Hello everyone! First time poster here. This thread will be a log for retrofitting my Mazak VQC 15/40 mill. Hope you guys follow along and enjoy the show. I'm also looking forward to getting some tips and suggestions along the way so feel free to jump in at any point!

So I'll start off with a little back story. I've been working at my family's machine shop for almost a decade now and all we had were CNC lathes, no CNC mills just an old Bridgeport knee mill. Being an engineer I've always wanted to make my own creations but having only access to CNC lathes I always felt limited. So for a number of years now I've wanted to get my hands on a CNC mill. I eventually came across an old Mazak VQC 15/40 on an online auction site. Not much info was posted about the machine on the site but I figured if the controller was dead it wouldn't have mattered as I was planning on retrofitting anyways. I just hoped the machine was mechanically sound and knowing Mazak's reputation I don't think that was to much of a worry. I went ahead and bid on it and crossed my fingers. Luckily the bidding didn't go to high and made out with what I think was a good deal. That was back in November.

When it arrived at our shop I was able to take a close look at what I got myself into. At first glance the machine looked really well put together; a nice solid design. That being said though I don't think the previous owner has the word "cleaning" in their vocabulary. I don't think the machine was cleaned in a day of its life. It was caked with coolant and chips everywhere. So I knew I had a lot of scrubbing ahead of me. Check out the photos to get an idea.

The first problem we ran into was getting the machine into the shop. For whatever reason the z axis wasn't lowered onto wooden blocks and was left in the highest position and measuring the height as best we could we knew it was going to be a tight fit through the door. I looked around on the web to see if and how to lower the spindle manually and couldn't find anything. So I took off the covers on the spindle to get a better look. I noticed a brake on the z-axis ballscrew and tried to manually release it by pushing and pulling on the flanges but no luck. We decided to give it a shot and see how much we're off by. Long story short we had to take a piece of weather stripping off from the top of the door and remove 3 tiny hex screws that held the grill over the spindle cooling fan and then it just barely slide into the door way with the forks of the forklift skidding on the ground. I found out a way to lower the spindle manually so I'll do a short post about it when I get a chance so other's won't be stuck in the same situation I was.

Once I got a close look I was able to make a plan and set goals on what I wanted to get done.
So the plan:
  • Remove all the panels so I can thoroughly clean the base of the machine and all the critical components (linear rails, ballscrews, etc).
  • Sandblast the panels and repaint them to give the machine a fresher appearance.
  • Fire up the machine to see if it even works and fix whatever needs to be fixed (hopefully nothing).
  • Retrofit the machine with a new controller.


Here are some photos before I started to take it all apart. I don't know why I didn't take a wide shot of the entire machine or of the pallet changer.