleParticipant @bazyle]

The electronics will fail before the leadscrew and then it’s scrap anyway.

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

That’s what people said when I bought my Warco (probably Weiss) 13 years ago and it’s only needed one set of brushes in all that time. Same with the rest of the Chinese offerings in my workshop including the CNC all are still going strong with just a LED needing replacing on the X3 in it’s 17 years of use.

[bernard towersParticipant @bernardtowers37738]

Is it me or is it turning the taper the reverse way to usual?

[Nick WheelerParticipant @nickwheeler]

You could say the same about cars, which are much more complicated. But it’s the mechanical parts that fail before they wear out.

 

And just what is so complicated about a couple of stepper motors and a simple ECU?

 

A proper, factory installed ELS is the final step in bringing ordinary lathes kicking and screaming into the twentieth century.

[John HaineParticipant @johnhaine32865]

Couple of steppers, drivers, and a processor probably significantly cheaper than a screwcutting gearbox.

[bernard towers]

On bernard towers Said:

Is it me or is it turning the taper the reverse way to usual?

Probably depends on the job, I’ve cut male and female tapers that are thinner at the tailstock end and also ones that are thicker at the tailstock end even on the same piece such as a venturi. So I don’t see a conventional and reversed way to do it.

Looks to be even better than the ELS systems we see being retro fiytted as it also backs out the tool and puts on the next cut, though the old school boys won’t like the straight in feed rather than setting over the topslide😈

[NealebParticipant @nealeb]

What would it need to take it to full CNC operation? All the basics are there – just add gcode input and full user interface? They have currently gone down the route of adding a lot of pseudo-manual electronic controls and a simple menu-driven interface. With CNC you would offset the additional cost by dropping the DRO.

As someone mentioned, though, electronics and simple mechanics are probably cheaper to manufacture than complex mechanics. Spoken by someone in the middle of renovating a similar size CNC lathe – and it’s a whole lot easier to strip and replace the old electronics with new than to do the mechanical equivalent which is possibly the answer to the “what if it goes wrong in 20 years?” question.

[jaCK HobsonParticipant @jackhobson50760]

My ELS on my myford is brilliant. I’m not a very good machinist – the ELS is more accurate than I am. Better for me than CNC as I’m a bodger, not a planner, and for this the ELS is the perfect tool. I find the DRO in combination is brilliant as well (thought I might have wasted my money on two similar things, but they work perfectly together).

 

I will put the Weiss on next years christmas list.

[Jason BallamyParticipant @jasonballamy]

Really the way he entered the parameters for the thread and taper are no different to “conversational” CNC and various built in Wizards where you don’t need to use CAM or write g-code you simply put a few numbers into the wizard for taper, arc, thread, etc and the machine works out the rest.

 

[John HinkleyParticipant @johnhinkley26699]

They must be anticipating further expansion otherwise why would there be a “Reserve” position on the multi-position switch top right of the main panel?

John

 

[Martin ConnellyParticipant @martinconnelly55370]

It looks to me like it has a ball screw hidden in the spiral cover, looking at the Z axis motion the motion starts before the handwheel then catches up. If the rack was driving the Z axis you would expect the handwheel to move first and the carriage motion to follow. I expect there is a stepper underneath the cross slide cover on the hidden side for the X axis motion.

Martin C

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