Motorised Rotary Table

[Carl Wilson]

About two years ago now I decided to motorise one of my rotary tables. I did this to automate indexing operations. My conversion was based on a design by Gary Liming, that had originally appeared in the US magazine "Digital Machinist".

Gary made his own indexing feature. I adapted his design to fit it to my Vertex rotary table. This involved making a mounting for the motor and an enclosure for the electronics.

I thought I'd post it here for interest.

I wrote up the construction and was "lucky" enough to have it appear as an article in Model Engineer's Workshop magazine.

The unit works well. The operator can specify how many divisions they want or what angle they want the table to turn through. There is a jog feature and a continuous rotate feature as well. I'll post some video of it running in the next few days.

 

[eLuSiVeMiTe]

Still need to get mine made.
Have an identical rt.
Life and new lathes get in the way.

 

[Carl Wilson]

indeed they do!

 

[Carl Wilson]

Post script. Two years later and I still haven't got round to making a handle for the opposite end of the stepper motor, for manual operation.

 

[AdrianH]

I have been planning on building one for a while now to use on the CNC plasma. I have a vertex table but knackered the worn gear and spur gear to the extent it scrapped the unit.

I kept the table section and have plans to graft it to the shaft of a 90 degree worm drive gearbox, I have the steppers and can drive it as a 4th Axis from my controller, another of the round tuits.

Adrian

 

[Carl Wilson]

Sounds like a great idea.

 

[Carl Wilson]

A bit more information on the electronics. On the left you can see the 12 volt switch mode power supply that runs everything.

There are three boards stacked together on the right hand side. Top most with the heat sink is the stepper driver board. Next is the Arduino itself and finally an LCD/key pad shield attached to the Arduino.

The buttons on the key pad are piggy backed onto more rugged switches at the front. These are two left/right momentary menu scroll switches and a select button.

 

[Robotstar5]

Is there a foot pedal/switch option?.

 

[Carl Wilson]

There isn't but there could be. It would be very simple.

Forgot to say that if anyone wants the software for this I can let them have a copy. It was written by Gary Liming but it is all open source.

Also I can give more details of the stepper board and LCD shield if people are interested.

 

[eLuSiVeMiTe]

There isn't but there could be. It would be very simple.

Forgot to say that if anyone wants the software for this I can let them have a copy. It was written by Gary Liming but it is all open source.

Also I can give more details of the stepper board and LCD shield if people are interested.

Yes please Carl.
Original plan was arduino as yours is so would be very helpful.

 

[Hopefuldave]

I'd like a copy too, I've a spare 6" vertex table with a worm that needs straightening and a hatful of chunky stepper motors, PSU... Pretty please?
Which issue of MEW, I may have it?

Dave H. (the other one)

 

[Carl Wilson]

No problem. I think the best thing to do is to email a copy of the software to people. Unless someone can come up with a better way. There are a few notes to go with it too, on parameters you can change depending on how you want it to work.

The stepper motor driver board is a type available all over the internet. it utilises the Toshiba TB6560 driver IC.

The LCD and key pad shield for the Arduino is a fairly generic part. However, the software was originally written by Gary Liming to work with a shield got from SainSmart, which is where I obtained mine. My system worked first time, but I know of others who used different makes of shield and there's didn't. The reason for this is that when the buttons on the shield are pressed, the Arduino interprets the input by reading the value of a resistor. Different value resistors used on seemingly identical units made by different manufacturers mean it is neccesary to change parameters in the software to get the button presses recognised. So I would advise using the Sain Smart unit.

Here is the wiring diagram showing the interconnections between the Arduino, power supply, stepper motor, driver board and LCD shield.

TB6960 on the driver board is a typo, it is a TB6560.

 

[eLuSiVeMiTe]

Cheers Carl.
Think thats the same build I took my inspiration from originally I belive.


As the software is open source a download link probably easiest for you
If the original is still live.

 

[Carl Wilson]

No problem. I can't remember which issue of MEW my article was in but it should be easy to find out.

 

[ukracer]

No problem. I think the best thing to do is to email a copy of the software to people. Unless someone can come up with a better way. There are a few notes to go with it too, on parameters you can change depending on how you want it to work.

The stepper motor driver board is a type available all over the internet. it utilises the Toshiba TB6560 driver IC.

View attachment 148944

The LCD and key pad shield for the Arduino is a fairly generic part. However, the software was originally written by Gary Liming to work with a shield got from SainSmart, which is where I obtained mine. My system worked first time, but I know of others who used different makes of shield and there's didn't. The reason for this is that when the buttons on the shield are pressed, the Arduino interprets the input by reading the value of a resistor. Different value resistors used on seemingly identical units made by different manufacturers mean it is neccesary to change parameters in the software to get the button presses recognised. So I would advise using the Sain Smart unit.

View attachment 148946

Here is the wiring diagram showing the interconnections between the Arduino, power supply, stepper motor, driver board and LCD shield.

View attachment 148947


TB6960 on the driver board is a typo, it is a TB6560.

I can host it in my dropbox if needed..

 

[Dutch Welder]

Can I have a copy too?
Could possibly work for my Arduino based welding rotator.

 

[Carl Wilson]

Of course.

 

[Hopefuldave]

Thanks Carl, I'm under the same name @hotmail.com if you wouldn't mind emailing it?

Dave H. (the other one)

 

[Carl Wilson]

I've had a lot of requests for this software. I think the best thing I can do is to include a link to Gary Liming's web page detailing his original project.

Here you will find a link to the Digital Machinist site to download Gary's code.

I appreciate it doesn't seem like a big deal but sending out copies of someone else's code just seems wrong. Slightly fraudulent, like I wrote it. I didn't. I just used it as one might use an off the shelf part like a gear or a bearing.

Here is the link:-

http://liming.org/millindex/

 

[Carl Wilson]

Some shots of it running. Menu consists of 5 items, these being:-

Ratio
Step
Angle
Continuous
Temp

Ratio allows you to input the ratio of the gearing on the table or fixture you are using. So you could have one controller with several tables.

Step mode requests you set the number of divisions required. The unit then rotates the motor each time you depress a switch by the number of steps required for each division.

Angle mode is the same as above except that the input required is an angle to be turned through. Repeatedly depressing the switch will cause the table to turn through the same angle.

In continuous mode the table just rotates constantly at selectable speeds.

Temp mode was for reading temperature sensors on the drive board heat sink on Gary Liming's original design. I did not use this facility.