New to forum and home machining

TonyRV2

TonyRV2

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May 6, 2018
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Hi All. Just thought I'd post an intro of myself having just signed up for this forum and having also just purchased the PM-25MV mill with DRO from Precision Matthews. I just retired from teaching college electronics about a year ago, after 32 years in the classroom. I'm setting up shop mostly to make knives and the mill is going to be a welcome addition to my other machines. I do however look forward to finding other projects to use the mill with as well. In another life, about 40 years ago I use to install 1st generation DRO's and CNC aftermarket controls on machine shop equipment. Between doing that and taking a few machining courses I'd learned a lot and look forward to getting back into it. That's it in a nutshell. If you have any questions at all about electronics, just drop me a note. My expertise is primarily in industrial controls but I'd welcome questions about any area of electronics. If anyone is familiar with or doing anything with Arduino controllers, I'd be especially interested in hearing from you, especially as it pertains to applications in the shop. And if I have any questions regarding this mill, and I'm sure I will, I know where to go. ;-)

...Tony
 
Welcome, Tony. After almost 30 years of Tool and Die work and then almsot 15 years of retirement, I bought on of Matt's PM25 mills, myself. Considering it's (size) limitations, I'm very happy with it. Most of what I do is in the 2 to 4 inch neighborhood, so I don't run into 'can't move' very often. I was self taught in M & G codes for early CNC conversions in the '80s, really enjoyed the work. Feel free to ask about mods to the PM25, there are several of us here who have done from X feed to 3 axis CNC on them.
 
Thanks for the welcome. I haven't received the mill yet, just ordered it today, so I'm not sure what mods I may eventually want. For the low quantity of things that I'd produce, I'll probably just keep it manual...but there is something about automation that I just can't seem to avoid as far as the cool factor. lol....we'll see.

...Tony
 
Hello Tony, and welcome!

So I guess you'd know the difference between a class A, AB1, and AB2 amplifier (my first year in electronics was all about tubes...)? :)

I was a firmware engineer for 30 plus years and know microcontrollers pretty well, but have no experience with the Arduino controllers. Sorry.

I had a PM25 for years, but have since moved up a size or two. But there are a lot of folks here who own the latest models and can answer questions/offer help. This is a pretty good crowd we have here. :)
 
Welcome Tony!

Your interests and experience will fit right in here.
Congrats on the new mill....you must feel like a kid with Christmas coming up.

-brino
 
Hi Tony, welcome to the site. One of my current projects (but on the back burner) is a Arduino controlled dividing head for the milling machine. Still learning code and it's slow going for an old fa*t :cool:
Mark
 
markba633csi said:
Hi Tony, welcome to the site. One of my current projects (but on the back burner) is a Arduino controlled dividing head for the milling machine. Still learning code and it's slow going for an old fa*t :cool:
Mark
Click to expand...
What is a Arduino controled dividing head Mark......sounds very interesting. Are you going to post it on H-M as you progress?

Michael
 
Hi Michael- I guess it's also called an electronic 4th axis. There are numerous home-made examples on the web, in particular one early version by a guy named Chuck Fellows (Google him)
There's some tricky math involved to avoid rounding errors which is still over my head; still studying how it's done. I was never great at math but always liked electronics, ironically. Like a musician who can't read music (I recall someone named McCartney who is so afflicted)
Mark
 
Welcome aboard Tony! I have a PM 833T and eventually would like to convert it to CNC. Looking forward to your contributions to this forum.
 
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