120 Family

EmcoTurn 120/220/Compact 6 lathes are excellent large benchtop CNC machines made in Austria from the mid 80s to early 90s. Many of them have shown up in the hands of hobbyists in the past few years as community colleges etc. move on to more modern machines.

The 120/220/Compact 6 are very similar. All models use 5 phase steppers on the axes. Models with a 'P' suffix have a pneumatic chuck drawbar and tailstock. Compact 6 was the first model produced in this range. It's spindle uses a pair of taper roller bearings with 21mm spindle bore. Compact 6 was rated 2kW, 4000RPM. 120, 120P, and 220P were made later and had minor changes including automatic central way lubrication. 120 still had taper roller bearings, but P models had ball bearings in the head stock and a larger 26mm spindle bore. The 120P draw bar actuator does not have a through bore. Both have 2.6kW (3.5HP) and 5000RPM motors, though the 120 was rated 4000 RPM. Turn 220 has a 31mm spindle bore (25.5mm through drawbar) and a duplex pair of super precision angular contact bearings. Specifications put the 220 at 2.6kW, 6300RPM. The 220 axis specifications are the same the 120. The 220 has a concrete filled base with a much deeper chip pan and optional parts catcher.

Originally they used either an EmcoTronic T1 or TM02 control. Outside Europe, a transformer was also required to supply 380V 3-phase to these controls. The age of the controls as well as the need for the transformer (the control and/or transformer is often missing by the time a home machinist buys the lathe) has lead to a lot of people performing retrofits to Mach 3 or LinuxCNC.

Newer versions PC Turn 120, 125, and 105 are appearing in home shops. These also have the same basic configuration, but are equipped with 3 phase steppers for axis drive and use the Emco PC based control running WinNC. These machines have interchangeable keypad interfaces for teaching industrial controls, like Fanuc 0T, 21T, Siemens, and others. These machines had similar options as the 120, but are rarely equipped with anything other than the manual chuck and manual tailstock. The spindle motor was changed to 3 phase induction and VFD drive, rated 2.8kW, 4000 spindle RPM. These machines use an interface card in the ISA slot of the PC. If the card is missing or defective it's costly to replace also making retrofit a good solution.

Emco Turn 320 is very similar in specification to Turn 220, but has 2.8kW AC spindle motor, AC servo motors on the axis, Sauter bi-directional turret, and is equipped with Fanuc or Siemens control.

The point of this wiki is to share information and keep people from reinventing the wheel in their own retrofits. It covers these major parts of the lathe:
 * Spindle motor
 * Axis motors
 * Toolchanger
 * Spindle encoder
 * Chuck