My new Mill

[cmacclel]

Well here she is sitting in the Garage. This is a BEEFY machine and is significantly larger than the typical Bridgeport.


50+ Quick Switch tool holders with over 100 collets. Some of these will be on Ebay soon!

After 9 hours of cleaning

3hp 3 Phase monster motor.....Look at the size of the Spindle Brake mounted on top of the motor!

Control Box

D688 Vise

Mist Coolant (M code controlled)

Auto Oiler

 

[donn_]

 

[Ganp]

WOW that really looks the business. :twothumbs

I especially like the Y axis power feed. :candle:


Colin.

 

[cmacclel]

WOW that really looks the business. :twothumbs

I especially like the Y axis power feed. :candle:


Colin.

Yup good old cordless drill power feed I installed that when I was cleaning the machine and forgot to take it off for the pictures. The real "Y" axis power feed is a 26lb servo motor The machine has one for every axis.

Mac

 

[donn_]

That's the first Lithium-Ion cordless mill I've seen!

 

[cmacclel]

The machine originally shipped as a CNC with a controller from the manufacture. It was Upgraded in the late 90's with the CNC Automation controller. Here in this picture (before cleaning) you can see it had big aluminum encoder housings. These housings stuck out another 6" and where no longer used as the servo motors now house the encoders, so I removed them.

 

[Mirage_Man]

Wow! What a great score dude. The machine looks great after cleaning too.

 

[wquiles]

Wow! What a great score dude. The machine looks great after cleaning too.

+1

Nice mill :twothumbs

 

[HarryN]

Nice mill. Are you going to keep using that controller or switch over to Mach / EMC ?

 

[StrikerDown]

SCORE!

Man Chris you said it came with a bunch of tooling... you weren't kidding, plus you finally got a good vise.

 

[cmacclel]

Nice mill. Are you going to keep using that controller or switch over to Mach / EMC ?

As long as it works I'm not going to touch it. The machine accepts G-code and has conversational programming built in. What I need now is to find a cheap CAM program and learn how to use it.

SCORE!

Man Chris you said it came with a bunch of tooling... you weren't kidding, plus you finally got a good vise.

I already have a nice vise that I like better than the Kurt...... The 9" opening Parlec

Mac

 

[HarryN]

If your need is 2.5 D vs. real 3 D, here is an open source option for you.

http://gcam.js.cx/index.php/Files

The basic idea is that you draw up your project with this s/w, and its output is g code directly - no need for separate cad / cam. Like a lot of open source s/w, it is a work in progress, but reasonbly usable. It is written in C code and works with linux and windows. (even Vista)

I have drawn up a few things in it, but there is a learning curve.