I checked with Dan, His was a refit of a mill that was CNC in an earlier life.
It looks like my only big issue will be the Z axis.
There are no exposed parts of the quill till it is about 1 inch down. That is where it just starts to show out the bottom of the head casting.
Even the depth setting is all internal.
It looks like direct coupling of a stepper to the shaft from the power feed may be my only access, short of cutting a slot in the front of the casting (the slot sounds like a real bad idea).
The return spring that is on the hand feed for the quill is just strong enough to couterbalance the quill, it will not raise the quill to the up position.
My thought was to see if I can make a new spring that would be strong enough to eliminate the backlash that is in the quill drive gears. It may make the quill dificult to use manually, but oh well.
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Jeff
If it aint broke, fix it till it is. |