Revamping/upgrading old engraving machine

Hi all!

So about a year and a half ago now I offered to rebuild an old broken down engraving machine my dad had at his company. It's a New Hermes Vanguard V3400. It's huge, and heavy, and slow. It's pictured below.

He gave it to me with a blown out motion controller. The PC it came with still functioned, but neither of us were intent on keeping that. I brought it back to life with an Arduino, some stepper controllers, the original power supply from the motion controller, and a Raspberry Pi for the user control, with some nice free software for doing his engraving. It took awhile but I got it done. But then... his company went bust before I was quite ready to hand it over.

So now I'm stuck with an engraving machine that's not much use to me. What would be of use to me, however, is a full-blown CNC. I'd love to be able to build brackets from aluminum and wood, and mill out PCBs for other projects I work on. I did a few upgrades so far, my dad sent me new X and Y axis screws that he found in a box at his company, and I bought a couple 2.8 amp NEMA 23 motors. I have a few questions though.

First, he axes are lead screws, and the nuts are entirely plastic. If I wanted to, say, mill out pieces of aluminum, would the lead screw fail? Would it be relatively easy to upgrade to a ball screw?

Another thing. The spindle motor is in the CNC housing, and a series of belts connect it to the spindle. The belt doesn't feel very tight and it runs at a fixed, high RPM, for engraving. The big question I have is, will I need to get rid of the belt drive and mount the spindle motor on the Z axis, or can I keep it the way it is?

Lastly, GRBL. What is the consensus on it in the community? Now that I'm not limited by my dad's requirements I'm tempted to purchase a proper motion controller, but GRBL did seem to work alright for engraving. What do other people like to use?


I do apologize if there's write-ups on all this that I'm not missing. I'm no CNC expert, in fact when I started this project I barely even knew what the acronym stood for. But any guidance would be greatly appreciated. :)

Shouldn't this thread go back into the CNC router forum?

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Originally Posted by Arjay

Shouldn't this thread go back into the CNC router forum?

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Yeah I don't understand why it's not considered DIY, the only thing I haven't changed on this machine is the case and lead screws and spindle...

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Originally Posted by katemonster

Yeah I don't understand why it's not considered DIY, the only thing I haven't changed on this machine is the case and lead screws and spindle...

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I suspect it's because the post started out with the word "engraver." Moderators, please move to the cnc router forum.

I have one like this that I modified also. used the original power supply and the stepper driver for years, but recently changed those out also. I also removed the spindle motor and mounted a RC Outdrive motor, meant for RC airplane. Works great.

I have new and used parts for the 3000 and 3200.

I have used these machines for over 20 years. I may be able to answer questions or provide schematics.