Enco's NEW Dove tail column Drill-Mill!

[HomeCNC]

I see by my latest Enco Hot Deals catalog that they now have a dove tail column drill-mill for sale. This machine should be great to convert to CNC.

[WOODKNACK]

I have not got that hot deal flyer yet? How much is it and do they show it on line?

[HomeCNC]

It is $1395.00 for just the mill. You can see a picture on their webset. Click on the hot deals catalog then go to machinery and look for page 41.

[WOODKNACK]

We have one just like this at my work. I have not used it but the guys who have are not real happy with it. But then again the rest of the machinery where I work is very high tech. So this is a toy to them. Its a gear head right?

[deanc500]

Hi Jeff, thats a pretty good price for that Enco mill. I am going to go with a dove tail column machine for my next conversion. We have something similar at House of Tools here in Canada.
http://www.houseoftools.com/product.htm?pid=169868
That one actually has a motorized head. The head is raised and lowered via a large acme leadscrew inside the column. The small head drive motor has a gear reduction unit on it. I am not sure if there is any Z backlash when the head is not locked down, but it would be a simple matter to add a servo to the existing head drive system. Alternatively, one could motorize the quill fine feed hand wheel. I have done that before on my RF30 without any backlash problems.

[HomeCNC]

The weight of a heavy head will take care of backlash on the Z. I did not want to use the rack and pinion on the Z axis so I removed mine and used a ball screw for my Z axis mod.

[MetDetect]

www.IndustrialHobbies.com has a CNC retro-fit kit for these dovetail column mills. I'm about to order both the www.lathemaster.com mill and the retro-fit kit. Servo's on XY, big mother of a step motor on Z (1200 ounce) which gives you about 16 inches of Z travel. Industrial Hobbies runs an Enco CNC convert for production work in their shop but have switched to the Lathemaster brand because they say its a much better mill. Top of the line is the Rong Fu 45 made in TW, all the clones are made in China. But IH says 90% of what you will pay extra for in the Rong Fu will be removed during the CNC retro-fit so save the money and go with a clone.

The retro-fit kit looks great, check it out.

[12six]

Thanks for the replies guys, but how to know if it is a dovetail column or round column ? I will be making slots for keyway on 3/4" to 1" mild steel to cold roll steel solid rod.

Thanks,
Charles

[MichaelHenry]

Thanks for the replies guys, but how to know if it is a dovetail column or round column ?

Do you realize that this thread is over 4 years old? You'd be better off to start a new thread.

Mike