[epineh]

Hi all, first up I seem to have a habit of not finishing projects, but having said that I really hope to bring life to this little mill that I have acquired.
The plan is to use it to finish a few other projects I have started and for some general tinkering. I plan to keep the original spindle for general steel and limited aluminium machining, but also build a high speed version that will bolt on to allow better machining in aluminium, which is what I plan to mostly use. I have a small backyard casting setup so the plan is to be able to cast rough parts then finish machine, all in the comfort of my own shed.

Enough talk, here are the obligatory before shots, unloading off the truck and now sitting nicely in the back of my shed.

Not much more to report for now, first up will be to retrofit new encoders to the existing DC servos. I have a plan that I hope to start on the weekend.

Cheers.

Russell.

[chich2]

Awesome!!!!
Im in Russ to watch your thread and lend a hand where needed.

Chich

[epineh]

Hey Chich I'm sure I'll need that hand sooner or later, if only we had milling machines to help make parts for our milling machines

Awesome!!!!
Im in Russ to watch your thread and lend a hand where needed.

Chich

[epineh]

Ok so tonight I thought I would try design the encoder mount, here are a few pics of a servo getting dismantled, the existing cover will be removed along with the resolver and tacho - generator.
This leaves a nice empty space in which I will make a plastic mount to fix the encoder to, there is a small 5mm stub on the end of the shaft, the encoder will use this. It seems a shame to rip everything out like this but it will make life a lot easier later on.

[epineh]

After scribbling some measurements down, I drew up a simple mount, complete with a hole for cable access and 2mm holes ready to tap 3mm threads into, hopefully in the correct loction, bit worried about the print time at over 5 hours but I guess I can drink coffee while the printer is doing its thing.

After the encoder is mounted I will also print out some covers, though they might have to wait, I have white plastic loaded, think the outside cover will look better in black.

Bit late to launch a 5 hour print now, will fire the 3D printer up in the morning and give it a shot.

Cheers.

Russell.

[epineh]

First mount done, I still need to do some work on my printer, but the first attempt is pretty cool, should be for a 6 hour print !

Personally I like the two encoder mounting holes printed at 2mm ready to tap a 3mm thread, hopefully I measured everything correctly and read the encoder datasheet properly, if not I am going to use the excuse that I did all that at 11:30 pm last night...

Russell.

[epineh]

Today I started giving the machine some attention, I will be testing one of the servos soon (X axis) so I cleaned the ballscrew and ways, also gave the bed a once over, it was covered with an anti rust goop that had dried and set, so after some serious elbow grease later it looks a bit better, after its clean I applied a thick coating of oil with a rag, should keep the rust away.

As always pics or it didn't happen...before and after. After photo is a little blurry, I was covered in oil and milling machine grease, that’s my excuse anyway.

Cheers.

Russell.

[RotarySMP]

Surely a better basis for conversion than some chinese iron.

Mark

[epineh]

Hi Mark, that is what I'm thinking, and weighing in at 2.5 ton I think it should be rigid enough for my needs. Hope so, it has been a big effort just getting it into the shed.

Hope to get some more time cleaning over the long weekend, as well as assembling the test servo drive.

Cheers.

Russell.

[RotarySMP]

Does it have linear rails or cast iron ways? What are the ball screws like?

[epineh]

It has linear rail looking blocks, but they don't look like standard type linear rails, a mate reckons they must have needle rollers inside as they are too small to be slideways, might try doing some investigating on that. The X is the only one I've cleaned up for now and it moves quite easily turning the ballscrew by hand.

The X Ballscrew is almost perfect the entire length, only one end has some slight rust pitting on it, will have to spend some time on that.

[RotarySMP]

Hope all that stuff is serviceable, I imagine it could get expensive if you have to source replacements.

German Ebay_Kleinanzeigen (sort of craigslist classifieds), has a similar mill frame (He has one complete and a frame for €800)
https://www.ebay-kleinanzeigen.de/s-...20732-223-1466

Must say there is a strong temptation to drive the 9 !/2 hours to check that out

[epineh]

I hope so as well, my budget won't stretch much more than the electronics and some basic tooling.

You should definitely go for a drive and check that out ! Looks like it still has its toolchanger as well.

[RotarySMP]

Do you plan to rebuild an enclosure around yours?

[epineh]

It actually has an enclosure of sorts, not a complete one but it will do the job nicely, will post a photo of it sooner or later.

[RotarySMP]

You're up early.

[epineh]

Or up late, depends how you look at it.

[RotarySMP]

Look Forward to seeing more photos of your build.
Mark

[epineh]

I got a mate to print three encoder mounts for my servos, as my printer accidentally got dismantled on purpose.

Took the remains of the resolver/tacho out of the X axis servo and fitted the mount, and encoder.

I now have some work to do to mount the servo back on the machine and temporarily connect a drive and controller but then I can test my drives and see how the machine performs.

I will also need to make covers for the motor end to protect the encoder, but for now it will be fine, not like I'm going to be splashing coolant around any time soon, or chips for that matter.

Russell.

[epineh]

Today I spent some time cleaning the X axis ballscrew, and it came up pretty good, I am much more confident it will be ok.

I also mounted the X servo in preparation for testing.

Next issue to sort out before I power up the axis is to get the oil lube system running, this should be fairly straightforward, the manual plunger works and there is half a tank of oil in the reservoir (bonus !), I just need to plug the line that went to the Z axis since that section has been removed, and work out what voltage the pump requires. It is single phase but no indication of whether it is 240V or 110V, will have to do some research.

It looks like the reservoir has a float level switch and also there is a pressure switch so that will be nice to make a little alarm circuit to monitor both of these, I won't link them to a machine estop or enable, rather an audible and visual alarm somewhere on the control panel.

Russell.