Originally Posted by mc-motorsports  I did a DIY using Gecko drivers, Pacific Scientific servo's, Elrod Z axis retro, ballscrews, new bearings, pullies, belts, wire, built a computer, mach3 control, made all the mounting plates, did all the wiring so on and so forth, around 12K total paying 2k for the conventional machine.
100ipm rapids (tested at 120imp) 80imp constant contouring simultanious 3 axis no problem.
My advice is build it yourself if you can, you'll know how to fix it when anything wears out, breaks or requires maintence. And for programming, CAD/CAM for 100% sure. I started off writing code by hand, and I can now do in 20 minutes what would take me 4-6 hours to program simple ganged or fixtured parts. Plus your almost limitless with CAD/CAM vs. hand writing code. You can machine parts with CAD/CAM that are damn near impossible to hand write code for. Without CAD/CAM, I wouldn't be able to make most of the parts I manufacture daily.
Good luck! |
A good set of ballscrews for my manual series 1 bport would have cost more than the BTC-1 that I wound up with. ($1k usd) It came with servos, ball screws,power drawbar, 24 position toll changer,vfd,servodrives, and a whole bunch of other things. Unless you have a manuall machine that you are really attached to, and many guys will agree with me, find a cnc machine in need of a retro fit. It is easilly less than 50% of the time required. Just make sure it is mechanically sound and the screws are not worn out.
I am into mine for about $3000 USD including shipping (means I went and picked it up).This of course doesn't include the vise and/or tooling that you would need to buy for any machine. I will hopefully be making my first test cuts today.
I cut air last week and with my air calipers it was dead on.
It is currently going 125IPM. once I retune the servo drives it should go up to the 300ipm it would go when new.
I use the original power supply and motors, the DSPMC/IP board from vital systems. (36 input 16 outputs) +-10v analouge outputs. Stepper output is coming. Network port interface so it will run on laptops as all the motion control is done on the board. Mach3 just tells it where to go.
Works well with on my test computer(Vista laptop) and I am running the machine on win2k.
I found that the best way to get cheap computer is to buy your wife a new one.
I am working on a build log and will hopefully get it going next week or 2