Here we go again :D

A month ago I posted on another cnc forum asking for some advice on buying a knee mill. A gentlemen responded and told me that he had a Bridgeport Series II NC mill for sale locally. Originally it had a tape drive, but that fried a long time ago. The ways and screws look to be in great condition because of the lack of use. It has a 4hp head, ground ballscrews, box ways, an air assisted knee, 40 taper spindle, 30x15 travel, and weighs 6000 pounds. My plan is to use the original 1400oz Stepper motors in conjunction with some really nice Slo-Syn drivers with built in power supplies. The head needs some work, but there may be a more elegant solution. Originally it was a Vari-Speed (4J) head but all of the belts and some other pieces need to be replaced. I have been wondering if it might be better to lock it into 1 or 2 ratios and do all the speed changes via the VFD. This would save time, money, and be much more convenient. Since my cnc router just sold on ebay, all I'm waiting on is the cash in hand. It should be 1-2 weeks before I can get it delivered to my house.

Let the fun begin!

There is a few post regarding this in these forums, this one for a start
http://cnczone.com/forums/showthread.php?t=7172
Al.

I will give you my two cents on VFDs. Others, please chime in on your knowledge.

You may not find a VFD in the 4hp range that has 220V single phase input. Automation direct stops at 3hp. The Yaskawa reps tell me that you can take their drive (3 phase input) and derate it by a factor of two and run it with single phase. So, in your case 4hp x 2. So the next available size which would be 10hp. I do not know if you will find other manufacturers that will proclaim this functionality. Or of course pick up a phase converter. Don't know which way would be less expensive.
Don't know what your motor is on that machine. But you may want to replace it with something like a Marathon Blackmax which has a TENV (non-vent) enclosure. This motors are rated for constant torque down to 0 RPM.
An 1800 RPM motor can be clocked at 2x nameplate with no problems. So you can achieve 3600 RPM without a problem, possibly more.
Look for a drive which has "sensorless vector" capability. Automationdirect sells a Hitachi SJ100 that has this capability. Don't know if they will share information that you can double the size of the drive and run it with single phase or not. Worth a try. A vector drive is even better but you will need an encoder on the motor. Big bucks!

Or replace the motor with a 3hp and then there are no issues since those drives are readily available in single phase input. If you can live with a little less power.

That is my two cents.
Good luck
Chris

The Yaskawa reps tell me that you can take their drive (3 phase input) and derate it by a factor of two and run it with single phase. So, in your case 4hp x 2.
Chris


The derating factor I've heard is 2/3. Makes sence cause you got two hot lines feeding the VFD instead of three. The diodes on the input are most liekly the limiting factor.

FWIW, I've run a 5 hp motor in my 10EE with a 5 hp. VFD (no derating) single phase input with no trouble at all. VFDs are programmable for ramp up/down, if you get OCR kickouts (overcurrent rating) adjust the ramping.

Karl

It wouldn't surprise me that the Yaskawa rep is just being conservative using the 2x.

Chris

In theory it is 2/3, but you need to remember 3 ph power has a different pase shift. There for when you use 2 legs out of the three the pase shift accounts for more loss. With single phase pwr the 2 legs are 180 deg out of phase, with 3 ph they are 120 deg.

Typically vfd's are rated if you are feeding 3ph in and getting 3ph out. When you put 1ph in and get 3ph out, you need to derate the drive.

If I were you CF I would put a 3ph motor on the mill (I'm assuming you have a 1ph now), and get a vfd so you can run on the house power.

I'm not even sure a 3ph vfd would run a 1ph motor, as the windings are totally different. A 3ph has 3 different windings, and a 1ph only has one. So I think if you would hook 3ph pwr (even if it is only 2 legs) into a 1ph motor you would 1) blow the vfd, 2) burn out the winding in the motor.

You cannot run a single phase motor on a 3ph VFD, There are 1ph VFD's out there for 1ph motors that are cap-start-cap-run (no centrifugal switch) but they are very unreliable and tend to drop out of control as soon as rpm drops too low.
The reason for de-rating a VFD when hooked into 1ph is that the DC supply has less capacity on 1ph than 3ph, the AC input is rectified filtered and then converted to variable 3ph out. If you dont intend running your 3ph motor up to maximum current then you can get away without derating.
Also usually the reason for faulting out when using fast accel. decel rates is overvoltage not overcurrent due to the regenerative action caused by rapid braking.
Al.

I need to clarify a little bit. The 4hp motor is already a 3 phase. The vfd I bought is a 7.5HP model. I believe that this won't be a problem, because 99% of the time I won't be using anywhere near the full amp draw of the motor.

My understanding is that the issue of running VFDs on single phase versus three phase is the capacitors. Three phase power can give you three times the ripple frequency (360 Hz versus 120Hz for full wave rectification). That means you can use a capacitor of one third the size for the same amount of output ripple.

I believe this is also the ripple current in the capacitor (although I'm not certain). The ripple current of the capacitor causes heating of the capacitor and is a direct cause of failure of the capacitor.

So, you might find that the VFD works just fine without any derating. Until a capacitor fails and it dies. :frown:

Ken

CF,

7.5Hp drive is close to 2x the 4hp motor. So, nothing is 100% but you should be o.k. there.
Don't be so sure that your existing motor is going to like being driven by a VFD if it is the original motor. But then again, run it till it burns then replace it with a inverter duty motor, provided no damage occurs to the VFD in the process.

Chris

True, but for now I'll just run the motor within a 25% window of the original 1750 rpm's so that nothing is damaged. After I earn a little cash off of the machine, I'll upgrade to a 3hp Inverter grade motor.

CF,

BTW: I found some of the information in this article informative. It is on VFD/motors:
http://www.reliance.com/pdf/misc/225412.pdf#search='torque%20decrease%20with%20speed%20decrease%20inverter'

Chris

Here is the 7.5HP Motortronics VFD that came today. It's supposed to be derated by a factor of .7 when run on Single Phase, so I'm in good shape.


ETA for the Bridgeport being delivered in next Thursday.

http://www.practicalmachinist.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=forum;f=3

check this forum if you have not already. I don't know jack s*&^ about VFDs but these guys do. Some pretty bright fellas over there, I'm sure they could help you as well.

I read hundreds of posts over there before buying this one. It's a great forum, although some of it is over my head.

No doubt, it's over most of our heads. But don't be afraid to post over there with a question or three, the vast majority of the guys over there would be willing to help you out. You'll be a VFD expert by the end of this.

My old cnc router is finally sold. Lance was very happy with the machine and the escrow payment should be processed later today. The pickup date is setup for Friday of this week. Hopefully all goes well, as it is quite a big piece of iron.

Here are my Slo Syn SS2000D6 drivers. They accept 5v ttl logic signals, so installation should be a breeze.

http://products.danahermotion.com/accountimages/141/1343/hires/SS2000D6.jpg


I just bought a lot of tool holders and collet holders on ebay. Tooling is quite a different beast then what I'm used to with the Porter Cable router. Each holder weighs about 3 pounds. This is 40 taper, which should be able to take heavier cuts then the R8.

Woah!

Big change of plans. I found out that the stepper motors I was going to buy aren't quite as powerful as originally thought. Only 900oz. That won't quite cut it :frown:

After cruising around ebay, I stumbled upon this auction. It doesn't look like much, but I believe from reading lots of specs that these motors are capable of 5lb-in per amp!! I'll put the larger two on the X and Y and the smalled one on the quill.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=7519233701&rd=1&sspagename=STRK%3AMEWA%3AIT&rd=1

Drives will most likely be Gecko. The power supply might be a 48v 36amp power supply unless I can find a 60v model.

*Sigh*

Just when I buy those motors, I find some more on ebay. I don't want to list the auction because it's not over yet, but I will say that they are almost 8lb-in per amp! With a 9amp continuous rating I'll have over 70lb-in of torque on my X and Y. Hopefully the Geckos can handles these crazy things.

That went well! Paid $250 for a rollback to pick it up in north Houston and then drive 30 miles to my house in Missouri City. The entire process took about an hour and a half.

The head isn't on it right now, because it wouldn't clear the garage without it being taken off.

I've gotten most of the electronics bought, now if they would hurry up and get here!

Took 6 hours, but now it's finally been moved into the garage by rollers. The uphill slope combined with my lack of experience handling 3 ton pieces of machinery were all working against me, but at least it's there and I still have all my fingers.

Today I worked on the lube system as well as the Z axis on the knee. The old auto-oiler got hit with a forklift so I'll be buying a new Bijur manual one shot. This probably isn't as good of a solution as an automatic model, but it's the only thing I can afford right now.

The Z axis ballscrew in the knee had every single bolt loose where the nut connected to the casting. I was worried that it had an extreme amount of backlash until I cranked the whole thing up and got a look at that nut. The rubber bellow protecting the screw is a lost cause, but hopefully the seal to the air-piston counterbalance faired a little better.


In 2 weeks I'll have my 100amp sub panel installed at the garage. Recently our breaker box almost caught on fire so we had the whole unit replaced. When the electrician was here fixing it, I talked to him about the 220v options for the garage. We came to the conclusion that a subpanel would be best, that way we can install a couple more 110v lines to other things in the garage.



This evening I tore off all the old limit switches and worked on cleaning them out. The ball mechanism was plugged up with all sorts of gunk and the rubber seal was degraded to the point where it was causing the plunger to bind. I also rewired all of them to work through my parallel port breakout board. The old cable was probably 14ga and much too big to work.

Got my geckos today, as well as a metal enclosure for all my electronics and a computer. Hopefully by tomorrow it'll all be wired up.

(Dang those Gecko drives are tiny compared to my Centents).

Got my 500w X axis servo today! A bit of bads news though. It produces its rated .6HP at 3000rpms, not 1500 as I originally thought. My target speed for the X motor was 1250. This means I'm going to have to gear it down a bit, which is going to kill the speed with my 1000ppr encoder. I should switch it out for a 250ppr but since the 1000ppr came free with the motor, I'll have to live with it for now.

I spent the afternoon making some temporary cables and getting everything ready to be tested on a single axis. About 2 hours later, success! The motor spun up quite nicely, although my 400mhz computer is obviously limiting the speed. Now to fiddle with the tuning. It never seems to stay quite right. I'll get it spot on while it's still, but after revving it up and then letting it stop again, the darn thing goes back to twitching. Any secrets here?

Too much power, is there such a thing? Here is my 65lb-in Brushless Gettys motor for the Y.

Thanks of the inflormation cold fusion. I'm keeping a print out of your thread for my own little how to manual. Looking for more of them.

Keep up the good work.

:D

It's alive!!!

After setting up all the parameters on the VFD, I crossed my fingers and hit Run. After the initial 10 seconds of spoolup time and slight panic by me, it settled in at 3000rpms with a nice little hum. The new Gates Powergrip belts seem to be the source of the most noise, but even that isn't very much. So far I've run it between 1700-3500rpms and it seems to run fine through the entire range.

Tomorrow I'll work on cleaning up the wiring and possibly doing the first under power cut with the X axis.

Man you are so far ahead of me. :( Mine is still in big pieces.

That's because I'm only a student and have the entire summer to work on it...

Well I went out to get some info off the controller today and the heat just about killed me. this weekend is going to be murder as well. Looks like the dawn low temps are going to be in the 90's

It's just about as bad here in Houston. I'm considering sleeping during the day and waking up at night to work in the garage.

Phoemix forecast for Friday Saturday and Sunday 112F, 113F, 113F

It's only gotten up to 100F here. The humidity is what kills you though. It's kind of like walking into a giant sauna.

Today was the big day! I cleaned out the entire left side of the garage and moved in my pre-asseblemed controller/drive cabinet. After a little fiddling with Mach2, I flipped the power switch and reset the drive fault. Cautiously I did a slow jog at 20ipm. Everything worked great!

I did run into a very strange problem however. Originally I had setup Mach2 for 14,400 pulses per inch, which should have been correct with my 360ppr Renco encoder . When I put the micrometer on the table it gave me some strange results. Mach2 was jogging in .1" increments, but it was only moving the axis .037". I double checked all the settings in Mach2, as well as looked for mechanical problems. It all seemed perfect. After doing a experimenting, I found that when I entered the ratio for a 1000ppr encoder, it worked great. Maybe I got a mislabeled Renco off ebay?


After solving that problem, I started working on measuring the backlash on all parts of the table. This also yielded some slightly strange results. With the table moved all the way to the right, I'm getting .0015. After moving 5 or so inches to the left, the backlash seems to disappear completely for the rest of the travel.


Right now everything has been paid for, minus some endmills and tslot nuts. Unfortunately my budget has been wrecked by that electrician's bill. Does anyone have some junk bits or beat up nuts lying around they don't need?

I just a $3000 slot in a piece of 1/4" aluminum.

Those cuts I did a few days ago were with a 1/8 endmill. Today I managed to find a busted up 1/4 Carbide in the tool chest so I thought I would setup some aluminum and see what happened. This endmill was a 4 flute, although it had one whole flute that had been chipped off. I managed to get 20ipm at 3200rpm with a .1875" depth of cut. Not too shabby, and the finish was quite surprising.

I do need to install some sort of spray mist lube system. The aluminum chips are welding themselves to the flutes without it.

I do need to install some sort of spray mist lube system. The aluminum chips are welding themselves to the flutes without it.

I had some endmills that I thought were ruined by having aluminum welded to them -- and one $70 carbide key cutter.

My father told me a trick that I will share with you. Put the cutters into a lye solution. It will react with the aluminum, but not with the steel. I used two heaping teaspoons of 100% powdered lye (sodium hydroxide) in a small juice glass of water. I let it sit for around five hours and the tools were as clean as new.

Warning -- lye is dangerous stuff. I put the juice glass inside a stainless steel pan, wore glasses and rubber gloves.

Ken

Warning -- lye is dangerous stuff. I put the juice glass inside a stainless steel pan, wore glasses and rubber gloves.

That's a cool trick. I have a water jet cleaning machine at work that uses NaOH as a cleaning solution -- one quart of powered NaOH to about 8 gallons of water. The instructions say that if you spill any on your shoes, you should "discard" your shoes immediately!

Of course, we don't throw our shoes away. But it made us think twice about touching it with our bare hands. I got some on my hand accidentally and it leaves the fingers feeling tingly, like you took a layer of skin off with sandpaper.

Also interesting to hear it's called Lye. We were told it's a chief ingredient in dishwasher soap. Anyway, good warning -- be careful!

That's a good piece of advice, thanks! Most of the time the bit ends up breaking because of the clogged flutes. If I am able to hit the Estop in time, the chips normally come out with a razor blade.

I've dealt with some pretty nasty chemicals before. Lye is like rainwater comparatively. We once did a test of 97% sulfuric acid on some fabric. It reduced a shop towel to a bubbling black pile of goo in about a second.

Hi there,

I would say that a concentrated solution of NaOH is just as bad as a concentrated solution of a 'strong' acid (HCL, H2SO4 etc). You need to be careful with any skin contact and particularly your eyes. I certainly wouldn't say it is like rainwater when compared to these acids - it is nasty stuff.

Regards
Warren

Also interesting to hear it's called Lye. We were told it's a chief ingredient in dishwasher soap. Anyway, good warning -- be careful!

It is used in diluted concentration as a degreaser. Purple Lightning is a popular brand. Also, lye is used to strip the anodizing off of aluminum and also as a prep prior to anodizing/reanodizing.

Anyone interested in buying the 2 Gecko 320 drives which I no longer need?

Anyone interested in buying the 2 Gecko 320 drives which I no longer need?


Maybe! PM me with the details.

Ygpm!

Come on guys, $190. Any takers?

It's been a while since the last update, but unfortunately not a whole lot has been done. I've decided to change the Z axis motor to a Stepper (it's a long story). Hopefully this will work as good, or better then a Servo. I figure that driving almost a thousand pounds up and do is not a good idea over 20ipm. Figuring in gear reductions and ballscrew pitch, that brings the rpm needed to 400. That's just about the perfect range for a stepper, because after that the torque falls off quickly. Also, the Z axis won't be moving 99% of the time. Since simple holding torque is all that's needed, a Stepper seems the best way to go.

Yesterday I got the .001 indicator and worked on tramming the table. When I first took the measurements, it was tilted in both axis by almost 5 degrees. The indicator was mounted using an 8" swing bar, which I've heard is a sufficient length. After an hour I got the X and Y to about .0005. The instrument is only graduated in thousandths, but that needle didn't twitch through the entire sweep....

Isn't that the same stuff used to pickle pickles....suppose to make them crunchy....it does....I used some about 3 years ago....

Cold,
How are you tramming the rig? Not looking for a detailed explanation, but are you following some guideline? As you know I have the Series one (I assume tramming would be the same), and need to tram it once I get it going.

Or is it really just common sense? I have the manuals for my machine, but I see no mention of it.

BTW how is the VFD going? I am trying to learn about VFDs, and as far as I can tell people are using it instead of three phase. I have a rotary phase converter already, and plan to leave the 3 phase running to the spindle, and the rest is wired to a separate 120v connection.

I would assume that after you get you VFD installed, you can control spindle speed with MACH3. I am not looking to spend that much more on this project, and variable speed control will be down the road somewhat. Problem is I have no idea how to control spindle speed with a 3 phase motor and MACH3. Heck I do not even know the principle of the adjustable dial up top yet ( the one that controls spindle speed). I guess once I get that figured out, it should put me on the right path.

You mention Z axis moving 1000lbs, are you moving the knee or the spindle? I have heard of people moving the knee as well on these machines. Being lazy it would be neat to move the knee as well. Again another "upgrade" after I get the bulk of it done. Although this would take some work for sure. Than again, how do I go about controlling 2 Z axis with MACH3????

Neat color and paint. Use a red colored lube and you would never see the oil dripping from the ways. :)

Chris

Concerning tramming, I did a lot of searching on the Practical Machinist for how to do it. It's really not that hard once you do it for the first time. To tram a series 2 you have to loosen the 4 front head bolts and gently turn the worm screw on the right side for the X axis. For the Y axis you have to loosen the 3 bolts on the ram and gently turn the worm screw that is on top of the ram. http://www.practicalmachinist.com/cgi-bin/ubbcgi/ultimatebb.cgi


The VFD has been working great. I have not had a chance to wire it to Mach2 yet, but that appears to be easy. There is a breakout board at the bottom of it with a bunch of relay controls and even a ttl input.

The series II came from the factory with the Z axis on the knee. It has a 4:1 reduction, plus a massive .2" ballscrew at the bottom. To further help with the weight, an air piston counterbalance was used in the base. To sum it up, you don't. I've locked my quill in place at the very top and left it there. The knee has such a larger travel, almost 15", that it will make you never want to go back to the quill again.

Isn't that the same stuff used to pickle pickles....suppose to make them crunchy....it does....I used some about 3 years ago....

That would be "Pickling Lime" also "Alum" is used in pickling, of vegtables that is.
Lye is drain cleaner (& oven cleaner). Still available but not talked about much because it's dangerous and people today are not as intelligent. Liquid drain cleaner is sulfuric acid combination, safer but weaker in comparison.

Sorry for the off topic post, didn't want anyone making pickles with Red Devil Lye.

Concerning tramming, I did a lot of searching on the Practical Machinist for how to do it. It's really not that hard once you do it for the first time. To tram a series 2 you have to loosen the 4 front head bolts and gently turn the worm screw on the right side for the X axis. For the Y axis you have to loosen the 3 bolts on the ram and gently turn the worm screw that is on top of the ram. http://www.practicalmachinist.com/cgi-bin/ubbcgi/ultimatebb.cgi
.

It's not hard at all but getting the direction straight in your head on which way to move the head to make the correction will drive you nuts the first time you do it. Loved to watch the first timers tram the mill.

All that's required is a DTI and one of the tramming rigs that clamps to the spindle and holds the DTI.

Makes you rethink tilting the head for a special operation. You start playing with sine bars & sine vises and angle blocks so you don't have to re-tram the head. ;)

Hahah, that got me a couple times on the first try. I found that the easiest way to do it was zero the indicator at the back of the table, then swing it to the oppsite side and note the difference. It was high on the front side almost .1", or one revolution of the needle. After noting that, it was easy to adjust the worm screw so that the needle rested exactly in the middle of the two measurements. Of course you need to repeat this 2-3 times because everything moves when you start tightening those bolts.


Since I don't even have sine bars & sine vises, I think I'll stay far away from those type jobs.

Cold,
Thanks for the info on tramming, I figured I would just have to tough it out. You are probably correct, once you do it it is simple. Problem is, that I will probably not have to do it again.

I did not know the Series II had the Z Axis on the knee. I did know about the air assist. That must give you a ton more axis on the Z as compared to the Series I (5" for the spindle here I think). I now see no place for the stepper on you head. Makes all the sense now. I assume that the spindle is fixed (as compared to the Z axis)? That 10" of travel makes me want tot convert it even more. How big is the stepper on your knee? I would think that one of the original steppers would work. I have 4 steppers on my machine (one for the rotary table as well). Might use the one off the rotary to do a mock up when time comes. Or just keep an eye out for parts form a Series II. Although I doubt that would come up.

I do think that our machines use pretty much the same castings in the knee area, although I might be wrong. That might give me an easy way out, if I can find the relevant parts to mount a stepper on the knee, form a Series II.

If you ever get a chance, I would not mind seeing a picture of the knee stepper.

BTW is that you in the pic??

Chris

Rusty,
You are more than welcome to come over here and watch this first timer make a fool of himself. :)

Chris

That's me, after too many hours in that horribly hot garage. As far as castings go, I think the the Series 2 uses mostly different castings. The reason I suspect this is that all my ways are Box ways, instead of the dovetail ways that a series I uses.

No, my quill is fully working and has about 5" of travel. Right now I have a hand lever on it to do manual drill work. I've got a 1200oz stepper on the Z right now, and it seems to work great. Without the air assist it struggles, but when you bring that thing to 40psi, it hums along just fine. I think that with the lighter knee on the Series I, you would get away with either a smaller stepper, or a 1200oz with no air assist.

Cold,
Now you are making me jealous. The Z axis being moved by a handle sounds great. Especially for a homeowner. Sounds like your machine will defiantly be usable as a nice drill press as well.

Did not know the ways are different. In looking at your pics, I see the table ball-screw is different (you have a gear on the left side, where my ball screw floats). See what I can learn. Neither the less, from what I have seen, most of the knee mills from Bridgeport seem to have the same setup on the knee axis. I might be wrong on this. If this is the case than I am sure I can find some simple parts or plans to upgrade it to a stepper.

I am getting ahead of myself and should be working on the mill, and finish what I have started and not making more work.

The drill press option is nice, but not as easy as a regular one. There is no through hole in the table, and all parts have to be carefully clamped down. 4hp at the spindle is enough to do some wicked damage if it picks up the part I'm drilling on.

I believe that a company makes a Z axis ballscrew conversion for the Series I. The link slips my mind right now, but I'll do some research and let you know what I come up with.

Cold,
I completly forgot about the ball screw. That extra cost might kill my plan all together. :(

Perhaps the best thing to do would be finish the mill first;) Even I don't know what I will use 15" of travel for. On 90% of my work, I only use 1"....

Cold,
You are 100% correct!!!!

I only have a days work wiring, and awaiting the new P/S for the steppers. If the P/S was here when it was suppose to be (2 weeks ago) I would have it done by know.

Hindsight being 20/20 I wish I left space for another Gecko controller for the knee axis.


Chris

You could always sell me that great controller cabinet and build a new, larger one :banana:

Now way on that Cold. As much as I would like to .... It is my pride and joy for the moment.

Actually I am way overboard on the thing. Seeing that I am waiting so long on the P/S I spent way too much time on the controller box. The CD-ROM and diskette mounted and accessible from the outside of the box, should tell you that much. Even worse I have a fluorescent lamp in the cabinet, controlled by a door switch. So I will have plenty of light in there when I spend the next couple of weeks troubleshooting it.


Besides, I am using steppers.... :(

Cold,

Afterthought. I would use a raised table on your mill. Just a steel plate with a hole in it to recreate a drill press. Raise it about 2 or 3 inches off the table. Better yet make it fit in the slots for quick install / removal. Giving you a nice 4 HP drill press.

Chris

Rusty,
You are more than welcome to come over here and watch this first timer make a fool of himself. :)

Chris

Oh I've seen enough first timers do it in the VoTec classes. And I've bailed a few out when they became babbling wrecks after several hours.

You guys have me drooling over the "Real mills". My little mini-mill project is just about done & I'm already dreaming of the real deal. Maybe I can make enough $$ with this toy to upgrade like C.F.. Only problem is, I'm in the boonies and there isn't any 3 phase.

Likewise the heat in the garage is pretty miserable too. I think C.F. & I are in the same heat latitude, me being in FL. I stand over the fan to cope. At night, it's just as bad, can't leave the garage door open because the bugs will throw you out. Dreaming of January when it cools off some :D

3 phase service is like 10 grand to have it run to the garage. Why not use a rotary phase converter or vfd to convert your 220v to 3 phase?


It's 95F over here right now. A welcome break would be 85F :(

Rusty,
As Cold mentioned, use a phase converter. I am in the boonies too, but on a major street and I am sure there is 3 phase out there. Boonies does not matter that much with three phase really. But you should not worry about having it installed.

Better yet keep an eye out like I did. I started wanting to do a CNC machine. I started out with a G8689 (very small), when it arrived it had some runout so back it goes (Grizzly was great to deal with). I started looking at a $1k Grizzly that was a little more substantial, than it hit me. By the time I put motors, ball screws, etc, on the machine it would cost me more than what I have now and it will still be a benchtop model. Plus if I ever wanted to bail on it and sell it, I would for sure lose some money.

Than I came across the model I have now. Very little use at all as it came from a fabric mill. Honestly I could probably sell the tooling on ebay for more than I paid for it. I am contemplating painting the thing, as it has so little wear on it. I also got the phase rotary phase converter with mine. All told I probably have less into my machine than you do or most people with the mini-mill conversions. Even more so if I include the tooling and phase converter. Glad I was lucky and found a good deal. I more or less just bought the iron, ballscrews and steppers. The rest I junked.

Just do not let the 3 phase or logistics scare ya off. There are great deals to be had as many people are scared off for these reasons. Even better yet, I have a 10HP converter now, opening the door for even more deals on 3 phase machines.


Chris

I'm working my way there. Trust me, getting this far has been a big accomplishment. I had the Grizzly mini-mill long before I got the CNC bug. Built it as an exercise in learning CNC. I've got a good grasp on manual machining, CNC was the next step.

I don't have a pile of money in it, maybe $500 plus the cost of the mill. I consider that the cost of the education. Could have spent nearly that just on a DRO. CNC is far more useful.

I'll be posting some pics on the benchtop forum in the next few days. I reworked my limit switch mountings today, didn't have an 8-32 tap or I'd been finished. But I'm really pleased with how it turned out. I really didn't expect it to have come out this well.

I've got a couple of small money making projects ready for it and if it all works out, I might be able to step up to a real mill and maybe put airconditioning in the garage :D

Been hand coding thus far. Now that the machine is done, I can learn software. :)

I've decided the amc drives are too much for me, and that geckos would be better. They're on ebay here. http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=7540014523&rd=1&sspagename=STRK%3AMESE%3AIT&rd=1

Tomorrow I'm going to get a quick video of the mill doing it's first part. Here is a screenshot of the part in Cad. It's a custom chassis plate for a friend who has been waiting patiently through the entire Retrofit to get some stuff done.

http://www.coldfusionracing.com/deck.jpg

Nice work! Are you going to post some close-up pics of the mill? Motor mountings etc. Didn't take you long to to the retro!

Is the screenshot from OneCNC or Solidworks?

Sure, although the motor mounts were not my work, but came from the factory. The machine was originally an NC machine with Nema 42 steppers.

Just curious as to how it all boiled down. I'm familiar with the Series 1 and the finned motors and the monster control cabinet on the back. Air operated speed control etc. Now that you have the Geckos and a VFD, the controls probably fit in a shoe box.

Best I can recall from your photos, the machine was missing NEMA 42 servos and the ones you found were bolt on replacements, correct?

Yep, I got the machine with no electronics at all. I've collected a couple different servo motors, all fairly large. The problem was that some had huge frames, but Nema 34 bolt patterns. I ended up making adaptor plates for the Y and Z axis to convert those holes to the Nema 42 pattern.

Wow! Can't imagine a NEMA 34 motor mounting on a motor to drive a mill that large. I've got NEMA 34's on my mill but they are the standard small form factor, not "Necked Down" motors. Never looked that close at the Bridgeport finned motors to see what their mounting was.

I'm taking notes, hope to convert a full size mill one day.

I couldn't believe they put 34 holes on this thing either. It's got almost 50lb continuous torque and is over a foot long.

Went back and read the first post, the isn't the #40 spindle taper the same as most VMC's? If so, you lucked up then with your tooling since a year from now when you upgrade to the Fadal or Haas, all your tooling will be ready to go ;)

Cold / Rusty
Just a fun reference. The computer cabinet on the Series I (assume the same for Series II) that I chucked was 370lbs (including the cabinet itself). (this also converted the AC to DC for the computer and 1/2 of the AC to DC converter for the steppers). The guts of the P/S cabinet that I chucked was about 170lbs, giving a total of about 540lbs of computer and power supplies. I estimate that I put in about 30lbs of computer and P/S.

So in my case 1977 technology = 540lbs,
2005 technology = 30lbs. (including a complete 2.4mhz PC)

Granted my build is in no way the overbuilt industrial type machine that Bridgeport did. Than again it should be better and faster by a couple of fold.

In all fairness and hindsight being 20/20, I would rather do it again like Cold, without the original computer and power supplies, heck motors too, if the price was right. After delivery, I had the Boss 3 controls running for about 30 minutes. Figured it would be a better route to retrofit than try to learn the controls. One thing I wasted a lot of time on was trying to figure out what the Boss 3 was doing. Learned a lot, but not really all that helpful in converting. Think it caused more confusion.

Chris

The actual taper is the same, but I believe they use Cat40 toolholders. Mine is an NMTB40 system. I don't think I'll be getting a VMC anytime soon:( When I go to college in two years, I'll have to take a break from the cnc game...

The actual taper is the same, but I believe they use Cat40 toolholders. Mine is an NMTB40 system. I don't think I'll be getting a VMC anytime soon:( When I go to college in two years, I'll have to take a break from the cnc game...

Use it as a side job to pay for college beer! ;)

Die,
Think the college would mind a mill in the dorms???

Chris

What great influences I've got from this board :cheers:

The mill is definitely staying home. I'll probably come down during the summer and do a few jobs for extra cash. It sure beats working for my money;)

Die,
Think the college would mind a mill in the dorms???

Chris

You know CF, I don't know what colleges you have your eyes on but many have machineshops. Depending on where you go, you very well might be able to keep up with your biz while at school, maybe even grow it. I'd look into it while checking out schools.

If you can stay away from the beer and chicky snax, while at school, you'll have a good head start on everyone else when you graduate.

Hopefully I'll go to A&M. I've heard they have a VERY nice machine shop.

Today was the big day! After getting home from Calculus, I spent the next 6 hours getting the servo system tuned, and all those lose ends tied up on the machine. Here is an part I cut a while back on the old machine, with a few changes.

3/8" 6061
3200 rpms
5/16 3 flute HSS Endmill
.1875" DOC with .005 finishing pass
Time to cut, 7 minutes.

I need to polish the faces on the belt sander with some 1000 grit, but I still think it looks great. The surface finish is a million times better then the cnc router. The tolerances are great considering it's a 30 year old machine with a servo system that a complete amateur installed. .0015 is the most error I can find in the whole piece.

Before I incur the wrath of the forum members, let me just say that this is a paperweight and nothing more. One of the very first pieces I made with my old cnc router was a plastic version of this, so I thought it fitting to do it again.


I would like to thank everyone on this forum for the incredible amount of help during this whole project. A special thanks also goes out to Mr. Oder, who was the reason this whole project got started.


http://www.coldfusionracing.com/k.JPG

The video isn't that exciting, except for the fact that everything is working perfectly!

http://www.swlambda.com/Mill.AVI

Nice Job!! Great finish!!

I'm real close to cutting my first part. Been doing some test runs in plexi before doing the real thing. Still learning asome things like G54 offsets & such. BTW OneCNC is absolutely awesome! Esp. for a CAD/CAM noob like me.

Wish I could download the video but stuck on dialup.

How about a few pics of your finished machine?

I offset everything in Onecnc. I don't know if that's the best way of doing it, but it keeps the thinking to a minimum;)

It's too dark now, but I'll snap a few tomorrow. Be sure to post a picture of your first part, as soon as that magical day arrives.

I got the sound, but not the video. This is with Windows Media Player version 9.

Yeah, other people are having that problem. I'm trying to encode it into WMV now.

New Video (http://www.swlambda.com/1.avi)

Upper deck for an Emaxx R/C car.

Does the new video work for everyone?

That one worked for me. Cool setup.

Is that really Mr. Clean in your spray bottle?

Nope, it's actually vegatable oil. It seems to work very nicely with Aluminum and smells great. It's like walking into a Donut shop :D

Who says you can't make tiny gears with a knee mill :D


Today I got a call from a friend of mine in Florida. It turns out that he was in a real bad situation and needed some cnc work done ASAP. This Saturday he was planning on making an attempt at the world R/C car speed record (The current is 112mph). The problem was that he had stripped his drive gears. Of course he wanted me to make him a replacement set, and have it over nighted by tomorrow. The gears are 32 tooth, with a 1mm tooth pitch. This of course is fairly small, which scared me. I've never done a job like this, but why not give it a try? Luckily I had some 1/32 endmills on hand, which after much double checking, would be small enough to create the proper tooth form. The white material is Delrin, and the silver is Aluminum. It took about 3 hours to machine both of these, due to a slow spindle speed of only 3200. I'm happy to say that it all came out very nice. With a little bit of luck, my parts will be on the fastest car on the planet.

Keep up the good work. your post have been so helpfull. You and jdeleaNEY both.

Thanks

Due to the request of a few people, I'm posting the IGES and DXF files for the knuckles. You may need to resize the holes, depending on how big your fingers are. Also, for legal purposes, this is a paperweight ;)

FWIW, there is a link around here where someone made a highspeed spindle from a pencil die grinder that fit a .625 or .75" collet, air fed from the top. If you find yourself doing small work, you might look into it further.

Great job on the gears, I've cut a few using an indexing head and gear cutter. CNC has to be faster. Were you able to configure the gear entirely in OneCNC? Haven't gotten that far along yet.

That is exactly what I need! I do a lot of cutting with 1/8 endmills, and 3200rpm is killing my job time.

Yep, I generated all that in Onecnc. It has a nice gear wizard in the shapes menu. All you need to know is the pitch diameter, tooth count, and pressure angle.

Here's the link, it's simple enough to do. I would caution against using the $15 Harbor Freight grinders, the runout is horid. Possibly a Foredom handpiece or if you want to go air, get a Dotco die grinder. You could also build a mount to clamp a small trim router to the spindle of the mill.

http://www.homemetalshopclub.org/news/feb04/feb04.html#mill

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=7544685842&rd=1&sspagename=STRK%3AMEWA%3AIT&rd=1

Any idea what sort of runout that would have? Instead of doing it the way the website did it, I'm going to mill a quill mounted bracket that extends to the side to hold the grinder.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=7544685842&rd=1&sspagename=STRK%3AMEWA%3AIT&rd=1

Any idea what sort of runout that would have? Instead of doing it the way the website did it, I'm going to mill a quill mounted bracket that extends to the side to hold the grinder.

Those are the pits, same chicom ones that Harbor Freight sells for $15. You'll spend more money on busted end mills. Dotco's show up on ebay from time to time. If you are going to use a side mount, look at a Foredom, quieter and you don't have a compressor running constantly to keep up. More power and variable speed. There is also a guy selling Proxxon router motors on ebay, they have a 1/4" collet. Be a little larger but you could still side mount. A laminate trimmer or a Rotozip is another consideration.

What about something like a high speed air powered dentist drill?

What about something like a high speed air powered dentist drill?


That would work or anything from the jewelry industry. You just have to keep in mind that these small devices lack power. More $$ with get you more power. You know, you might even find some R/C motors that would serve the purpose but you'd have to fab the spindle. You might be able to find one of the cheap air grinders to work but you'd have to go to a Harbor Freight store and pick thru a stack till you found one that was machined well. You could buy a Foredom handpiece and modify any kind of motor to fit on it air or electic. #30 handpieces run about $40 new on Ebay. Lots of ways to get the job done. The critical issue is very little runout. When you are running tiny tools, a small amount of runout will kill the tool quickly. Small endmills are expensive too. You'll need enough power to keep it from stalling esp. in aluminum.

Power has me concerned. About 90% of it's use will be slotting with 1/8 endmills. The rest will be odd jobs with 1/32-1/16 endmills. I'm afraid that with an air powered spindle, I won't have enough power to really go through the aluminum quickly. Fabbing the spine myself is possible, although hard because I don't have access to a lathe.

What I'd recommend at this point is a Foredom or Grobet flexshaft machine. THe hand pieces are uniform in shape so it's easy to fab a mount, they are designed to have very little runout, made for running tiny little burrs & drills, motors are made to handle the varible speeds & speed control, and have lots of power.

The #30 hand piece is just a regular drill chuck. THere are some handpieces that use collets and some are even quick change. You could use an optical tach ($40 on ebay) to set the speed with and you'd be right on for the OneCNC speed & feed settings.

THat would be the route I'd go, the next step up would be a router motor of some kind.

Just finished cutting these for a friend. They are custom Emaxx shock towers made out of 5/16 Delrin. I love this material, because it allows VERY fast cutting and is quite stiff.

Nice! I like Delrin too, great stuff to machine, threads nice, finishes nice. Makes one heck of a mess though. You can often buy "Drops" on ebay. I've got a lifetime supply of 1"x~2" that I bought.

Very nice parts, Cold Fusion. How did you hold down those delrin shock towers when cutting? Could you shed some light on the process behind those parts - how you set up and machined the shock towers and the gears? Did you cut them with multiple setups?

Thanks!

The towers were easy. I simply left .01 tabs in a few places on the outer profile to hold it in place while taking the through-pass. It was easy enough to trim with a razor blade, and now you can't even tell where I put them.

The gears were a challenge.The aluminum one was cut out of 1/2" 6061. I used a circular pocket to form the hub. I then roughed out the teeth with an 1/8 cutter, leaving .005" on the bottom to keep it all in place. I then used a 1/32" Endmill to cut the actual teeth, again leaving .005 on the bottom. Then I flipped the entire sheet over and cut .006 deep to release the finished gear. I did the Delrin one the same way, minus the hub.

I hope that all made sense.

Why oh why does Mfgquote.com have to charge $5000 for a membership? It's impossible to find decent quantity jobs anywhere else, because they put all the other sites out of business. How does everyone else do it?

*Goes back to the never ending search for more jobs*

Why oh why does Mfgquote.com have to charge $5000 for a membership? It's impossible to find decent quantity jobs anywhere else, because they put all the other sites out of business. How does everyone else do it?

*Goes back to the never ending search for more jobs*

All you need is your own website and have it set up right in the search engines. Specializing in small one-of runs is a niche market. Have a banner ad put on every R/C web site. Surely there is some R/C enthusiest that will trade custom parts for web design. BTW the Mfgquote issue is being discussed in another thread.

I haven't taken any pictures of the control system yet, sorry! This is due to me being half incredibly busy, and half lazy. I'll take some soon, I promise ;)

It's been working for a little while now, so I've had a chance to tweak things here and there and generally get a feel for the machine. The mill seems to be performing great, and has yet to fail me in tolerances. The tightest job I've done was a 3.46" bore in cast iron for a motor mount. It had to be within .0005 to work properly. Even I didn't think it would work, but I had nothing to lose by trying. After it was all said and done, the piece worked perfectly...


Now all I have to do is find some jobs to do. Seems like that is the hardest part of this whole business :rolleyes:

Another custom chassis.

Jig for custom knife handles.

Hey CF,

Great looking parts! I've followed your thread for a long time now and enjoy seeing what you make with the finished machine. Keep up the posts -- and if you get time, I'd also like to see photos of your control system. =)

-D

What if I'm ashamed to show my hobbled together control system? :idea:

Thanks for the compliment! Onecnc made the perfect toolpath, the Bridgeport cut it, and Mach2 controlled everything perfectly. I don't know if I actually did much at all ;)

Ashamed of rebuikding a cnc and making it work. Dude great job. I appreaciate your link and I am using it as a guide for my own rebuild.

Thanks and keep it up.

Since the mill has been working, I've done nothing but small parts. Those really didn't test the mill in the least. Finally, however, my 1" collets arived and I could start on some serious metal removal. Here is what I made today. 1.25" thick 6061, which is the thickest I've ever cut. The finish doesn't show up very well with this camera, but in reality it's VERY nice. (And yes, the shakey camera work was due to the fact that extremely large and hot chips were flying everywhere).

It took about 15 minutes to complete the whole job. I suspect I could have done it faster, but it was my first experience with endmills this large.

http://www.coldfusionracing.com/con2.JPG
http://www.coldfusionracing.com/con4.JPG
http://www.coldfusionracing.com/con5.JPG

Video 1 (http://www.coldfusionracing.com/Divx1.avi)
Video 2 (http://www.coldfusionracing.com/Divx2.avi)

You will need to create the 3rd phase by using a couple motor starter capacitors one twice the size of the other one. Capacitor size based on motor horse power. In addition you will need a starter cap to get things rolling at 2/3 power.
A rotory phase converter needs the above tied to a separate stand alone 3 phase motor. You could then utilize 100% of the power and wouldn't need to modify your equipment after you get the rotory phase converter started.
I have the specs if you need them.
jeffremus1@yahoo.com

Hi Jeff,

Maybe you posted in the wrong thread? I have a VFD providing 3 phase power which is working just great right now.

This is driving me crazy, these one part runs. Little $30 jobs that end up taking most of the afternoon. MfgQuote and First Index are out of the question because of the cost. I tried playing the I'm-only-16 card, but no luck :p Does anyone know of ANY other sites?

Concerning the high speed spindle idea, How about a belt driven offset spindle?
Mount a big pulley in the existing spindle, and have it drive a smaller pulley on a secondary spindle that is clamped to the body of the bridgeport spindle. Of you do a 2:1, or 4:1, or any other equal ratio, it would be easy to know the small spildle speed.

Neatman

I found an easier way for the high speed spindle. A 35,000 rpm air powered spindle that can clamp up into my regular toolholders. They are $200-$300 on ebay, but worth it in my mind.

I have a old brigeport mill and I would like to make cnc as yours, please let me know how much will cost me your help.

I have a old brigeport mill and I would like to make cnc as yours, please let me know how much will cost me your help.The mill in this thread started out as cnc, so it's not a conversion. There are examples of conversions on this forum that would probably suit your needs better.

I understand, my proyect will be to make a regular mill in to a cnc, instead of starting from nothing.I think it could be done?????

http://s93886278.onlinehome.us/sv/BLMT2_Renders/images/render51.jpg
http://s93886278.onlinehome.us/sv/BLMT2_Renders/images/render43front_brace_servo.jpg
http://img452.imageshack.us/my.php?image=dscf03481ts.jpg
http://img452.imageshack.us/my.php?image=dscf03629bs.jpg


There is part of a custom rc car project I'm working on. Should look generally like the rendering when I'm done :D

Custom knife and grinding jig. It's only in the prototype stages with aluminum, but I'll be making the real steel version today.

Here is a gallery for those of you that don't want to sift through lots of pages.

http://coldfusionracing.com/Newcnc/pictures.html

I've got my new compressor installed, so that leak problem is no longer an issue. There are a number of improvements I have lined up for the machine, which will all be completed as I get the money for them.

Vacuum table. I bought a piece of 35x15 UHMW, 30x12 of which will be used for the actual hold down area. A grid of channels will be cut in that area, similar to this picture. A square oring seal will be used to limit the vacuum to a size slightly smaller then the plate being cut.

http://www.vacmagic.com/images/lenani2%20vac%20chuck.gif

I bought a 4cfm HVAC vacuum pump, originally used for removing moisture in refrigeration units. Supposedly it pulls about 29.5" of mercury, which will work quite nicely even with fairly small sheets.

New spindle belts. What I originally did was use H class timing belts to drive the spindle. 44t pulley on the motor, 22t on the spindle shaft. This worked fairly well, and had a TON less rotating mass then the old varispeed assembly. The only problem was that the cogged belt made a lot of noise, enough so that I can't run the machine past 9pm for the sake of the neighbors. My new approach will be to use a v belt system. Power Twist belts from Fenner are supposed to run very quiet but still maintain the strength of regular belts, so I've ordered one along with the proper pulleys.

Spray mist unit. A Fogbuster would be great, but there is noooo way I can afford the price. I'm cutting Aluminum, so I only need a very light amount of lube to keep those chips from welding themselves to the cutter. Something like this is what I'm looking at. Any suggestions on coolant brands?

http://cgi.ebay.com/Spray-Mist-Unit-Sprays-Coolant-and-Lubrication_W0QQitemZ7568020712QQcategoryZ633QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem


Enclosure. I built a simple one out of Plexiglass, but it eventually cracked. The plan is to build a nice hinged unit out of 1/4" Lexan. That probably won't happen until Christmas, so I'm stuck sweeping the floor and pulling chips out of my hands until then.


Air Spindle. The second I can afford one, I'm buying an air powered sub spindle. These little 1/8 endmills don't like much over 4ipm with my current 3400rpm spindle, and it just so happens I have to use those sizes a LOT. The air powered units turn about 35,000 rpms. $200 is not too bad at all for that kind of speed increase.


WMS was kind enough to send me an early christmas present of some endmills. Carbide, and lots of it :D Now I'll finally be able to crank up the feeds on the 154cm steel I've been working with. A HUGE thanks goes out to Ward, he is truely a 5 star forumite.

My long time business partner from Austin came by and saw the mill for the first time today. Things went fairly well, although he harped on my clamping methods some. But....I'm not going to drop a lot on hold down clamps with the vacuum table so near completion. I do have more t slot bolts then I'll ever need, however those do no good without some toe clamps or spanner bars.


Surface finish has been okay, not great. That's probably my cheap endmills more then anything. Also, the collet I use 95% of the time, the 3/8 TG100, seems to have an excessive TIR. In the order of .0009. All my others are under half a thou.


It's becoming obvious I need to upgrade my computer that is running Mach2. Right now I'm running a 400mhz with Windows 2000. While doing some 3d surface finishing, it started to stutter at 40ipm. (All of you VMC guys, don't laugh). Mach2 revealed a pegged cpu level, which is obviously the bottleneck. A friend has a 1.3ghz he may be willing to donate to my cause, which would improve everything dramatically.

Art just found a long standing bug that can effect 3D Constant Velocity performance. He upgraded the version of Mach2 on his sight to include this fix, which is also in the latest version of Mach3. He said that some people might not notice the difference, but it can be a juge imrpovement for others, depending on the code your running. You might want to look into it and see if it helps.

And for your vacuum table, here's where we get the gasket material for our vacuum pods at work.
http://www.allstaradhesives.com

I definitely will. I rarely process 3d code like that, so it's really no big deal.

Hey CF,

I know it's old news, but I have a question about how you fitted the new axis motors to your machine. Did they just bolt-on? Or did you have to modify the mounting brackets? The old steppers on my Series 1 BOSS3 had some strange hole pattern, about 80% of the size of a NEMA 42 mounting pattern. Just wondering if you ran into the same problem on your machine, and if so, how you fixed your brackets...

Mine appear to be Nema 42, if only my servos were too. I had some weird bolt patterns on those things, so I made a couple aluminum plates that had both sets of holes in them. First bolt the plate rigidly to the servo, and then you can use the stock adjustment slots in the BP holes to set your belt tension.

Mine appear to be Nema 42, if only my servos were too. I had some weird bolt patterns on those things, so I made a couple aluminum plates that had both sets of holes in them. First bolt the plate rigidly to the servo, and then you can use the stock adjustment slots in the BP holes to set your belt tension.

Hey,thanks for the info! I'll have to work on it -- I think if I put an adapter plate in between the motor and bracket, it will make the motor's shaft too short. Those old Bridgeport steppers had really long shafts on them!

I ran into that problem on my z axis. What I ended up doing was modding the Z axis mount so that the face of the servo was flush with the front of the plate, instead of the back. This gave me an extra 1/2" of length, otherwise it wouldn't have worked.

Cold Fusion !

How are you doeing on your retro?

I have the same macine and am looking for another!

Any Ideas on where I can pick another one up?

JimPAC

JimPAC - I've called Cold and told him about your post. I believe his mill is for sale as he's off to University soon and his family wants to make the garage into something else.

Thank you Tom for the connection.

I was born and raised in Fort Worth and have lived here in Wichita since 90.
I've been tool and die since 69 and have recently bought a mint Series IIA (2)NC.

After returning home from duty in the good old USMC my father and I started a machine shop (MALCO Machine) . Back in 76 there wasnt much to choose from in CNC versious NC. Dad and I settled on two Series IIA (2)NC's and two years later bought 6 Series II Boss 6 CNC rigid's! We did pretty good until 86 and Rockwell Int'l stopped work on the shuttle program. Anyway BLA BLA BLA. Ive been consulting for the last 7 years and have desided to do tool design and tooling work here in Wichita. My one eyed mexican lawer and I have hached a plan to build our own product (RV) and augment with tooling work from the Aircraft Industry. Having a great love for the Series IIA (2)NC's I need one more.

I found the one for sale in BC (6Kshipping!!), can't do that! however Texas is good.

Please keep informed

I am ready to move on a machine as soon as I locate one.

Again Thanks

Jim Salter

pac470@cox.net

Is anyone in the Houston or Texas area interested in buying it? Give me a call at 281 403 1893 and we can chat about it.

Thanks,
Andrew

Jim, did you get my email?