Power Feed For the Poor

[austin.mn]

As a poor guy i am often found scrounging through my local scrap yard in search of good usable junk. a while back i cnc'd my old jet mill drill using some motors from some C-band satelite actuators and some gecko drives. it worked fairly well, but the backlash on my machine is absolutely horrible. so it wasn't all that usefull as a cnc machine. i sold the geckos on ebay, almost for what i paid for them, and put the hand wheels back on. of course than the mill just sat in the corner of my garage not being used much, as i hate to crank the hand wheels. not long ago i pulled a control box off a junked machine in the scrap yard, i think i payed 5 or 10 bucks for it. it had some pneumatics, some relays, and a leeson dc motor drive in it. today, after spending the better part of two days doing some spring cleaning in the shop and running accross all those actuator motors, i thought this would be an excellent time to add power feed to the old mill/drill. an hour later this is what i had, and it works awesome. i still need to add limit switches to it, and i think that i am going to pull the hand wheel from the y axis and put another motor there. no more cranking at all. the speed range is about 0 to 50 ipm, so it is plenty fast and so much nicer than cranking away at the handles. sure a guy could argue that if i don't have a handle on the y i may not be able to feel the cut, but i generally don't do any heavy cutting, so i ain't to worried about it. Also, the wiring will get cleaned up, so don't make fun of it.

i just thought i should post about it so the other poor guys out there could add some functionality to there mill. even if you don't have a scrap yard near by i don't think that the items needing to do such a conversion would cost much on ebay. maybe $100 after shipping, which is much less than any power feed available.

[austin.mn]

later yesterday i added the second motor, so now i am also driving the y axis. i just put another switch in that changes the output from the motor drive from the x motor to the y motor. i used that mill more yesterday than i have in six months, did i mention that i hate to crank handles...

anywho, today i added limit switches to the x axis, i will have to take another trip to the scrap yard and find some more industrial limits.

so far this has been the best mod i have done, the mill is a joy to use. now i just need a cheap 3 axis dro. any ideas?

[txcowdog]

Pretty cool for a $10 investment. Since you sold your Geckos, what are you driving the motors with?

[austin.mn]

that bueatifull stainless electrical box that i got from the scrap yard had a leeson dc motor drive in it. so that is what i am using to drive both motors. the motors that i am using are only 36v motors, but i have been using them with that drive all day today, and a lot of the day yesterday, and no problems so far. i will grab my volt meter from work tomorrow so i can see what voltage the drive is putting out. as far as i can tell though, there doesn't seem to be any issues. the motors aren't even getting warm.

i know that old C-band satelites are all over the place, just sitting there unused. i would be willing to bet that you could probably just ask your neighbor if you could steal his actuator and he would probably say sure or take the whole thing.

[txcowdog]

My neighbor has a yard full of those old dishes. He used to install a cluster of them in apartment complexes before the invention of DirectTV and Dish Network. Now those old sat. dishes have gone the way of the dinosaurs. I never thought of using the actuator. Great idea... thanks for the tip.

[austin.mn]

yeah, they are gear reduced to the nuts, so they have torque for days. some of those actuators have 1000lb ratings and better. so it is plenty of power to do the occasional milling job that i need to do.

and you just can't beat the price!