First off, big thanks to FannBlade and a few others who've inspired me to do the conversion.
I bought this 3 in 1 a few years ago on sale from Grizzly, $1500 iirc, and taught myself the basics of machining and turning. Since then read a lot of books on the subject and lurked here a fair bit.
My background is on the 3D/CAD side of things. I started working in AutoCAD and Rhino (when it was just a free beta), and moved onto media graphics and have done that professionally for a long time now.
Suffice it to say, the digital side is my strong point, machine side, have plenty of learning to do.
Has a lot of pictures and some video of the machine running as well.
I needed to get a better adjustment on the saddle gibs so I made some new stainless bolts with nubs on the end. These seem to work really well as they are a much tighter fit than the stock ones, and much easier to adjust with the larger allen key.
Also purchased 2 - 3ph 1.5hp 3500rpm motors from AutomationDirect. This is the flange I designed and had waterjet for the mill motor mount:
Picked up a generic enclosure for all the CNC controls. These VFD's are Hitachi ones and I got lucky as the ones I ordered were backordered, they upgraded me with these.
Ordered my steppers and driver/power supply from Automation Technologies. Pretty happy with them, although I accidentally ordered the wrong ball screw support blocks, and they didn't catch it when packing up my order and still sent me the wrong ones. My fault but still sort of bummed. I just picked up new ball bearings for it anyways.
Also designed this flange to clamp over the end of the mill spindle. Had these waterjet as well at a local place. Now, you'll notice I have a few design problems with this axis.
Took the other 2 axis apart to figure out how to mount the other ball screws. Making some decent progress here too. I think I've got these figured out. Just got my couplers in the mail today so hopefully these will get done this weekend.
Putting this together much like FannBlade's design here. He didn't patent his stuff so tough luck (kidding, I asked).
Also not shown, I replaced all of the bearings in the spindle with higher quality sealed bearings and rebuilt it all with new grease. Will spin much smoother. I also turned the stock pullies down a bit on the lathe before I disassembled it, which will help with balance. Once the CNC is dialed in I will probably just CNC new aluminum ones for even smoother operation.
I have the same machine I believe except from HF and want to convert it just for Lathe work. I have a Tormach PCNC 1100 for milling. Hey, if you need a couple do-dads machined you want to trade your drawings for the ball screw and stepper mounts once they are set?
That quill ballscrew is going to be trouble. You might want to check out Hoss's X2 setup for his Z. Really you'd rather have the ballscrew mounted with the fixed end on the quill, and mount the ballnut to the motor pulley.
Yeah I was thinking of mounting the motor on a spacer on that spindle bracket then mount the ballnut to the mill. I'll figure it out. The other 2 are pretty straight forward, I hope.
David, PM me, I'll send you whatever CAD I can. Really only have the motor mounts + the spindle/quill brackets in CAD though.
Figuring out the Y axis motor mounting. Since my mill is this, I can't use it, so am doing all the bracketry with a portaband and my benchtop drill press, so excuse the un-pretty bits.
Getting the wiring figured out for the control box. I am using the forward/reverse switch to swap between controlling the lathe motor or the mill motor.
The base plate for the X-axis. Basically copied FannBlade here, threaded the remaining holes that were already there on the bed and countersunk everything best I could on the drill press.
Everything mounted up for the X, pretty happy with how it all turned out. Fits nicely with maximum amount of space on the X.
Have it all mounted up now.
I managed to mount my Y ball nut in this handy location in the stock parts. Drilled and tapped 4 holes but managed to break a ****ty tap in one of them, but 3 12.9 socket screws will be plenty strong enough. I had to tap out the stock bronze bushing to get the keling ballscrew to fit through.
I made this bracket up to attach the X-axis, but will most likely be temporary. I will machine a newer beefier item once the machine is fully up and running. I'm sure this would be ok but will flex under too much strain.
A shot of it all together.
So onto the electronics. I ended up buying a UC100 USB/Parallel converted and so far it's been pretty great. I realized the laptop I bought had a locked BIOS with no way of unlocking it without the password.
I have the Gecko G540 with the UC100 installed, and I am able to control both X and Y axis with jogging. Re-used the E-Stop switch that the machine came with as well.
I have some limit/home switches I need to wire up but not sure exactly how they need to function, I know how to wire them no problem though.
I am having trouble with my Mach3 to VFD communication though. I've started another post about it here: Forum Post
Basically, I can run both motors from the Hitachi WJ200's control panels, but when I switch to analog input, I don't seem to be properly sending a signal from Mach3. I can't figure out if its an issue with Mach3 setup, or with the UC100 ports and pins.
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My Grizzly G9729 3 in 1 CNC Conversion
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