About 6 months ago I converted my mill to cnc with the Industrial
Hobbies cnc kit. A month ago I broke the mill down to the bare
castings again to lap the ways and send some parts off for
modification. I tossed the old stand on the scrap heap to and built
a new one to better contain the flood coolant. Here it is finally
back together, keep in mind I wanted to contain the coolant without
breaking the bank, no fancy stainless steel enclosure here.
The 20oz Pepsi bottle should give this brute some scale.
www.coilbuilders.com/pics/milla.jpg
Here you see it all buttoned up. This thing has a 4x6 foot wide
footprint with all the cnc gear hanging off it. I started out to
make a 4x6 foot stand but it was just too large, I could barely get
at the mill. After much thinking this is what I came up with...robo
stand. ;-)
www.coilbuilders.com/pics/mill1.jpg
In this pic you can see the coolant containment shields hinge out of
my way giving me good access to the mill. If I need to wrench on it
the drip pans unlatch and the whole thing can be set aside in a few
minutes. Note I took some effort to make this lightweight hence its
not built from 3/4 plywood.
www.coilbuilders.com/pics/mill2.jpg
The main chip pan holds a few gallons and drains to the front.
www.coilbuilders.com/pics/mill3.jpg
Here's a front view, you can see everything is shielded from the
flood coolant.
www.coilbuilders.com/pics/mill4.jpg
That 11x14 inch plexi-plate keeps the chips and coolant off the ways
and ball screw. This mill was modified to add 3 extra inches onto
the Y axis and so the screw is exposed when the table is at the far
rear.
www.coilbuilders.com/pics/mill5.jpg
Here's a shot looking down with all the shields in place. Plenty of
elbow room now.
www.coilbuilders.com/pics/mill6.jpg
This coolant tank will never look this clean again! When I first
converted this mill I purchased the rather expensive "true" coolant
tank. At 5 gallons it was not only too small but also very poorly
designed for a coolant tank. It had all these slots molded inside
for a seperator sheet, trouble is the coolant went bad and it was
nearly impossible to get the bacteria cleaned out from all those
slots. This new tank is 10gal and cost a whopping $4 at Target. I
ran a bleach solution through the pump for about 30 minutes to make
sure I killed off all those rat bastard bacteria. I also switched to
a new coolant.
www.coilbuilders.com/pics/mill7.jpg
Here's my mobile workbench housing the PC and tooling.
www.coilbuilders.com/pics/mill8.jpg
Here's a pic of the low voltage electronics panel. I bought a $100
Nema enclosure for the mains voltage stuff, then got smart and
bought this cheap 200 amp service panel at Lowes for the rest.
www.coilbuilders.com/pics/mill9.jpg
Here's the backside, dang theres a bunch of wires to one of these
cnc mills. Note the air pump on the floor which will keep the new
coolant airated nicely and the bacteria at bay.
www.coilbuilders.com/pics/mill10.jpg