[vpl]

I've been in the process of "building" a cnc router. Until I ran across this unit. I got from a guy locally. I believe it to a decommissioned wood type router. It was modified to be a really big printer. Then scrapped. Its seems to be about 80%+ complete. There is no stepper or linear drive on z. There's no computer, software, or vacuum source, but most of the electronics are there. Being I have never seen a complete build all the way through there will will me more stuff for sure. But the bulk of the work is done and likely better and or quicker than I could have made it. Does anyone know what brand this might have been?? It has a usable table size of 4X8++. z is 3.5". Anyone have any ideas on what router would be applicable to this size table? It has a single Mdrive 34 on x and y. There are to racks running the length of the table on each side. One stepper is on an axle with gear/belt reduction at each end to run pinion drive gears on both sides. Not exactly the way I would have built it but for the price.......
I guess I'm fully committed now. Hit me up if you think you may have any parts I may need or maybe you just have some friendly advice. I'm, pretty much flying by the seat of my pants. Thanks for looking!
Vince

[DIYaholic]

vpl,

That's a lot of metal there. You may be in over your head, trying to get that behemoth hunk of metal up and running. I would be willing to take it off your hands and relieve you of the arduous task. LOL.

Nice score. It will be fun to bring such a machine back to life.

Good luck with the "rebuild" and remember to post tons and tons of pic's & vid's.

Randy,

[CarveOne]

That's a real nice score. I'm jealous of just the frame part of it. The new (or replacement) NEMA 34 step motors will require some extra cash and any necessary replacement drivers to run them will be more expensive but the results will be well worth it. If you got it for free (or not much money) then you will have indeed gotten lucky no matter how much you have to spend on it.

CarveOne

[cyclestart]

Mdrive ? A Google search turns up stepper motors with integrated controller, encoder and power supply. Interesting. Have you ruled out reusing these units ?

If you got this thing for anywhere even close to scrap price it's the cnczone find of the year so far.

[vpl]

The new (or replacement) NEMA 34 step motors will require some extra cash and any necessary replacement drivers to run them will be more expensive but the results will be well worth it.

CarveOne

Would you take a minute and clarify? Thanks!
Vince

[vpl]

Mdrive ? A Google search turns up stepper motors with integrated controller, encoder and power supply. Interesting. Have you ruled out reusing these units ?
I want to use what I have. I only need to bu one stepper hopefully.

If you got this thing for anywhere even close to scrap price it's the cnczone find of the year so far.

The guy I bought it from bought 2 at scrap price. He sold one to me to recoup or make some $$. He kept the nicer or bigger one. You couldn't buy the x axis linear motion rails for what I paid for it. No I didn't get the cnczone deal of the year. But I did score. Just from a time standpoint, I feel I'm way ahead. There are several different components that would cost way more than what I paid for it.......

[vpl]

vpl,

That's a lot of metal there. You may be in over your head, trying to get that behemoth hunk of metal up and running.


Good luck with the "rebuild" and remember to post tons and tons of pic's & vid's.

Randy,

Randy,
Yep I agree-in over my head(no lol about it). That's why I'm here!!! I don't even know where to start. What fun!!!
I'll post as money and time allow this project to move forward. Thanks for your post.
Vince
(ps If I just can't manage this project there's plenty of scrapper right here in the pacific nw who would come take it free of charge!!-lol)

[cornbinder23]

What part of the PacNW are you in? I would love to come "scrap" it out for you lol.
Looks like an excellent start for a great machine, I am in the process of modeling my next build, 4x8 table, right after I finish my lathe conversion. Its funny, after I finished my mill cnc conversion and flood "VMC" enclosure I was sure I was going to be making parts left and right for my other hobbies ie: motorcycles, guns, nitro rc etc.. but I have been having so much fun with the machines I cant stop working on my "next build" long enough to even think about those other hobbies. Too many toys too little time


JTCUSTOMS

[CarveOne]

Would you take a minute and clarify? Thanks!
Vince

The Mdrive 34 label indicates to me that it is probably a NEMA 34 size step motor. Even without the integrated drive circuitry that the one in your photo seems to have they will be almost twice the cost of a NEMA 23 size motor that many of us hobbyist builders use. They also draw more current, so a higher wattage (more expensive) power supply is needed.

If you only need to buy one motor for the Z axis to get it working again it won't be so bad. Mach3 will run on older computers with a built in parallel port or from a plug-in parallel port card, so you can maybe find a free or low cost used computer for this machine.

CarveOne

[harryn]

Hi, there is no one here that wouldn't buy it for 2x what you paid for it, and be happy.

The M Drive is a commercial version of how ims does their drivers and motors on the high end stuff. If you think about it, what could be more ideal for a system designer than being able to mount the power supply, motor, and driver all in one unit ? Not much. It eliminates a ton of cables, racks, assembly, and part numbers. For a commercial user, m drives are just about ideal. The only downside is cost, but for you, that is a non issue on this unit.

The dual side rack and pinion witht the shaft will greatly reduce the potential for racking, so that is all good - as in the correct way to do it.

As far as the router itself, you have a lot of options, but for getting started, I would recommend a router that has 3 useful features:
- Variable speed - very useful for different wood cutting conditions
- Ramped speed control (so it starts up in a ramp, not just on / off - much safer, especially for hand held use)
- Closed loop speed control - keeps the rotation speed constant under a wide range of loads, vs the speed changing under load.

I have a Bosch router with these features - love it. There probably are other brands with these features, I just haven't had to look further than this one.

[harryn]

Can you show us some more pics of the back of the Y axis. It almost looks like that one might be a belt drive setup, but I can't tell for sure.

[lovebugjunkie]

You may not have gotten the “steal” of the year here on the zone but I bet you come close.

I gave a local welding shop a RFQ on a table using 2x2 steel half the size of yours, they came back with “I'll give you a good deal at $2800). Now I have no idea if this was a good deal or not but I told the guy for that price I'll buy a welder and give it a go myself.

So yes, you most likely got a great deal.

Good luck on your build, will be following it.

[vpl]

Can you show us some more pics of the back of the Y axis. It almost looks like that one might be a belt drive setup, but I can't tell for sure.

I'm not really sure which way is which on a router. Y is the short way on my mill...are we working with the same orientation? Let me know. I'd be happy to upload some pics... + I'll be on the same page with the x y orientation..thanks Vince (noob)

[vpl]

Hi, there is no one here that wouldn't buy it for 2x what you paid for it, and be happy.

The M Drive is a commercial version of how ims does their drivers and motors on the high end stuff. If you think about it, what could be more ideal for a system designer than being able to mount the power supply, motor, and driver all in one unit ? Not much. It eliminates a ton of cables, racks, assembly, and part numbers. For a commercial user, m drives are just about ideal. The only downside is cost, but for you, that is a non issue on this unit.

The dual side rack and pinion witht the shaft will greatly reduce the potential for racking, so that is all good - as in the correct way to do it.

As far as the router itself, you have a lot of options, but for getting started, I would recommend a router that has 3 useful features:
- Variable speed - very useful for different wood cutting conditions
- Ramped speed control (so it starts up in a ramp, not just on / off - much safer, especially for hand held use)
- Closed loop speed control - keeps the rotation speed constant under a wide range of loads, vs the speed changing under load.

I have a Bosch router with these features - love it. There probably are other brands with these features, I just haven't had to look further than this one.

Thanks for your input.
I need a stepper for z so my guess is stick with the commercial 34 M Drive? The electronics are already set up for it........ (I'm cringing)How much do you figure one stepper could cost?? I looked on the website but didn't see a cost and I doubt they are going to answer their phone today...

I'm a huge Bosch fan and would tend to go in that direction. It nice that you pointed out the basics needed features. It may be old hat to some but its fresh info to me....

[vpl]

this is where i really need help

Any urls, posts, basic info or ??
Thanks
Vince

[CNCMAN172]

VPL,

Nice score. The picture of the NEMA 34 stepper with integrated driver looks interesting. If you could find some documentation that might be the way to go on that machine for the least amount of money. Do you have one of these steppers on the X and Y? The Z axis looks like it is not complete you need a ballscrew and a motor, but it was hard to tell because there was no close photo in that area.

The driver appears to have a square plug with maybe ten contacts, my guess is these is the input control or possible encoder outputs. I think I can see the power wires leaving the motor do they go back to the control cabinet?

Your control cabinet looks stripped with the exception of the transformer. If you search CNCzone you will find many example of power supplies that could drive your unit and you have some key elements already.

You have a nice control box on the side of your mill, and expensive option and yours appears very nice.

The frame looks well made and who every put the rails and gantry on the table appears to have done this the correct way very nicely done. The motor appear to use drive belts to go down to the cog rails on the sides as well as the X axis across the gantry.

This project honestly would not take a huge amout of effort to get moving. You should check to see if anyone on CNCzone lives near you as having someone who has done this a time or two can really help accelerate the project.

I would recommend MACH3 or EMC2 for your control software and you can use a very reasonable Windows machine to run either software. The EMC2 is actually on the LINUX platform but you can get versions that will boot directly on a PC and that software is free where MACH3 is about $175.

There are large numbers of people in both camps and they are both very successful. MACH3 is a commerical product with many plugins for all kinds of hardware and you can download a trial version that will let you test your machine and run about 500 lines of Gcode. Either way you will be happy.

Both pieces of software will need access to an IO port and MACH3 uses a standard parallel port with a driver card which can be purchased on ebay and many other sites for $50 - $60 without drivers. These type cards provide step and direction information to your stepper drivers. In your case it would appear they used NEMA 34 nice heavy duty units with integrated drivers.

Lots of people on the Zone can help point you in the right direction and help you along the way. Enjoy your project and keep posting lots of pictures it helps keep things interesting.

Good Luck

CNCMAN172

[wireb]

Can you take a better photo of the label on the side of the stepper motor just under where the cable comes in.

I think the hookup information you need is on that label (I could just barely make out some of the pin names)

[cyclestart]

Those Mdrives will add some complexity to this project. They also look to be an older model than the current offerings. A search for anyone using these with EMC2 came up empty. A better bet for help is Mach3 users. You have some research ahead, hopefully it's more fun than frustration.

If there's a power supply on those motors it will be for the encoder etc, not for powering the motors themselves, or at least that's my suspicion. You'll need to know the current firmware settings. Anyone know why these motors have encoders ? Closed-loop capability ? Slaving extra drives ?

[CNCMAN172]

VPL,

Here is a document that will help you wire up those drivers. This version is a little newer than yours but it use the same connector and my guess is everything else is the same as well. Note this is a step and direction unit and will work just fine. They can be interfaced with a computer over the parallel port and they also support an SPI interface which is just a serial interface often used on many microcontrollers.

http://servosystems.com/ims_mdrive34speed.pdf


As far as the control cabinet goes you need to take a much closer picture to determine exactly what parts are still left in the cabinet. I could see the main transformer, but your will probably need a full bridge rectifier, several large capacitors, etc. There is another guy in who scored a huge table who has been rebuilding it for probably eight months now and he had much more work that you have in front of you. You might find reading his thread useful as he as asked many of the questions you are going to ask.

Of particular interest is the control cabinet and the power supply. I think several people posted full schematics and locations to get key components. Hopefully you will find it an interesting read and learn along the way. Hope this helps.

Build Thread 15' long 8' wide Ex-Boeing CNC *REBUILD* - CNCzone.com-The Largest Machinist Community on the net!


CNCMAN172
Russ

[juzwuz]

Looks like most of the mechanical components are there for a great machine! Couldn't quite tell what shape the z-axis is in. Seems to be missing parts. Anyway, if the mdrive steppers give you trouble you can always pick up a regular stepper motor and a driver (like a Gecko). I've also got some spare parts in my garage that might be useful for your build. Where in WA are you located?