Assuming you are following the conversion presented by hossmachine, it is not
as simple removing the crank handles and adding motors: 1. The mill X and Y
stages must be completely disassembled. The acme lead screws, nuts, stage
mounts, crank handles and bearings are replaced with ball nut/screws and
associated hardware..
2. Material must be removed from the inner surfaces of both stages to
make room for the new ball nuts. (The good news is that the cast-iron is
pretty straight-forward to work with using hack-saw and grinder). 3. New
aluminum plates for the ball-screw bearings must be machined. This is where the
motor stand-offs are mounted.
Anyway, I hope you get the picture.
Before you jump into this, I want to mention some other things I remembered
about this project:
1. Ball screws - they come as stock thread to the length you specify. One
end of each needs to be machined to connect to the bearing and motor coupler I
have the Harbor freight 7"x10" lathe and it was barely up to the task. The
screws are case-hardened, so I used a bench grinder to get them close the
required diameter before machining to 5/16" diameter. You then need to cut
3/8-24 external threads for the mounting nut.
2. Mounting plates. There are 2 large holes necessary. I was able to borrow
an adjustable boring bit to do this.
3. Stop blocks. Because of the way the ball-nuts mount, I had buy an
expensive 15/16-16 tap to complete those parts. I'd be happy to loan this to
you.
From: Jason Barnett <[email protected]>
To: "A discussion list for dorkbot-pdx (portland, or)"
<[email protected]>
Sent: Wednesday, March 4, 2015 7:43 PM
Subject: Re: [dorkbotpdx-blabber] 2. Re: Can anyone talk me out of this? (Rick
Burkard)
James,
Are the motor mounts complex enough that you couldn't make crude temporary
ones? You could then bootstrap the setup so you could CNC your own upgrades. If
you decide to work on it again, let me know. I might be able to help and it
would be neet to work on someone elses mill before I decide to do mine :).
On Wed, Mar 4, 2015 at 11:51 AM james wrathall <[email protected]> wrote:
On 3/4/2015 11:14 AM, [email protected] wrote:
> 2. Re: Can anyone talk me out of this? (Rick Burkard)
Great to see this topic! I have an X3 small mill (one size larger than
X2) that I want to CNC. I have been collecting parts for the project,
and I have even installed small DROs scales & readouts on the X-axis an
Y-axis, in anticipation of making the motor mounts, etc. I have a good
3" vice, and the other fundamental tooling you mentioned. In fact, I
have the drawings that could ultimately be converted into G-code and
used to CNC the motor mounts, but I have not been able to locate anyone
who can and would be helpful in that regard. I've been 'high centered'
on this project for a while now, but your post may be just enough to
make the wheels start rolling again.
Thanks!
Jim_W
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