HBM / Sieg X1 Micro mill conversion

[Hamish911]

Hello!

I've started to acquire parts to convert my Sieg X1 clone to a CNC'd one.
Started with the machine itself, bought at http://www.buitelaar.nl/.

• 1 x Vexta PK268-E2.0A / 2 phase / 1.8 deg/step stepping motor (8 wire)
• 3 x Japan servo KH56KM20851 / (4 wire)
  
• components for 2 Picstep drivers
• pcb's for 4 Picstep drivers

I hope to complete the conversion within a few months.
Tomorrow I'll try to get a motorsupport of my own design milled out of a piece of alu I found at the scrapyard to see whether it fits.



more to follow soon I hope.

Gr's
Hamish

[Hamish911]

Here's an image of the current handle supportblock. I measured and modelled it so I could design the motorside of the support properly.

[Viaharo]

I to am doing the same conversion on a Sieg X1 ;-).

I have been about three weeks in to the build and just got my x and y axis's online.

Your motor mounts look awesome. Far better than my rough drafts. I took the wood approach seeing as its what I had available. Made my first engraving last night.

I look forward to seeing updates on your project. Maybe there can be some collaboration? ;-)

[Hamish911]

Viaharo:

You are further I have gotten so far. What driver/motor setup do you have?
I still need to program the PIC IC's for the first driver and replace the wire links.
Then I can test the driver and populate the second board.

The CNC machine I have access to (a Roland Modela MDX-20) hasn't got a coolant setup atm, so I am limited to plastic as opposed to alu. Likely I'll have to do the mounts manually on my own mill.

If you there's anything I can help you with, shoot me PM. I may be able to assist you if you want to mill out the alu versions of your supports, with drawing and such. Shoot me a PM.

[Viaharo]

For the driver board I bought a cheap CncGeeker 3 AXIS CNC DRIVER BOARD with 5vdc .5amp PS for the controller and a 24vdc 20amp PS for the motors.
I have all the components to construct my own 3axis controller using heavier driver chips with better Response / speed / and power/. Now that I am semi online I plan on constructing much better motor mounts. Then I will use the machine to mill a new controller board.

Warning to people that decide to get the CncGeeker Board. It is a great board. The only drawback is the driver chips have a pretty low limit on the max KHz that they will accept. I am currently capped at 4655KHz. This limits my max jog to 9 IPM and a max feed of about 6 (safe) IPM. But then again I am running at 1/8th step per axis on the controller.

For the motors I am using Three
M21NSHS-LNN-NS-02 POWERMAX ll NEMA 23 BIPOLAR Stepper Motors.

I am Using Emc2 Axis for the Cnc Controller.

Good Delrin plastic would make a decent substitute for alu. My next task after the controller remake is to make new Delrin lead screw nuts because of the low friction and backlash reducing capabilities.

I plan on having pictures up of my build step by step here pretty soon. Just as soon as I can find the dang camera with the mem chip ;-)

Here is a good resource that I have been using. This page pretty much gave me the road map that I needed for my build.
http://www.embeddedtronics.com/micromill.html
They were even nice enough to post drawings for their motor mounts that look pretty slick.

[Hamish911]

Hello,

A little heads up from me.

I've just programmed the 2nd PIC16F628A mcu for the PICStep v4 controllers.

The programmer I used is a PICKit2 design, I bought a kit for it a while ago and assembled/soldered it.

In the past few weeks I made 4 PCB's using the direct toner transfer method (There's much more info on the web about this, google is your friend.) Ordered a few sample LMD's to populate the PICStep board and went to a local electronic componentsshop (radio rotor) for the rest of the components. The first driver board works like a charm, the second I'll test tonight I hope. For now I am testing with a regular 12v AT computer PSU, but I would like to up the voltage a little using perhaps a 40v powersupply like this one.

The mechanical side of it, e.g. isn't done yet, and I had to abort the milling of a plastic (acryl) test part twice as it took too d*mn long.

For a controller board, I am contemplating either a 'regular' lpt bob and EMC2, or a usb controller. Kroko recently posted that it seems to work ok in a VM, so it's a fairly portable (wrt underlying OS) solution now.

As you can see, I am trying to built everything myself, either using kits, or from scratch. This definately isn't the fastest way, and it might not even be the cheapest either. It is a lot of fun though!. I know it's been done a thousand times before.... just not yet by me

In daylight I'll shoot some photos and put 'm up here.

[Hamish911]

I've built a small rectifierboard to go with a 220 - 42V AC donut-transformer
The steppersdrivers & motor seems happy!

Next up: mechanical mounting onto the mill.

[alkance09]

Im still thinking about doing a Tamiya buggy conversion, just something about the old retro look of the Tamiya kits I like.

[oshb5]

Hi

Iv been playing with motorising my table and have got as far as making it work but there are points when the table seams to go tight I just was wondering if the X1 you are setting up is using ball screws on all axis i can see one on the Z but am not sure what you are using for the X and Y. I think i may have to strip the table and make the lead screw nor smoother I will put brass jibs in and then turn to making the screw itself run better first. Im going to get the table feed part right also might try and motorise the Z feed as well. Then might try the full CNC package later. as i should be able to use the mounts iv made should i not?

Here is my mount for the table feed iv made.






Andy

[quote=Hamish911;686346]Viaharo:

You are further I have gotten so far.