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Almost finished the ToDo: list over the weekend: Fabricated the three metal brackets to hold the encoders over each of the hand wheel shafts. These are made from 1/16" x 3/4" aluminum flat bought...

Here's the box after painting and with some of the parts assembled. The blue metal flake Rustoleum turned out nice and everything fits well. Note the day glow green bezel taped temporarily in...

If I recall correctly, the radial load is largely carried by the ball bearing nut riding on the ball screw. The thrust bearings contrain the ball nut vertically as the ball nut is driven to move...

Hello, started following your build, looks like a great start. I checked your math and get the same, (except typo on units): .00127mm/step, or 787.4 steps/mm. --md

Got the pocket cut for the rotary switch and mitered the edges of the display panel, and also cut the side panels. Took a few minutes to figure out how to fixture for gluing it up, but it worked...

I have a good stock of 1/2" birch cabinet ply, and for making a prototype it seemed like a good idea to use something failrly cheap and easily repaired or replaced. My mill spindle speed is a little...

Nice progress, coming along great. Saw the note at the end of #5 video, sorry for your loss. --md

The front panel was cut from a piece of the 1/2" birch plywood and mounted to the mill table on top of some clean scrap pieces to serve as sacrificial spacers. I used the front edge of the mill...

Graham, hadn't checked back in a while-the mill looks really great, nice to see it all working. --md

Nice video, good luck on the build, I'll be following along. Jealous of that big mill... --md

With the hand wheels finished, I've been working on making the g-code to cut the housing front panel bearing pockets, switch holes, and drill pattern for the bearing retainer and encoder bracket. ...

The remaining hand wheels have been finished, and I got on to making the handles. On a related side note, on Cyber Monday, Enco usually runs their 20% off with free shipping offers, and this year I...

Got a little time to get started working on the hand wheel shafts. The final design deviates a little from the model in that there is a shoulder at the end that connects to the hand wheel. This...

Yeah, sorry about that. I worry about the posts getting too long, and adding paragraph breaks makes it longer...I'll try to improve it when I can, and to break into smaller posts. Thanks for...

Thanks. Did you make the mods to your machine? --md

These little machines cost very little, relatively speaking, so the Chinese will use their tooling to the maximum, and beyond. This means that if you are unlucky, you get a machine that has...

If you think the gibs are the problem, I would start with a new set of gibs. You can get a complete set from Little Machine Shop for not much money. Take your machine apart and clean thoroughly,...

I decided to tackle making the hand wheels first. My model drawings show these as single piece wheel/shaft, but it's much easier to make the wheels and shafts separately, especially on the...

This post is an overview of the electronics and mechanical workings of the controller. Each hand wheel is connected via a shaft to a rotary encoder inside the box. I picked 24 step encoders with...

A while back I evaluated a friend's < $100 pendant controller and found it to be nice but with a few shortcomings. Some of the other pendants from VistaCNC, at almost $300 are very nice (from...

After a long pause I'm starting back to work on the mill. In the interim I've used the machine to make some small parts for a few projects and even for some wood working where I needed some accurate...

Hoss, congrats on passing the 1,000,000 views mark! Been following your thread for years, great job keeping it interesting. --md

Is any of the VFD wiring running near the stepper motor wiring? Noise still seems to be a likely cause. Re-position cabling, and shielding the step/direction signals from your BOB to the stepper...

You're welcome. A couple notes on some things I noticed in the drawings: 1) The 10mm ID x 12mm OD spacers used on either side of the bearing can be made, but I bought those off the shelf from a...

There has been some interest in plans for my LMS conversion, so I'm posting some of the requested drawings for the X and Y axes parts. These drawings should be very close to what has been presented...

You should contact LMS and ask their advice if you haven't already. I've found them to be very helpful in resolving problems. --md

Looks like the motor side coupler tried to turn against a locked shaft and was forced by the insert up the motor shaft? The set screws must have dragged a burr that has wedged it all tight. I was...

I'm using the sub-miniature switches from McMaster-Carr, here: McMaster-Carr. Mcmaster costs more, but where I'm located I usually get overnight delivery for ground UPS shipping cost. It's a good...

One quick thing to try is to put your meter on the Direction pin and see if it goes High/Low when you press the opposite movement arrow keys. If you see nothing, then the problem is in the parallel...

Nice build. Did you mean to post here, or were you trying to start a new thread? To start a new thread, go up one level to Benchtop Machines and click on Post New Thread. If that isn't visible,...