I had been looking for one of these small Emco machines for a few months. They aren't too common, but turn up here and there. I was lucky enough to find one close to home last week on craigslist. The price was right and it didn't have a control which was perfect. After digging into it it looks like it had a fairly rough life. I am going to have to come up with a chuck for it. I was told it had some kind of manual collet chuck being activated by an air cylinder. The motor is a 380VDC shunt type, 6000RPM max. I'll have to replace it with an AC motor and VFD I still have to figure out if it's OK to run a 3600RPM motor at 6000RPM by increasing the frequency. I was fairly set on servo motors with Gecko drives, but am reconsidering. There are 5phase steppers in the machine and 5 phase drivers can be found. The biggest problem with this project will be getting the turret working. I'll be using EMC for control.
Greg
Greg