Newby, Manual mill to cnc retofit Qs?

[K Battenbough]

Hi Guys
First of all please excuse my ignorance, Ive never cnc'ed before, but its something id like to get into in the future.Heres my dumb questions, could my universal mill (jafo jaricon) be retrofitted ? I can only find Bridgeport type mills that have been converted.Also is it possible to switch between manual and cnc once the conversion has been done? (if thats possible).
Am I better off leaving the jafo manual, and start searching for a BOSS?hopefully my pics of the parts id like to cnc have attached.
Many Thanks
Kev

[Al_The_Man]

A few advantages to Retrofitting a CNC rather than Man. m/c is it should already have ball screws and motor mount hardware etc. Also much of the control hardware can often be used such as pendants, power supplies etc.
Al.

[K Battenbough]

Al
Is it too expensive then to convert a manuaul? should i look for a more suitable machine.
Kev

[BobWarfield]

How much are you able to spend? That will help quantify what's possible for this mill.

If you buy a used already-CNC mill, you just have to bring it back up to snuff--little or no new engineering will be required, at least mechanically. You may convert the servos to a PC based control, but that is straightforward and a well-travelled path. If you are converting a manual mill, you'll have to engineer how to mount the ballscrews nad servos/steppers. Given that your mill is quite a bit different than a lot of what we see here, you'll be much more on your own. Make sure you are comfortable with that.

On the manual operation question, it will be harder to operate the mill manually once converted, but not impossible. To get an idea, download Mach 3 Mill from www.artsoft.com and take a look at their wizards. Running your mill manually post-CNC conversion will be similar to interacting with that kind of software. Most of the CNC die hards here will probably tell you that you won't need to run manual very much once you are used to true CNC. Since I don't yet consider myself a die hard (you must learn to think in the g-codes freely, grasshopper) I still favor manual ops from time to time.

BTW, did you make the parts yourself, or are you trying to make more just like them? They look like gun parts.

Best,

BW

[NC Cams]

Do a Google for "CNC retrofit". Go deep into the search.

Look at what peope do not what they do it on/with. Part of the retrofit process involves engineering/making the parts and fitting them yourself.

There are examples of guys taking manual machines and making the parts needed to convert them to CNC. There is even a long thread on this board showing nearly a step-by-step conversion of a Bridgeport. Again, you're interested in WHAT he did and HOW he did it. The same can be done for clones in some way, shape or form.

Our Bridgeport EZTRAK is a factory CNC system - we use it as a manual machine all the time. We even use it as a psuedo-CMM when we combine the DRO and a dial indicator.

[K Battenbough]

Thanks all for your input, Im beggining to realise that I should really be looking for a used bridgeport or similar if I want to go down the cnc route.
BW:- They are rifle parts, Ive not made them, just pics Ive found on the web. Im wanting to produce myown rifle actions eventually.
Cheers
Kev