I've been busy all week so I haven't had much time to work on the new machine. I did have three of the older machines running all day every day though.

Today I decided to get the PDB installed and maybe get a start on the ATC.

First off I have to say I actively dislike the black cube power supply for the PDB. Yuck. How inelegant. I went and grabbed a DIN mounted 12V PS out of my supplies cabinet and routed an extra pair of wires down the mill column into the electrical cabinet... then I read the part about disconnecting the ugly little power cube when its being used with an ATC. Ok, looks like I can put the fancy power supply away. Wasn't much room to mount it to the back plane in the cabinet anyway. I'm curious to see what the power solution will be when I get to the ATC.
The instructions are mostly quite good, but a lot of little things they say to do are already done. Drill a hole. Nope its already been drilled. Even the PDB itself sort of fell into place. I think I spent more time looking at it from different angles to make sure it was lined up right than I did mounting it. Level was pretty darn good. Alignment was too. I know the alignment was just luck, but still. Everything went together nicely. Even pulling the wire through the column wasn't to bad, but I have spent more than half my life pulling wires through hard to pull places. I could see how it could be kind of tricky. Might be nice if Tormach left a pull string tied off in there for folks who might struggle. I just used a fiberglass wire pulling rod myself.

Most everything fit together just like it was supposed to. There were only a couple little things. The zip ties are a cheap soft plastic kind. I had a couple break before they were even pulled snug. Fortunately I have bags and bags of good zip ties on the shelf left over from various jobs. I expect the zip ties would have lasted indefinitely if I hadn't tried to snug them down firmly.

The ends of the air lines from the control box were cut fast and sloppy with a dull tool. They were a little mashed, and not cut straight. I was actually surprised by that. The little short pieces that tie the fittings on the front of the PDB together were all cut straight clean and crisp.
No big deal. I have a couple razor sharp plastic tube cutters. I just squared up the end to make it nice and neat. A fresh razor blade would have done the job as well.

Nope haven't operated it yet. I want to read the ATC instructions now to see how the power is managed rather than use my PS or hook up the cube.

Somethings I wonder about too. When I did the automatic oiler installation I actually had to drill a hole, and enlarge a hole. LOL. However I did not need to use the included extra oil line. (Maybe when I install the splash pan and enclosure? ) The oil line on the machine already reached the forward most mounting location for the oiler with several inches of slack to allow for neat routing. .

I don't know if I am going to get used to the Tormach jog controller. It works just fine, and I suppose if I hadn't gotten used to a hand wheel type pendant it would be easier to get used to, but I am thinking I'm going to try to find out how practical it will be to use something like the VistaCNC iMach III P1AS pendant I am used to. Lee says he has some customers using them under PathPilot. I guess once I get everything else done I can worry about that.

Overall I am rather enjoying working on this machine. Other than my initial bad controller I've found very little to complain about, and quite a lot that is executed nicely.