[BrownDesert]

Well, I have been lurking around here (cnczone) for a few years, and finally got around to signing up and posting something! I actually already have my CNC mill project “done”, but I thought I'd go ahead and upload a bunch of pictures that I took along the way, and write up how I did things, and maybe help out someone on their build. I've been around CNC mills and Lathes a good bit, since CNC programming and operation is what both of my brothers do for a living. I have always been amazed by what you can do with a CNC mill, and I would always scrutinize just how those machines were put together, and say to myself “I could build one of those...” and I was right. Nice. Of course it has helped enormously that I got all kinds of great ideas, solutions, and inspiration here on the 'zone. Oh, and LinuxCNC/EMC2... that software rocks! Many thanks to all the hard working LinuxCNC developers. I'm not quite sure where to start, but I guess I have to post the un-crating pictures first...


...and a “what it looks like now” teaser picture, too.

Oh, and any advice on how to effectively post pictures here would be very helpful... I want some way to have a caption/description on each picture... I suppose clickable thumbnails embedded in the text would be best. A picture is only worth a thousand words when you have a description to know what you are looking at! I've got a lot of pictures to post (229, and counting), and I'd like to make them easy to view in this thread.
-Austin

[Wallerawang]

Hi Austin
Looks good - I can't wait to see more of your photo's and read what you did and why you did it that way.
Steve

[BrownDesert]

Thanks, Steve... always good to know folks are reading what I am typing. I think you will find I did do at least a few things in “different” ways on this build. Of course everyone has their own motivations, and hence the reason no two machine builds are quite alike. As for me, I'm a bit cheap, and I don't mind reinventing the wheel, if the method intrigues me and I'm always looking for the best bang for the buck. I was just contemplating what to post next, and I thought I'd mention a little bit about the shipping of a machine like this... it is expensive (especially from southeastern Canada to Texas), but there is significant savings to be had by having it shipped to a local freight terminal for pickup, rather than shipped to your house. Of course you have to have a truck, and some means of getting the machine out of the truck, and onto the stand. Also it is nice to not have to wait around for the delivery guy to show up. Having to move this heavy machine around made me awful glad I made the forklift forks for my tractor... Time and money very well spent there. Oh, and I think there ought to be a separate forum section for larger “benchtop” machines like this and RF45's and such, since they are really more of a “stand top” machine, and in a whole different class than the mini-mills. I can't imagine putting this machine on any normal work bench, especially when it is doing 160IPM rapid moves. It shakes around more than I'd like, as-is. It is a pretty good sized machine, with a large work envelope to match. What I wound up with after adding all the CNC related hardware was X=27.103” Y=10.960” Z=19.257”. I could have gained about 2” in X, 1-2” in Y, and about 4” in Z, but it just didn't seem worth the trouble, or worth the compromises. I wish I had extended the Z travel down to be able to take the spindle all the way to the table, without extending the quill. The reason I don't want to extend the quill is that it may interfere with 3 of my future upgrades: A) powered drawbar B) spindle encoder for rigid tapping and C) belt drive conversion. Oh, and it makes the machine somewhat less rigid. I guess I'll get back to the pictures now... trying to do this in chronological order so I don't get on a huge tangent. Anyway, the first picture is showing how high the spindle can go relative to the table. The second picture is lifting the head off of the machine with an engine hoist. I didn't ever weigh it, but I've heard the head alone weighs about 200 pounds, and that seems about right from handling it. The third and fourth pictures show the rust on both the back of the head and the z axis slide. All of the machined surfaces on this machine had significant rust on them, the only parts that were not rusty were the ground surfaces (the ways, table, quill, and spindle). There is rust under all of the places where I've taken paint off, too. Basically it seems that the machine parts were cast, then machined, and then stored outside for a month, or maybe in a warehouse close to the ocean, or something, but there is a good bit of rust. The fifth and sixth pictures show some of the parts as I was taking the machine apart. Yup, I took it apart without even making any chips with it, though I did run the spindle. I didn't want to get it all coated in metal shavings before I had to work on it, though between the Iron dust and casting sand, I didn't really save much effort trying to “keep it clean” since it was already dirty. I guess that is all for the moment, thanks for reading.
-Austin

[ViperTX]

Austin,

What part of TX are you in, I'm in Round Rock outside of Austin.

What did you save on shipping to the freight terminal versus the home delivery?

Thanks,
Paul

[DRock]

Thank you for taking your time to give back to the community!

Pictures are awesome and it is always great to see how others choose to build their machines.

[TiagoSantos]

Damn it must be nice to have a shop like that! Kinda makes my 10x10 basement feel even more cramped

[jason_b]

Looks good Austin. That looks like one heck of a motor on there!

I picked mine up at the freight terminal too, partially for cost, but mostly for conveience.

Jason

[CNC-Joe]

Thanks for sharing the pictures, Austin. It sure turned out to be a beauty of a machine. Where do you purchase an MTW machine? How much did it cost?
Is it an R8 collet? or ?

Looks like all it needs is flood coolant and an automatic tool changer..

[CNC-Joe]

How about a close up of your control panel, and a wiring diagram?
I see some things in there that I'm not quite sure what they are.
Looks like you're running Gecko 320 or 320X servo drivers.. not sure what the boards are on the RHS....

[BrownDesert]

Wow, lots of replies since I posted last... let me try and go through and answer all the questions...
Paul, I live near Lubbock, so, not really all that close, probably about a 6 hour drive. I actually bought the milling machine in June 2011, and unfortunately I don't remember the shipping cost quotes as I got them by phone (checked my old emails, no luck there). Anyhow, I may be wrong, but I have a notion in my head that it was around $100-$200 cheaper to go to the freight terminal. It seems like the total for shipping and duties was about $500-$550USD. I was originally going to buy from Industrial Hobbies, but they were out of stock, and so I decided to check out Machine Tools Warehouse, which actually cost just about the same once the currency conversion and shipping costs were all tallied up. One little surprise was that my credit card company charged me a $30 fee for the international purchase.
DRock, thanks for the nice words... I figure a little time on my part may very well save some folks a ton of time/frustration/expense/etc... and this is kinda fun, anyhow.
TiagoSantos, it is nice to have this shop... it is also where my wife and I live. We built it about 4 years ago, it is 40'x60'x16', and we have a 20'x30' apartment in one end of it, so the shop area is 40'x40'. One of these days, we are going to get around to building our “real” house... so far it is just concrete footings and the sewer plumbing... some year.
Jason_b, yea, it is a pretty stout motor... it is a 3Hp, 3 phase, 4 pole, 1750RPM motor that I got for free because it was supposedly broken. Lucky for me, it works just fine It used to power the fan on a commercial air handler, and you wouldn't believe how much dust I blew out of it. Makes me wonder if they even used filters on that A/C unit, sheesh. I'll definitely be going to the freight terminal any time I get something shipped to me from now on... sure beats waiting all day, or having to rush home at a moment's notice.
CNC-Joe, thanks... I think it's kinda “purdy” myself, but I'm a little partial. Hee hee. I just need to make up some decals so it looks like a real VMC. It has a cover to go over the electronics box, but I've left it off so I can see and mess with the VFD, and also see the LED's on some of the componets in there. It either needs to have hinges, or be clear... Hmmmm.:idea: I got the milling machine from http://www.machinetoolswarehouse.com/ They are a distributor of machine tools in Canada. The machine is model MD001, and it seems to be basically identical to the machine that Industrial Hobbies sells. Some speculate that they are made in the same factory in China, but who knows. It has an R8 spindle, though I mostly use endmill holders rather than collets. Endmill holders are nice for easier tool changes, and they allow for having repeatable z height whenever you put the same tool back in later. Enco has some pretty good sale prices on them from time to time, too. It already has flood coolant, with a 15 gallon reservoir and a 1/2Hp pump from harbor freight. That little pump has some serious flow and pressure... I have two 1/4” flexible nozzles mounted by the spindle, and it can run both of those while maintaining about 20-25psi. I'd love to build a tool changer for it, but really if I ever have to machine enough stuff to justify that, I'd likely have enough money to buy a commercial VMC that has one already. I'll do another post about the electronics, with pictures... I'll make that my next reply, soon.
Here are a few more pictures of the mill being disassembled. Also, a couple of using my brother's round column mill to machine the oil grooves into the way surfaces. I made all of the parts using that junky round column mill, and I'd have to say it was rewarding, but very frustrating. Only having 5” of quill travel is quite oppressive, since you will loose your position in X, Y, and Z if you adjust the head height. It is so very frustrating to get you center drill divot made, then attempt to put the drill bit in and realize that it won't fit, so you have to adjust the head up an inch, and proceed to re-locate your X, Y, and Z position... again. On the other hand, I did get a lot of practice with the edge finder and dial test indicator. Now I have a CNC mill, so I have all new ways of getting frustrated!!! :wee::banana:

[LUCKY13]

Brown, nice looking build. I think your right about this section should be for the RF-45 builds only, but with IH & Tormach having sections for there own machines there is just not enough RF-45 builds to fill a section on its own. Really there is a section for the smaller machines but they still end up getting posted in here.

ANyway it is the way it is, and even though its kinda hard to find just RF-45 info, it is here if you dig deep enough. WHat I try to do is make a section in my favorites and I link dirrectly to all the good big machine threads and put them in there. This way when I want to find such and such build/info I can go straight to it. If you dont they get barried so deep its hard to find them when yuo need em.


Your pics really show just how much beefier the IH type mill is compaired to the norm. I have the normal Enco branded machine (ZX-7045 they call it)and there are many differences.

One question on your build, you have three extra brackets/supports added to the back of the column. They look like steel box tubbing fabricated to fit. What are these for, support or something I havnt figured on? If they are for support, what went into there design, or maybe I should say, how do they support it better?


Jess

[arizonavideo]

Nice to see another IH/MD001 mill. From what I know it is exactly the same mill made at the same factory by ZAY. You did get upgrades metal handles when IH ships plastic.

I also had a RF-31 not too long ago and sold it to make room for other mills and the other day I needed to drill into the end of some 24" long round stock. This was always a neat thing for the 31 you could just swing the head over and bolt the shaft to the side of the table. You might want to keep it around if just as a nice drill press and second op sometimes.

You must be tall judging by the 31 stand.

[BrownDesert]

Sorry for the long delay... been a little busy lately.
Jess, I usually just do a search for RF45 or IH clone or something along those lines, with pretty good results, but mainly, I was just trying to figure out where to post my own machine build. I thought for sure there would be a section, and it didn't seem right to put it in the IH section, even if the machine seems identical. Saving the good threads to favorites is certainly a good idea, and probably something I ought to do more, though if the information seems especially valuable, I like to save the text and/or pictures to my computer, as I've had some bad experiences with web pages going “poof” all the sudden. Let me elaborate on the brackets that go around the back of the column. What I found is that when I adjusted the Z gib strip, the axis would bind when I attempted to move it either up or down (it was in the middle of travel when I adjusted it). Next, I adjusted the gib strip with the head all the way down, but when I moved the head to the middle, I found that it was loose, it could move side to side something like 0.005”, and in/out about as much. So, it was apparent that the dovetails were closer together in the middle than at the top and bottom. Not good. :violin: Visions of hand scraping came to mind (something I had never done, at that point). So I got to pondering how this could have happened. It wasn't wear, since the machine is nearly brand new. Maybe it was just a bad day at the grinding machine when they ground the column ways. Maybe I snugged down the z lock too tight while tinkering, and bent it? I don't know how it happened, but the thought of maybe accidentally bending it got me to wondering if I could un-bend it. So, as a quick test, I rigged up a dial test indicator to measure the distance between the Z dovetails, then used a very large C clamp to gently squeeze the column, and found I could very easily bend it 0.005, and I could even get some needle deflection with my bare hands on a 0.0005” DTI. I suspect that this may be the weakest link (for rigidity, not absolute strength) on these machines. So, the brackets you see here serve two related purposes, first, they spread the Z dovetails apart in the middle, so that it matches the width of the top and bottom, and second, they make the spacing of the dovetails more rigid. In other words, it makes it take more force to squeeze the dovetails closer to each other, which is a big deal considering that any direction you push on the head (except straight back) will ultimately cause them to get squeezed together. The better they resist being squeezed together, the better they can help keep the head from moving where it isn't supposed to. I built the brackets to be just a little wider than the column so that I could use 3/8” bolts to widen the column by the 0.005” that I needed to. I arbitrarily picked the right side as the adjustment side. On the left side, I put a washer in between the bracket and the column, then tightened down the bolt. On the right side, I only tightened the bolt enough to adjust the dovetail spacing. I did it that way so that the only points of contact between the column and the bracket are at the 2 bolts. The brackets are made of 2”x 1/4” wall square tubing, with miter cut welded joints between the pieces. I used this particular material because I happened to have it on hand, and it fit in the limited space between the column and the counterbalance air cylinder. Heavier duty material might get even better results, though the 2”x1/4” steel achieved my primary goal of adjusting the dovetail spacing, and each bracket seems to be more stiff than the column itself. Using more brackets closer together might also have rigidity benefits.
Arizonavideo, yea, I did get metal handles, acme screws, acme nuts, drill press style handles, and a variety of brackets that aren't particularly useful for a CNC mill... wish I could have bought just the other parts of the machine to save some money, hee hee. The round column mill does make a fine drill press, it is able (just barely) to drill 1” holes through 1” thick mild steel, which is nice to be able to do sometimes. My regular old drill press can just barely make a 1” hole in aluminum. It's stand is really too tall for me, actually, I'm just a hair over 6'. The machine actually belongs to my brother, and he is about 2-3” taller than me, and he built the stand for it. I think the stand is really too tall for him, too, depending on how you are using the machine. I keep a 8” high wooden box next to it to stand on for certain things like changing the belts, and looking at the dial behind the quill handle. At least I don't ever find myself stooping over.

[BrownDesert]

Ok, well, I promised some posts about the electronics aspect of the machine, so here it is. I've read a lot of posts here from folks that may have the machining thing figured out, but have trouble with the electronics. I'm more the other way, actually. I've worked the last 7 years as an electronics technician, mostly dealing with commercial HVAC control systems . As part of that, I have worked with a lot of digital controllers, variable frequency drives, and the 3 phase motors that they power. I know how frustrating electronic systems can be some days. I think I'll just make this post an overview of the electronic parts of the machine, and then type up some more posts later to answer questions and whatnot.

Well, looking at the second picture, you can see the operator station, with the monitor, keyboard, mouse, and dedicated buttons. The blue light indicates that the servo drivers are enabled, and that in theory the machine is ready to operate. The blue button under it is enable/reset button, and it must be pressed after turning on the computer, and opening LinuxCNC, in order to enable the breakout boards, and enable the servo drivers. Also, if a servo driver, or the vfd trips, or you press E-stop, you have to press this button to reset the system. All of the logic behind this is taken care of on the circuit board in the first picture, which is a board I designed and built. Well, I designed it, had it made by Express PCB, then I soldered all the parts on. The green and yellow buttons are supposed to be run program, and pause program, though I've yet to get around to hooking them up... it isn't that hard to just click the virtual buttons with the mouse. The big red button is of course the most important one: EMERGENCY STOP! I've only had to use it a couple times, but like most emergency equipment, you sure do appreciate it when you need it.

The E-stop button has 2 sets of contacts on it, the really important ones are normally closed, and send power to the E-stop relay when the button is not tripped. When E-stop relay is energized, it supplies power to the servo power supply, and when it is de-energized it connects the DC output of the servo power supply to a power resistor to discharge the capacitors, and dissipate any regenerative braking energy that may be coming back from the servo motors. The other contact on the E-stop switch is normally open, and it connects to the circuit board I built, and it responds by disabling the servo drivers and breakout boards, turning off the blue light, and sending the “oh crap, shut down now” signal to the computer that controls the machine.

The circuit board handles 2 other functions, as well... for one, it handles the charge pump signal from the computer. For those who don't know, the charge pump signal is a simple fixed frequency signal that the CNC mill control software sends out to inform the machine that the software is running, and ready to operate the machine. Without this, it is possible that if the computer were started and you tried to, say, print a document and it got routed to the printer port that the machine is connected to the machine could go berserk. Not cool. A common way to prevent this is to disable the outputs on the breakout board unless the charge pump signal is present, though it is hard to get the charge pump signal through the breakout board if you already have it's outputs disabled. Catch-22. The way I got around this is that the board I built both looks for the charge pump signal, and it also controls the breakout boards' enable function. When you press the blue button, it enables the breakout board, then immediately checks for the charge pump signal, if the signal is there it goes ahead and turns everything on, if it is not there, it disables everything it has control of immediately.

The other major function of the board is to interface with the Gecko servo drives. The Error/Reset pin on these drives is a bit confusing, and a bit hard to interface, but I built the circuit board to overcome the problems. One problem is that the error/reset pin is not isolated from the high voltage power supply, so I wouldn't dare hook it to the rest of my electronics without isolation. The circuit board has optoisolators to isolate each servo driver from the rest of the system and each other. Also, the E/R pin is both an input and an output, so it is a pain to interface. When the servo drives are first powered up, the E/R pin will be at 0V. If you apply 5V to the pin, the drive will keep the pin at 5V so long as the drive doesn't trip. If the drive does trip, it will force the E/R pin to 0V, or you can externally connect the E/R pin to 0V to force the drive to trip. It gets even more fun when you have say 3 drives all running the machine together, as they all should trip together if one does. You don't want X and Y to keep moving when Z tripped with a drill bit in the part, for example. You can make this happen by just wiring all 3 E/R pins together, but if one trips, they all trip, and you have no idea which one caused it. The way I got around this is to have the microcontroller on the circuit board scan to see if any drive tripped, and if one did, then it will remember which one tripped, externally trip the others, turn on the LED to indicate which one caused the problem, send the shutdown signal to the PC, disable the breakout board, and of course, turn off the blue light. Safety interlock systems can get awfully complicated sometimes.

The monitor is just your run of the mill 19” LCD monitor, and the keyboard and mouse are USB (wired). The blue strip below the monitor is a plastic wire-mold that contains the wiring for the monitor/mouse/keyboard/control box, and also the power wire for the work light inside the machine enclosure. The work light is a 65W compact fluorescent outdoor light, equivalent to about a 300W halogen lamp, and sure makes it easier to see what's going on... also handy for getting good machining pictures/videos. I sometimes wish I had another light in the left corner, to fill in the shadows, though it would probably be best if both added up to about 65W, since that is a LOT of light. The other thing you can see in the second picture is the large blue corrugated tubing, which contains wiring and oil hoses for the lubrication system. It took me a little while of shopping around before I finally figured out what to use for that, but I finally settled on swimming pool vacuum hose, secured by conduit straps. The stuff seems like it is made of HDPE plastic (just guessing) and if so, it will be resistant to coolant and oil. It is flexible, but not too flexible, just perfect for supporting wires.

Looking at the third picture, you can see the the 120/240V breaker panel, with a “whole house” surge protector mounted on the bottom of it, the main control box in the center, with the PC that runs the whole show on the right. The blue container next to the PC is the coolant reservoir and the hose with the orange sprayer is the coolant wash-down hose... I like to live dangerously, hee hee.

Inside the controls cabinet there is the VFD on the left, and the servo power supply soft start below it on the left wall, along with the servo power supply fuses, and the servo power supply on the bottom. Beside the VFD is a terminal block I used for distributing power (120VAC, 12VDC, and 72VDC), 3 relays below that, and a 25W power resistor (gold color) that quickly discharges the servo power supply capacitors when the E-stop relay is de-energized. Below that is the grounding bar (meant for use inside a circuit breaker panel, got it at home depot). I'd highly recommend using the “panduit” or “finger molding” (gray stuff), as it makes a mess of wires look almost presentable. Next, there is the big blue cable, which is the power from the VFD to the spindle motor... it is just 14ga, 4 conductor extension cord cable, but the part inside the control box I covered with metal braid (from McMaster-Carr) and wrapped in electrical tape. The braid is grounded on the VFD's grounding screw. I did all this because VFDs are notorious for generating tremendous electrical noise, so I figured I would trap it before it could get out and make me pull all my hair out... or at least make my machine go bonkers. For your own sanity's sake, I recommend always using shielded cables, and grounding only 1 end (usually at the controller / control cabinet).

In the center, there are 3 fuses at the top, which protect the 3 servo drivers below, which are the Gecko G320X model. The heatsink for the servo drivers is mounted to the outside of the enclosure, with a hole in the back of the enclosure for the servo drivers to mount directly to the heatsink. This allows fresh/cool air to circulate through the heatsink fins, which are vertical for good convection flow, and helps to keep the control box cool, too. The heatsink gets just a little warm when the machine is working pretty hard. Also mounted on the heatsink is the “returned energy dump” circuit which protects the servo drivers from damage due to regenerative braking voltages. See http://www.geckodrive.com/returned-energy-dump for more information on that. Below are the 120VAC outlets where the PC, monitor, 5V power supply, and 12V power supply plug in.

On the right, at the top is the safety logic circuit board I built. Below that are 2 CNC4PC C10 breakout boards. The computer actually has 3 parallel ports, 1 on the motherboard, and 2 on an expansion card I added, which are hooked to the 2 breakout boards. I'd like to use the other port for a jog wheel pendant some day. To the Left of the bottom C10 board is a rigged up board that interfaces the 5VDC breakout board signals to the VFD's 24VDC signals. Below the C10 boards, is another board I built that takes 5V logic level signals and controls 12VDC loads. It has 5 channels to control as many loads. It currently powers the spindle relay coil, coolant pump relay coil, the blue light, and the oil system solenoid valve.

The hole in the bottom of the enclosure is where an air filter is supposed to go. The idea is that the fan on the VFD will blow air out the top, which will be directed out the vent on the left side of the enclosure (need to enclose the top of the VFD for that to work). When it moves the air out, that will cause a vacuum in the rest of the enclosure, drawing air in through the filter to keep the enclosure and VFD cool. So far I've just been keeping the front off of the enclosure, so I haven't fussed with all of that stuff. I guess that is pretty much my simple overview of all the electronics, though there is plenty more to say. Questions welcome. I'll try to draw up some schematics as requested. I think I did draw up some before building all this stuff, but I doubt they are all that similar to what it finally became.
-Austin

[pippin88]

Austin, nice build, but is there any chance you can break your posts in to paragraphs? I find it really hard to read a wall of text with no breaks.

Cheers,
Nick

[BrownDesert]

Sorry to anyone who may have received a headache or blurry vision from trying to read that last post (#14). :drowning: It didn't look so bad in my word processor program, but once I posted it, it looked like “a wall of text with no breaks” as pippin88 said. I actually laughed when I saw it, but I was tired :tired: so I went to bed instead of fixing it right away. Well, anyway now it has been broken up into more manageable paragraphs.
-Austin

[LEARN]

WOW that enclosure is Very nice!!!