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Experience has made me absolutely ruthless about electrical interference and grounding problems, because the moment you see unexplained behavior in a machine its hard to trust it again.

If you are...

The numbers are plausible at the moment, but I worry that you will spend six months working full time and discover that you've paid your suppliers, the machine lease, and rent; but have made nothing...

I'm not too concerned about acetal in the design, box ways provide damping so they are very well suited to an aluminum machine. You also have to remember that a ball-screw has only point contact...

Can you provide more information on your previous business selling 3d printer hotends? It is very hard to commit four figures to a first-time Kickstarter.

Also what is the overall machine size.

You are right, but the cartridges you are looking at are already $800+ and by the time you throw in new bearings, a motor, and an air cylinder; plus do all the design work and construction you might...

I'm not sure the PocketNC comparisons are fair. In video, and even in their demo photos, the PocketNC was clearly incapable of cutting aluminum. The surface finish and sound were just disgusting.
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It doesn't sound like you are selecting a work offset to use. Type G54 to G59 into the MDI to activate a work offset.

While you can directly edit the offsets keep in mind that the offset is...

The feature exists in various forms. The most basic would be something like iMachining3d which looks at the stock and target models, and removes the difference.

CamWorks and other...

I think the GIFs make this machine look a lot bigger than it is. I'm visualizing something along the lines of a 7 axis Sherline here. Those steppers are almost certainly Nema17s or smaller, and the...

How does the lathe spindle transition between indexed/simultaneous 5 axis moves and turning speeds? What kind of gearboxes are you using for the rotary axes?

I think the parts and bearings are...

I placed my order in early May 17 and received the kit mid December that year, so it took around eight months in total. I wasn't particularly rushed since my mill is more of a side project at the...

Any news on the May kits yet?

The most obvious difference between low and high end stepper drivers is that the latter will be much quieter. Cheap stepper drives make a loud hum/buzz/whine whereas the expensive stuff is often...

That seems plausible, I honestly just saw the 24V input and assumed it would work like the typical npn inductive switch. Looking at the datasheet I thought the 20ma limit applied to the...

I'm pretty sure my ETS arrived dead, but can you guys take a look at my wiring?

Something is definitely happening because the current draw goes from 4ma to 0ma when activated, but orange/brown are...

Can you give me some pointers on wiring it? I have the 6-wire NO version (sk-66a-kc) and I'm putting 24V across red/grey but the brown/orange circuit seems to be open and there is no LED regardless...

The simplest solution is to swap the motor for a stepper.

You can run the servo with a suitable drive but it will be a PITA. You can get a used Parker VIX (Series AH/AE/IE/IH) off ebay for maybe...

The general name for that kind of shaft is called a spline. Every manufacturer has their own spline profile, so you need to identify which spline the servo uses and then see if anyone sells a...

I've decided to go with the larger 1.5HP motor as it seems to have limited drawbacks. I'm fairly confident I could survive on 3/4HP, but if shedding 15lb has limited upside there is no point taking...

Since you are starting with a doughty drive most of your design choices are pretty limited. Essentially you want to build a regular router table, perhaps more rigid than usual to help offset some of...

I've been doing most of the math with the motor running at its rated speed (3600) or faster. For example 3/8" Endmill slotting 0.4" deep in aluminum at 6000RPM/12IPM calculates to 0.4HP, which is...

Hydraulic intensifiers are an option but I'm not sure if the advantages are really worth the additional cost.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2BmuUabeJ0

I'm looking into doing a VFD conversion and two of the best options seem to be the 3/4Hp Leeson 192047 and the 1 1/2Hp Leeson 192048.

I've noticed a lot of conversions use 1.5-3Hp motors, but they...

Closed loop stepper covers a very wide range of configurations.

Almost all the commercial closed loop steppers I have seen are far closer to a servo than a stepper. They use the encoder for...

Since you can always fall back to Step/Dir mode, virtually all motion controllers will be sufficient. If you want to close the servo loop on the controller side you will need an analog interface. I...

G-code is almost never shared for several reasons. It is machine, material, and cutter specific. Incorrect (or incorrectly used) g-code has the potential to do serious damage to the machine.

At...

Having an arduino communicate over serial is fairly trivial on its own, but integrating all these features suddenly turns it into a substantial project.

Frankly I think linuxcnc would be the...

It is very unusual for a mill table to be out to that extent. It is also very difficult to measure only the flatness of the table without including other sources of error. Unless you have put a...

Well something somewhere must be loose.

I'd put an indicator on the end of the leadscrew to see if it has any axial play. If the bearings/couplers are loose the screw could be moving back and...

What exactly is path pilot? Just a skin and GUI on top of stock LinuxCNC?