Fixture plate for Sherline mill

Inflight

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I recently acquired a small Sherline vertical milling machine that was converted to CNC and sold to schools by Paxton / Patterson in the mid 1990's.

Although I did get the machine working with Mach3 software using a DB25 dongle, I found the original stepper motors lacking power and glitchy. So I stripped all the original electronics and installed new power supplies, motion controllers, stepper motors, and a parallel port break-out-board.

Today, I made an aluminum fixture plate and added a chip guard as can be seen in the photo. I also made a few Morse Taper endmill holders and some work clamps from steel.

Sherline Fixture Plate.jpg


Matt
 
Nice setup. I see these on fleebay all the time, well these and others like it. They always seem to sell for way too much, especially considering what you needed to go through to have a good working tool, replacing all the old and generations outdated electronics and such. Now that you've got it this far, are you considering something like an ATC? :)

Mark
 
Wow! That automatic tool changer is absolutely incredible.
No, I have not planned anything quite so ambitious at this point in time.

Thanks for the link.
 
Your welcome, I thought it was pretty shiny my own self. In the yahoo group for that mini tool changer, a few have just adapted the spindle porton and use it for a more traditional tool rack style ATC.

Mark
 
I like all your stuff mine is not cnc I only have manual and am till gatering tings and trying to make some good work and welcome to sherline ownership.
KVT
 
That's the exact same setup I got for my first mill. In my case, the Y axis on the driver board didn't work right, so I yanked the board and went over to a Xylotex box. Got the heftier motors (300 in-oz?) they sold with the controller box. Then I got bigger A2Z CNC XY axes for it with the Kerk lead screws. Works really nice.


Bob
 
Here are the guts of my configuration.

CNC_electronics.jpg
 
These Sherline-based teaching machines are actually a pretty nice deal. I have had a Denford and a Lab-Volt. Both had nice steel cabinets with roomy enclosure for the electronics. Most of the electronics can be retained, requiring only a few new components to run from EMC2 or Mach3. The going price seems to be $400 - $600 for nice examples in working order. Another $100 will get them running on Linux CNC
 
These Sherline-based teaching machines are actually a pretty nice deal. I have had a Denford and a Lab-Volt. Both had nice steel cabinets with roomy enclosure for the electronics. Most of the electronics can be retained, requiring only a few new components to run from EMC2 or Mach3. The going price seems to be $400 - $600 for nice examples in working order. Another $100 will get them running on Linux CNC

May I ask where you're finding these machines for $400-$600? All the ones I'v ever seen are being offered for ~$1995 and up. Even with the Sherline at the bottom of my list, at $400 almost ready to go... I'd be thinking about it.

Edit - OK, I just found a Lab-Volt on ebay for $675. I guess they can sell for less than 4 figures.
 
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