First Chips! PM-25MV

[codexmas]

Quick update, scored a used LMS 5100 7x16 lathe last night!
The tool room is almost complete



It came with a crap ton of tooling and accessories, pretty much everything I would have ordered myself and more.
I was deeply considering the PM 10x22 lathe, but weight and basement access issues have slowed that idea.

I think I can do pretty much everything I need on this cute little unit, might just be able to make a better draw bar for the PM-25!

 

[wrmiller]

Just a suggestion codexmas? When milling I keep a rubber dead blow hammer nearby as when you clamp a piece in the vise you will find that the workpiece lifts off the parallels a bit. So I just give the workpiece a thwack or two to get it back down on the parallels.

Not a big deal for what you're doing in the vid, but later when trying to keep tighter tolerances, it could help.

 

[codexmas]

Just a suggestion codexmas? When milling I keep a rubber dead blow hammer nearby as when you clamp a piece in the vise you will find that the workpiece lifts off the parallels a bit. So I just give the workpiece a thwack or two to get it back down on the parallels.

Not a big deal for what you're doing in the vid, but later when trying to keep tighter tolerances, it could help.

Yeah, thanks for the reminder!
I was intending to do that during the first chips session but totally forgot. Muscle memory yet to be formed

 

[mcdanlj]

At the beginning of the video, I thought you were going to be the first person in history to succeed in using one of these mills with the polycarbonate shield in place. On my PM-30 I took the face off the spindle box and put a jumper in place of the shield "safety" switch to get that out of the way.

I was thinking of something like this for an X and a Z axis using steppers, keep it real simple like:
Stepper controller board

Ah, I was thinking of the mechanical design rather than electrical. But yeah, that's a nice stand-alone controller. I'd be likely to DIY the controller, but only because it's fun for me. I had ideas of using an ESP32 also interfaced to DRO outputs to auto-calibrate, though probably I'll never get around it.

(And vis-a-vis settling parts with a dead-blow hammer, I found the MIT machine shop training videos useful generally, and that was one of the things that stuck with me. If you are already expert they might not teach you anything, but for me with no education in metal shop tools beyond sheet metal forming in junior high school I don't want to say how many years ago, they were valuable.)

 

[codexmas]

At the beginning of the video, I thought you were going to be the first person in history to succeed in using one of these mills with the polycarbonate shield in place. On my PM-30 I took the face off the spindle box and put a jumper in place of the shield "safety" switch to get that out of the way.

Yeah, all it took was removing the c-clip at the top and a set screw. The shaft came out and the default state for the switch was 'enable'. It was so janky to get it to be happy where the flat of the bar to allow the machine to power on.

Ah, I was thinking of the mechanical design rather than electrical. But yeah, that's a nice stand-alone controller. I'd be likely to DIY the controller, but only because it's fun for me. I had ideas of using an ESP32 also interfaced to DRO outputs to auto-calibrate, though probably I'll never get around it.

The only issue I have with that unit is the forward/reverse is a toggle with no indicator. I really don't like the idea of having to remember which direction it was last, workflow is really important to keep simple in my mind. Probably not a real issue but my programmer head envisions times when it would be super easy to crash the machine. Might go arduino, as I use one to control both the X and Z with some nice buttons and pots for speeds. Coding in specific feed rates at certain pot values or some such.

(And vis-a-vis settling parts with a dead-blow hammer, I found the MIT machine shop training videos useful generally, and that was one of the things that stuck with me. If you are already expert they might not teach you anything, but for me with no education in metal shop tools beyond sheet metal forming in junior high school I don't want to say how many years ago, they were valuable.)

Will check them out, thanks for the link!


/edit spellin

 

[mcdanlj]

Might go arduino, as I use one to control both the X and Z with some nice buttons and pots for speeds. Coding in specific feed rates at certain pot values or some such.

Note that ESP32 can be programmed with Arduino if you want, and there are some relatively inexpensive modules with a small screen attached.