X2 Mini Mill CNC Conversion?

MGP: I live in Naugatuck, right down the road. So if you need a little moral support or another brain to put on the project let me know. I'd be more than willing to take a ride up to give you a hand. I'm no cnc magician but I'm damn good at reading wiring schematics and doing the mechanicals. I also have a Bridgeport and a lathe if you need to make or alter a few parts. :))

Send me a PM if your interested.

Marcel
 
you have me on that question i need to know this myself soon?
steve
 
i'll probably use synthetic gear oil 90#
i use it to lube everything it stays on the ways and seems to be holding up fine in my exposed lathe gears
and a quart squeeze bottle is cheap
steve
 
Any oil is better than no oil. But way oil is formulated to not attract dust so much so see if you can get your hands on some.
 
could not sleep so i thought i would comment about the z axis. it will be handy to know the weight of the head itself less the column. we may have to add lift cylinders or a counter weight to the head to get the required speed and power out of the stepper motor. I would prefer to have as much mass to the head as possible to keep down chatter. with a dovetail column the weight of the head and the tension on the dovetail help improve rigidity but since we want to move this fast the dovetail is not really as tight as it can be for manual adjustment. that is why a knee mill is more desirable than a dovetail column. the head is solid and the screw holding up the knee is directly under the spindle. plus the damn thing weighs more than a ton lol. so the velocity and acceleration for the z axis is not going to be near that of the x and y.the stepper motors loose torgue as rpm goes up and we need a slower acceleration to get the head moving up to speed its dead weight straight up pull with add resistance of the dovetails. x and y simply slide with dovetail friction and cutter force. so if mach3 is set to accelerate too fast it will miss steps and not know it, due to no feedback from stepper motors unlike servo motors with encoders. each missed step accumulates without mach3 knowing and pretty soon mach3 thinks the cutter is say an inch high over the table but in reality it is in the table. not good. trying to get too high of velocity same effect. if we find that z will lift too slow as dead weight then x an y will be waiting for z to complete its move before they move on slowing down the entire mill. thats when we add counter balance to speed up z's motion but only enough to reach a happy medium and maintain as much rigidity as possible.
sheeesh what a load of...
make any sence?
it's a lot simpler and faster to slide things than lift them
steve
 
if we determine we need to reduce the weight of the head. I would start with a counter weight system, it is easy to adjust the weight to find the sweet spot we are looking for. then it is simple to divide the weight in 2 and buy a lift cylinder for each side for half the weight from mcmastercarr or someone else. you dont have to put on cylinders the weight system can be hidden under or behind the mill and a cable used to keep down cost, it works just the same and there is no return shipping for getting the wrong one. so your probably thinking why weight the head if we are going to play with the weights. my reason is if we have chatter i want to know how close to zero weight we are. a feather blows all over, a brick wont budge. it's my meds....
steve
 
Back
Top