It may never have even been assembled, and has sat in it's delivery crate for who nows how long. There's damp/condensation which has rusted some parts like the motor mounting screws (see pic), but the leadscrews look fine(?).
I have no experience with this sort of thing, and don't yet have a PC with a parralel port to test it. Fingers crossed the spindle and motors work.
So what I'm looking for is your opinions on this machine (it's not what it'd have chosen, but the opportunity presented itself ). Limitations of the spindle? Worthwhile to fix if I do run into problems?
What are my next steps?
Re: Impulse bought a rusty 3040. Was it a good idea?
At the very least you will gain some experience of several aspects of CNC building and operation.A bit of cleaning looks like a good idea and then you have to work out which bits go where.Now might be a good time to work on your CAD skills for creating the parts you will be making since its not too useful to have a machine sitting there,ready to go and nothing to make with it.Presumably the machine came with a demo version of Mach 3 because that seems almost universal and the sub forums here should be able to deal with any questions that arise.It could be a good time to look into tooling as the factories have been disrupted lately-I had an email on Thursday telling me some cutters would be arriving later than predicted because of the factory having production problems,