[matth]

As there's no movement at the moment on my large steel router build (waiting on fabricator to do the frame) I thought I'd post some information and progress pics for a very heavy cast iron mill i've been designing and collecting parts for.

This is a bit of a skunkworks project and is not my main focus so is a bit "throw together". It's propose will be to machine steel and aluminium parts.

The main frame/bed is a cast iron boring mill table that weighs in somewhere around 500KGS, this will sit on top of some very large SHS sections (250mmx2500mmx10mm).
The column will be made up from 3 (18x12x9") cast iron machinist cubes (each weighs approx 60KGS) and reinforced with a very large cast iron angle plate (weighing approx 100KGS).

The saddle and working bed will be made from two 24"x12"x4" jig fixture plate (also cast iron and weighing around 50KGS each).

For rails I have some 55mm THK heavy duty rails and carriages (enough to do all three axis).

I have a couple of 40mm Ballscrews for the X and Y but I need another for the Z.

For the spindle I have an X3 head modified with a 2.2KW AC Servo as a motor and pneumatic drawbar with TTS tooling. A small cast iron machinist cube (not show) will space the spindle out from the column.

Travels will be somewhere in the region of X:12", Y:12" and z:24".

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[matth]

All in the weight should be about 1200KGS.

Spindle head:

[matth]

Drive will be via some 400W DDM servos that I don't trust for production use but will be fine on this for a while. Coupled with some 10:1 planetary reduction gearboxes.
I have an ESS controller sat on an MB2 breakout board and will run Mach3.