I eluded to this on another thread, but with my tremendous need to be prolific here's the news:

What I got:
http://frederic.midimonkey.com/yard-mill-overview.html

The fight to get it into the garage:
http://frederic.midimonkey.com/yard-mill-install.html

The start of CNCanizing:
http://frederic.midimonkey.com/yard-...chardware.html

And the start of the CNC interface:
http://frederic.midimonkey.com/yard-...interface.html

It was a really cool deal, partially because it was a gift, partially because the price was freaking good to.

The machine was on sale for $899 from $999, and I had a 15% coupon. The machine came with a chinese chuck, with an included R8 to J33 adapter - both of which are really nice pieces actually. It also came with a medium sized facing mill with four carbide cutters installed, which is also a nice unit (R8 shaft on that too).

The optional stand was $150.

I bought out of Xmas cash an R8 11-collet set in 1/16" increments, a set of 20 end mills also in 1/16" increments - 10 of 'em are two flute, 10 of 'em are four flute, all HSS and TI coated not that it really matters.

Everything important on the machine is ground and hardened, and the jibs on the X-Y table are about 3/4" thick and everything is very tight.

While it has the usual import quality plastic crankwheels, a sheet metal "flip up" belt cover like a cheap drill press, and the quil dept gauge is about as useful as a drunk porcupine, these are all really minor issues which can be easily resolved for minimal cash down the road. Since I'm putting togther CNC bits for this, I'll have to make new crankwheels anyway with timing pulleys built in, so that will be taken care of in short order. The drill press cover just rattles sometimes which is annoying, but that can be solved by applying door weatherstripping that's about 3/8" square foam with sticky stuff on one edge, around the perimeter of the stamped steel bottom half of the housing. And the useless depth gauge can be replaced with a $80 digital unit no problem, just a matter of drilling and tapping four holes, bolting the thing on in place o the quill indicator, and makine a short stud to go into the indicator support bar into the back of the digital head on the 6" quill scale.

What is cool is the X-Y table has enough travel to face mill a BBF cylinder head no problem. And, enough depth that I can mill really thin stuff or things as thick as 11" or so. The table is 8x28 or something along those lines. 5/8" t-slots etc.

Please excuse the spelling and typos if there are any.. my contacts are so bleary at the moment I can't see anything but splotches on the screen. Too much squinting today staring at a busy end mill




So I think I'm set in the "big tool" department for a while.

Lathe
Milling machine
plasma cutter
two mig welders
floor standing drill press

 

COOL!!!

Curious as to why you aren't using the standard G-Code coding system?
I have been hanging out lately on the Deckel Maho DMC 60 U at work... really great unit, just wish the bed size was bigger (could you say a billet alluminium 5.4 short block )

 

Very nice! You will have a very nice machine shop set up in no time!

Some of those "tacks" are cement coated. The glue softens with friction when they are installed and they don't come out.

I can give you one tip on desoldering boards that an old electronic tech taught me:
Find a nice metal trash can, the small office kind but stout.
Line it with old towels/rags with a little anti static spray if needed.
Turn your board to be depopulated upside down, -solder side up.
Hold it in one gloved hand.
Hit a section of the board with a propane torch.
Slam the board down against the rim of the trash can.
... -Parts fall off into the bottom of the can.
Repeat several times to get all the parts off.
Pick the parts you want out of the bottom of the trash can.

I will go check out that machine a little closer tomorrow if the local HF is open. Maybe they will have one on display. They don't keep everything on display in the local store.

Now you just need an optical comparator, surface plate, surface grinder, toolpost grinder, radial arm drill, crankshaft grinder, jig borer, shaper, horizontal mill, valve grinder...

 

That's an impressive piece of machinery even if I don't know what all of it does.

 

stuff Aaron - lots of stuff


Actually, mills are generally used for machining stuff that isn't going to be round (then a lathe is used)
frederic has made it CNC himself (which stands for Computer Numerically Controlled) which means you can make far more complex parts of much higher accuracy through using a computer.

Hope that makes sense
All you need to remember CNC = good

 

Once he gets all of those steppers and encoders on the XYZ axis and hooked up he can start on the tool changer and spindle drive.

-As far as your fight to get it in the garage you should have seen me moving a 2000# lathe inch by inch with only old man grunt and some occasional help from a younger guy. Damn near killed me and took me the better part of a day. Abused the hell out of a engine hoist. To move over cracks etc I frequently set the load down then move the hoist and re-pick the load. When it moves next time I will have a wrecker with a boom move it.

 

Frederic, probably too late, but check this link on Northern tool's site out:
http://www.northerntool.com/webapp/w...6859_200326859

 

Man. what a nice "toy".I want one too even though about the only thing I can think of using it for right now is for sharpening lawn mower blades.........man thats nice!

 

I didn't have any idea until Frederic started his CNC project a while back that it had finally gotten within reach of the home user. Got me wanting to build a little "micro-mill" with a CNC controller, but I really don't know where to start. I've got a strong electronics and mechanical background, but my brother is the machinist in the family. Any pointers to some good DIY CNC info would be appreciated. Pretty much everything that I would want to build would be quite small (like my budget). Would it be possible to convert a tabletop drill press into something like this, or would I need to get a "purpose-built" small mill? Also, what about an "entry-level" lathe? Any info appreciated.

 

I just need a cheap/free piece of Windows software that can take "whatever" and twiddle the pins on the parallel port to drive my stepper motor controller. Mach3 seemed to be the only one.

Most of the other packages that I've seen (so far) seem to require some kind of RS232 to stepper controller interface in addition to the stepper motor drivers themselves - higher cost.

The other feature I like about Mach3 is that it can operate in two ways - blind operation where it knows that a certain number of steps equate a certain distance traveled, and assumes that to have occured when it instructed the stepper motors to do so. The second mode is more intelligent, where using optical encoders, digital scales and other devices, the software can verify that something moved correctly when instructed to do so - the mode I can't afford at the moment, but will try to facilitate down the road when I can afford it. It would suck to ruin a large part because 0.1" was lost somewhere in the "X" travel due to weight of the project, the stepper being slightly undersized, or something else along those lines.

That's the way things seem to be going

I've used the torch method for removing electronic components before... I used the heat gun this time because I couldn't find the torch To make room for the milling machine I (cough) used a snow shovel to clean the area where it resides - by scooping and tossing everything over about 8 feet. I lost one of my electric drills too.

Definately check out the machine locally if you can, I'd be curious of your opinion. Compared to the other models they had on display there was no question this is at least an "okay" machine. It's not like I'm going to be running it 10-15 hours a day doing full production work. And if that ends up being a business for me (unlikely) at that point I'll buy a 3-phase bridgeport and put it in my warehouse space one town over, along with various other necessary machines.

Considering the collets have to be tightened from the top of the machine, I'm not sure how I would fabricate an automatic tool changer system. That's not even in my thoughts at the moment... but I am curious how one does this. Would some kind of "device" go into the R8 collet spindle, and handle the tool change itself? Or would the entire machine have to be hacked up and reworked?

That's the set I got off e-bay for $45 plus shipping. Obviously not that much of a savings looking at your link. Maybe I need to slow down my "ebay solves all problems" and start looking around tooling sites. Thanks for the tip!

CNC is within our reach these days, if you keep things to scale of your needs. The larger the machine, the more expensive the steppers, bearings, and structure components will be due to size and required power. That's why this machine : http://frederic.midimonkey.com/cnc-gantry2.html appears to be very "flimsy" in many aspects - because it is. Since the plasma torch shouldn't be resting or dragging on the material to be cut, I could get away with 1/2" round rails for the various parts to slide on, and smallish steppers.

For my milling machine, I'm going to *try* the steppers from the plasma cutter but I'm fairly confident they're going to be too small. If they are, fine, I'll pick up larger steppers and new controller boards, and the guts I "stole" from the CNC plasma machine can be reinstalled there.

Converting a drill press is reasonable for softer materials - plastics, soft aluminum, cast resin, softwoods, and so on. Drill presses aren't designed to take tremendous side loads on the chuck - only downward loads. Mills on the other hand are designed to take sideloads (material pushing into the side of the cutter) so that's a key thing to keep in mind.

A lot of older drill presses use better and more bearings, have larger heads, and more surface area to hold the quill straight, so those types of machines you can probably use as a real light duty milling machine.

Here is a guy who proved the theory:
http://tjanstrom.com/drillmillconvertion.html

You'll find that a lot of the import "toy" milling machines are really fancy drill presses, so they're not going to survive milling 1/2" thick steel on a regular basis either. It depends what you materials you need to work with. I do steel, steel, and more steel, so something massive, heavy, and structurally stable is a requirement. Otherwise, I'd have bought one of those $400 import milling machines and not thought about it again.

Basically for CNC conversions... you need the following:

1. Software to draw the part
2. Software to convert the part to machine code (G-code or similar)
3. Software or hardware to take that code and motor controllers what to do
4. Motor controller for each axis
5. Motor for each axis
6. Limit switches, relays for coolant and machine power as optional stuff
7. Wires and connectors to connect everything.

Oh, and a PC.

Google for "turboCNC" and download the DOS program, and give it a try. That's what got me hooked years ago. Turbo CNC essentially is #3 in the above list... so for $50-60 (I forget), plus three steppers and stepper controllers, you can convert any small machine to become CNC powered.

I think I paid $20 for each stepper, and $50 for each controller, plus shipping. I can give you the part numbers if you want if that helps any.

These parts are probably going back on the CNC plasma fairly quickly as I think the steppers are going to be too small for the job.

 

I think we should clear up just one small point. We need to change the name of the thread. This is not a toy but an 'absolute must have important piece of equipment' I get enough questions from my better half asking what my new tool is for and do i really need a new toy....

 

Thanks for the info Frederic. That was my basic thought on it as well. My intention for it would be primarily for aluminum and plastics, with a very occasional small bit of steel. Something like that would likely work for me. I kinda figure that my brother can likely help me out with a lot of the tooling using his machine shop connections, as well as the fact that he frequently fabricates things for me in the shop he works at. They are a rather large tool and die outfit with everything imaginable. The wire EDM machines there just fascinate me. When you gonna get around to making a DIY version of one of those? LOL. I went in the local HF today and I see what you mean. They had a micro-mill (thought I made that name up. Guess not) for 299, as well as a slightly larger one for 499, and the one you bought. There is a HUGE difference for the price difference. If I was going to shell out the 499, I too would rather cough up a grand and get one like yours. Gonna go back and check out your plasma setup again, as I could really use a cutting table for mine as well. congrats, and thanks again for the info. Also, yeah, I would like the sourcing info on the steppers and controllers.

 

Here's a yahoo group for homemade EDM machines, good group of guys too. Not too much BS and politics.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EDMHomeBuilders

I looked very seriously at the $300 and $500 machines, and there were several things that were turn-offs. The smaller $300 machine has an MT2 taper spindle, which if you buy collets for you'll find size limitations on what you can do. Absolutely no facing mills on that machine. The $500 machine has an R8 spindle which gives you access to much more and better tooling, but like the smaller machine the rectangular post is an extruded piece so I'm not sure how structural it really is under the heavy load of milling iron and steel. The biggest turn off for me was the fancy DC motor with variable speed drive - fine for higher RPM usage with milling/drilling aluminum and other soft materials, but steel and harder materials require a very low spindle RPM. The controller is PWM based so it will spin the motor slow enough, no problem, but to maintain torque the current draw is significantly increased. More current = more heat, and a slow running DC motor using high current will not cool itself very well and eventually burn out. I couldn't figure out from looking at either unit if the motor was a standard motor I could get anywhere, or if I'd be married to harbor freight hoping they carry parts in the future.

Aside from addressing rigidity concerns, the larger mill I ended up with uses a huge-**** AC motor like any "serious" power tool. While the mounting looks somewhat different than most of the other machinery I have personally or have access to, it's fairly obvious to me that if that motor cooks I can replace it with a Baldor of some type and just make a mounting plate adapter.

If I bought a bridgeport, milwalkee, clausing or cinci, I'd be very confident that I can buy parts down the road for the machine. In fact, I bought a gear for my Clausing lathe which was made in 1959, and Clausing had it in stock no less.

I couldn't find a "good enough" bridgeport for $800 or less, as a replacement single phase motor (of some kind) would be about another $200. That's another cool feature about this import mill - it runs on a 120V, 20A circuit. The website suggests 15A, but if I slip the belts to the fastest speed startup current is almost 20A then it runs at a hair over 15A. Not enough to trip the breaker, but the lights in the garage dimmed significantly while the machine was running. So, I moved it back to the 120V 20A circuit I put in for my SP135 welder which my Clausing lathe also is attached to (I can operate one machine at a time of course, two is a guarrenteed trip down in the basement, even if they aren't under load).

The price of this mill is double of the medium mill that you looked at, but it's at least twice as heavy and twice as rigid and there's no fear of flexing with this beast. So far I've only milled aluminum on it but it eats it like you or I would eat spagetti. Sluuuuuurp!

You can see in the pictures I was milling 1/8" aluminum plate.... and one area has a 5" long slot that I made.... I turned the crank as fast as I could to see what happens, and the mill (and installed end mill) seemed very happy.

Steel is another story of course... slow is much better as you know.

With the CNC plasma gantry I made... I strongly urge you to consider buying a "machine torch". I got mine used on ebay, and it's by far easier to mount than to make one from scratch out of a gun-style plasma torch. Also, you'd have to buy the gun-style torch to get some of the parts that you can't buy seperately. Just a though... I think I paid about $100-120 for mine, but what I paid is on the web page. I often don't remember details like this accurately. Too many things swirling around in my brain.

Check out the yahoo group, maybe it's for you, maybe not. YOu can also google for "homemade EDM" with the quotes and get some hits. A lot of junk, but a few hits looked useful to me.

I'll keep posting the progress here.

 

Yahoo has a EDMHomeBuilders group. I tired to post the actual link to it however FTE burped and I lost my entire post.

I looked very seriously at the $300 and $500 machines, and there were several things that were turn-offs. The smaller $300 machine has an MT2 taper spindle, which if you buy collets for you'll find size limitations on what you can do. Absolutely no facing mills on that machine. The $500 machine has an R8 spindle which gives you access to much more and better tooling, but like the smaller machine the rectangular post is an extruded piece so I'm not sure how structural it really is under the heavy load of milling iron and steel. The biggest turn off for me was the fancy DC motor with variable speed drive - fine for higher RPM usage with milling/drilling aluminum and other soft materials, but steel and harder materials require a very low spindle RPM. The controller is PWM based so it will spin the motor slow enough, no problem, but to maintain torque the current draw is significantly increased. More current = more heat, and a slow running DC motor using high current will not cool itself very well and eventually burn out. I couldn't figure out from looking at either unit if the motor was a standard motor I could get anywhere, or if I'd be married to harbor freight hoping they carry parts in the future.

Aside from addressing rigidity concerns, the larger mill I ended up with uses a huge-**** AC motor like any "serious" power tool. While the mounting looks somewhat different than most of the other machinery I have personally or have access to, it's fairly obvious to me that if that motor cooks I can replace it with a Baldor of some type and just make a mounting plate adapter.

If I bought a bridgeport, milwalkee, clausing or cinci, I'd be very confident that I can buy parts down the road for the machine. In fact, I bought a gear for my Clausing lathe which was made in 1959, and Clausing had it in stock no less.

I couldn't find a "good enough" bridgeport for $800 or less, as a replacement single phase motor (of some kind) would be about another $200. That's another cool feature about this import mill - it runs on a 120V, 20A circuit. The website suggests 15A, but if I slip the belts to the fastest speed startup current is almost 20A then it runs at a hair over 15A. Not enough to trip the breaker, but the lights in the garage dimmed significantly while the machine was running. So, I moved it back to the 120V 20A circuit I put in for my SP135 welder which my Clausing lathe also is attached to (I can operate one machine at a time of course, two is a guarrenteed trip down in the basement, even if they aren't under load).

The price of this mill is double of the medium mill that you looked at, but it's at least twice as heavy and twice as rigid and there's no fear of flexing with this beast. So far I've only milled aluminum on it but it eats it like you or I would eat spagetti. Sluuuuuurp!

You can see in the pictures I was milling 1/8" aluminum plate.... and one area has a 5" long slot that I made.... I turned the crank as fast as I could to see what happens, and the mill (and installed end mill) seemed very happy.

Steel is another story of course... slow is much better as you know.

With the CNC plasma gantry I made... I strongly urge you to consider buying a "machine torch". I got mine used on ebay, and it's by far easier to mount than to make one from scratch out of a gun-style plasma torch. Also, you'd have to buy the gun-style torch to get some of the parts that you can't buy seperately. Just a though... I think I paid about $100-120 for mine, but what I paid is on the web page. I often don't remember details like this accurately. Too many things swirling around in my brain.

Check out the yahoo group, maybe it's for you, maybe not. YOu can also google for "homemade EDM" with the quotes and get some hits. A lot of junk, but a few hits looked useful to me.

I'll keep posting the progress here.

 

Finished up the aluminum panel for the CNC interface -

http://frederic.midimonkey.com/yard/mill/IM002268.JPG

Two parallel port connectors, a power connector, and a GM ECM connector for the wiring to the milling machine (and plasma machine if I feel like carrying it over there ).

Milling is fun. Now if I could easily get the chips and the cutting oil out of the t-slots that would be nice. Used a small shopvac with a crevice tool and that works fine, but I need to address the coolant issue by taking the igloo coolant system I made for the lathe and never hooked up, and attach it to the milling machine. Spraying is boring.