I've been around here for a while now, and I can say one thing for sure - it's sure addicting! I LOVE this site, and I can safely say, it's 100% the reason I wanted to have my own cnc machine.
I spend hours at a time, on here and Youtube looking for DIY ideas.
Background - I've been a machinist in the past, worked in oilfield industry running various mills, lathes, shapers, etc. Mainly spent the majority of my 12 year tenure as a horizontal boring mill machinist, running a 5" Lucas horizontal mill. Superb machine I might add. I believe it was a 1949 model!
Now days, I spend my time (for a job) working in I.T. as a "Network Engineer". lol. My side job-hobby is working on race cars, building custom turbo kits. Mild to wild, making anywhere from 500-2500HP. Don't ask me how I got into that, I have no idea. THAT is the main catalyst behind my cnc'ing a mill (and a lathe, but that comes later).
As of last week, I finally recieved my MTW / RF45. Pat was great to do business with and was good about posting info on his site wtih updates as they came up. I ordered my machine with the 30Taper spindle, not installed. I already had some tooling left over from when I had my CNC bridgeport (had centroid controls, mobo burned up and didn't feel like messing with it - needed ball screws, mobo, etc. X axis was too short for some parts I had planned). Anyways, sold the mill - kept the tooling and here I am. The move to the MTW machine was to gain close to 12" in X and 2" in Y. Not to mention the automation of the Z axis got 15"+ instead of the problems associated with the Z on a bridgeport (automating the knee or the qull).
Anyways, here's the mill in all it's glory.
The next problem, I had bought some servos a year or two back off of ebay. While I am certain they are good - I can't find any info on them. See picture below for specs, but for now - I cant find ANY info online about them. Not totally sure that they are adequate, size wise. FWIW, I'd like to see 200-300IPM rapids and gobs of torque. At first, the spindle will be "stock" but in the near future it will be VFD controlled, and belt driven, and maybe even a power draw bar, and/or ATC.
I am not totally sure on the electronics aspect of this project and that will entail the help of my neighbor, who's an EE.
So far, I have some of the electronics from www.cnc4pc.com. I'll post specifics on that later, but I got the MPG, the C23BOB, limit switches etc..
I'm open for suggestions and questions.
Heres something worth looking at, first they beef up the castings.
http://www.ihcnc.com/pages/products.php
I do have the same or similar mill/drill with powered head running 3 axis DRO and Bridgepoert converted power feed http://www.chesteruk.net/store/super_lux_mill.htm
The lead screw nuts will wear rapidly on X, Y and inside the upright dovetailed column- 5 revs before it moves after 6 years!
lol, I am probably solely responsible for 2/3 of the hits on IHCNC's page for the last couple of years. I've been daydreaming about this project for quite some time - unfortunately, my "side work" takes all of my free time. That's ok, I'm "retiring" from that work this winter - then it's time for MY fun. I've finally sold my house and getting ready to move into a NEW house with 3 car EXTENDED garage - so now I'll have plenty of room (starting out at least).Originally Posted by hareng
That machine you linked to, has much shorter travels from what I can tell.
Before the power feed i could get an actual 23 3/4" X axis movement. After fitting the Bridgeport 110V type of power feed with extended lead screw and mounting its down to around 21".
When milling away i do lock down the beds and quill etc and have some movement some where. Seems like it the head after browsing IH.
Will have to have a look some time.
Mine is labelled as Zay7045L with 1hp motor. Just need to wire in the coolant.
Tighten and beef up should make a nice cheapish cnc.
One thing i have noticed over the years from the same supplier is different table lengths and widths plus some have three T slots, mine has four slots.
I haven't been able to do much to the machine since I created the thread - but I'll add what I have. These pics will be of the stand and machine assembled. The first pic is of the leveler nuts that are welded to the feet of the base. Second pic shows them welded to the bottoms of the legs, and finally - the machine mounted on the stand.
The stand still needs a shelf added (I ran out of tubing). Right now, it lightly sways front to back because of no suport.
Other good news, I ordered the machine with the NT30 taper spindle, not installed. It was cheaper, and I wanted to become familiar with the inner workings of the mill. I'll just say this, I made that spindle installation MUCH harder than it needed to be (TIP: There's a set screw on the left side of the mill head that's half covered up with bondo, it's gotta come out for the spindle cartridge to be removed)
Also, the stand will be "modular" the coolant trays will be added, but removeable. I bought a 1100GPH pond pump from home depot - I wanted HUGE amounts of coolant for rinsing the coolant tray out, blasting swarf away etc..
The updates from here till Christmas time will most likely be slower than normal - due to me getting ready to move into the new house etc.. but be patient, it'll get good.
Also, I made drive lugs for the new NMTB30 spindle - for whatever reason they didn't come with the spindle. After I squared up the stock to the right size for the lugs and drilled the holes - I mounted them up to the spindle and used a lathe tool to turn the O.D.and trim them so they were concentric and didn't look so "odd". After I did this, I put my trusty .0005" Mitituyo test indicater in the mill vise and touched off on the spindle bore, hand cranking the spindle only netted slightly less than .0005 runout. Much better than I expected. The part I didn't like, was you can induce .002-.005 of deflection in the head, or Z axis.. I am sure most of which is coming from the spindle bieng loose in the bore. I'll tackle that when get there.
Nice stand 2x1"? Got the other mill on that and the other work benches.
If you did install a DRO on Z axis you would need to make that screw a better fit, the quick slightly rotates in the uneven slot. Dont want no broken glass.
Bet you struggled getting that up on to the stand
Very nice stand. I am excited to see the rest of your build.
Thanks!
hareng, The stand is 2X3 rectangle.
Please don't take this the wrong way...
But as an owner of the full sized IH mill I must say this.
Your very nice stand Still needs some additional cross bracing.
My IH is manual with the powerfeed and DRO option, but I do have a Hurco CNC Knee mill. The problem you face is this. When the machine does a rapid move then stops on a dime you can have several G's of load and even with the heavy/large material you have choose (great choices so far BTW) it can still cause the base metal to fatigue at the weld points.
Do the upgrades now, and know no grief later.
The problem is worse in these machines because they are essentially still benchtop mills just sitting on there own stands. All the weight is up off the floor by atleast 20" in an unstable top heavy condition. Stepper machines are less of a problem due to how the motors both ramp up and ramp down for moves and there top rapids are far lower.
A servo machine will jump. Instant Go fast, Instant Stop.
waaay ahead of ya..
I might even get to the shelves (i.e. supports) today. The coolant trays will add a lot of stability right to left on the machine. In fact, I might even build the first part of the trays out of 2x3 just to give it some support left to right.
Cool, another RF-45 build!
These machines have really started getting popular. I love it.
I love my IH. You're probably way ahead, but if my pages on my conversion can be of any help, here they are:
http://www.cnccookbook.com/CCMillCNCHome.html
Cheers,
BW
Try G-Wizard Machinist's Calculator for free:
http://www.cnccookbook.com/CCGWizard.html
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