[cybeeria]

Hello everyone!

I have been lurking for quite a while and learning, learning, learning. Now it's my turn to give something back so here goes.

I have wanted a 3/4 axis CNC mill for some time but I could not afford what I wanted nor the shipping to get it here as I live in southern New Mexico and everything I saw for sale was on the East or West coast and shipping would be outrageous. I finally found a old CNC mill close to me. It is a Hurco Kmb-1m in great shape but with an ageing control system and was therefore pretty much obsolete. I bought it on e-bay for $1000 and since it was only 200 miles away I just borrowed a big trailer and went and got it myself for $70 in diesel. The mill is bigger than I really needed but I'm sure I'll use the capability someday. Since it weighs almost 5000 pounds is was a bit of a chore getting it into my garage but with a couple of friends and a rented forklift we got it in.

I have 3 phase power less than 50 ft from my garage but the electric co. says that since I won't ever use enough power to pay for the cost of installation they want $7000 to hook me up. OUCH! That will never do. It turns out the the Hurcos use a very special motor made just for that mill and the actual motor shaft is part of the variable speed drive system. No single phase motor is available. After much research I decided to simply use a 3 hp single phase motor and drive the old motor with it, useing the old motor as a jack shaft. I made a bracket to hold the new motor and put a pulley where the fan on the 3 phase motor was and voila! works perfect but look a bit odd.

The controls were problematic and the cost of a Hurco upgrade was $4500 to get 10 year old controls. No good. After reading and learning on the forum (thanks to everyone!!) I decided that I really wanted to stay with a closed loop servo drive system and use the nice servo motors that I already had. After more research I decided to purchase the Ajax system (hence posting in this section). I ordered the system and also the upgraded encoders as the 200 line units in my mill were not enough.

I can't say enough about how nice Ajax has been. They were very helpful in deciding what I needed and getting me the right stuff. When it arrived I was very impressed with the whole package. I am just starting the electronics install and will update this as it goes along. I will post pictures too.

I plan to run OneCNCXR2 and they have been very helpful as well. The fact that they have a centroid post already was a major factor in choosing the Ajax/OneCNC combination. I am very computer literate but I don't want to write the interface or post. I want something that will pretty much work right out of the box.

I built a dedicated computer for the mill using a Gigabyte 2004RZ motherboard with an AMD 2.4 GHz CPU and 512Mb ram. I plan to install the motherboard right in the mill as there is plenty of room and I'd like to keep it self contained. I installed the control board and the flash drive from Ajax and it runs perfectly right from the onset-a huge plus! I was unsure that this board would work with the Linux but it does! Easy, Easy, Easy!

I installed the new encoders and they fit right on without any modifications to the encoders or the mill. Again, very easy. I gutted the old controller and am now ready to install the new controls from Ajax.

I will post an update as I get further along.

Bill