Building a CNC Mill

[stuiephoto]

Im not sure if theres anyone on here thats interested in this stuff, but I figured I would post and see.

Background:
In high school I went to BOCES for machining. The program there (at least when I went) was based 99% on manual machining. They had just purchased a benchtop machine, so me and another person were basically the guinea pigs to teach ourselves how to run it.

Through BOCES, there is a SkillsUSA national competition for machining called Automated Manufacturing Technology. in 2005 and 2006, there were about 30 teams from across the country that competed in this competition in Kansas City, MO. We were 3 man teams. One was the machine operator, one the programmer, and one had to make an ANSI 3d cad drawing of a part that was given to us, and we had to duplicate it. We placed 4th in 2005 and 1st in 2006. I got a few job offers from it but decided that I didnt want to do it for a living.

About a year ago I started accumulating parts to make a machine. Pre-built “turn key” machines are very expensive, and there is a lot of online support for the DIY community.

The base of this project is the Grizzly G0463. There are many companies that make this exact mill, but the grizzly one seems to have he best reputation and has great customer service for parts.
http://www.grizzly.com/products/G0463

My Machine partially stripped down.
[ATTACH=CONFIG]20948[/ATTACH]

This is a manual mill. In order to make it CNC, you need more accurate ball-screws and mounts for the stepper motors. There is a company that makes this kit for a reasonable price, so I picked that up.
[ATTACH=CONFIG]20949[/ATTACH]

I have the controller, stepper motors, etc already purchased.
[ATTACH=CONFIG]20950[/ATTACH]

These parts have been sitting for about a year since I have about 5089 projects going at once. Today I built a workbench in the basement at home so I dont need to drive to the shop to work on this thing. Got sick of looking at thousands of dollars sitting idle in a box.
[ATTACH=CONFIG]20951[/ATTACH]
Now I need to figure out how to make it go. I will be using Artsoft Mach3 to run the machine. Not sure what cad/cam package I am going to use yet. I have experience with mastercam but its has change a TON since I used it.

I found a guy in canada that is going to come down and help me set the thing up. Electricity is a mystery to me – I still think its the hand of God when a door opens up automatically for me at the grocery store. If theres anyone with any experience with this kind of stuff locally- please chime in!

[Paulo]

Cool project. During my senior design class @ UB there was a group going a CNC project where the result was fairly unimpressive. This stuff is very hard to set up properly to hold tolerances and I don’t think that the group realized how challenging it could be.

Either way, I look forward to the updates. :tup:

[Motocrossx23]

My senior year of high school myself and a few other friends helped build a 2.5 axis CNC mill with our Tech Teacher. It worked amazing and if I’m not mistaken, they still have it.

[stuiephoto]

@Paulo

Cool project. During my senior design class @ UB there was a group going a CNC project where the result was fairly unimpressive. This stuff is very hard to set up properly to hold tolerances and I don’t think that the group realized how challenging it could be.

Either way, I look forward to the updates. :tup:

These ball screws are good to about .0002-.0003". They were NOT cheap. Using the screws that are supplied with the machine will net poor results-- which is probably what that project used due to cost. The software that runs the machine is extremely complex. The “play” in the screw can actually be compensated for in the software to yield almost perfect results.

[Carnut]

I like this project.

[walter]

Are you doing this just for fun? Why not just buy a used CNC, they can be found so cheaply. :shrug:

[stuiephoto]

@walter

Are you doing this just for fun? Why not just buy a used CNC, they can be found so cheaply. :shrug:

They are cheap for a reason. A lot of the used bridgeport CNC mills are beat to death and need new ballscrews, need major electronics updates (still use floppy disks?), or have outdated software that is difficult to find support for. All said and done, this should cost about $3,500 w/o tooling for a brand new machine. Also, you cant get a kneemill into a basement.

[walter]

I’d disagree on almost all of those accounts.

And who cares about using a floppy to transfer a 50kb g-code file?

I’ve bought plenty of new and used manual and CNC equipment, its not going to be cheaper for the money, hence “you just doing this for fun?” which is always an acceptable answer. fun to say you did it, misleading to say it will be better/cheaper than lots of the other alternatives.

what type of travel are you hoping to end up with? how many HP is that unit you’re starting with? It may be the pictures, but it looks pretty small.

[stuiephoto]

@walter

I’d disagree on almost all of those accounts.

And who cares about using a floppy to transfer a 50kb g-code file?

I’ve bought plenty of new and used manual and CNC equipment, its not going to be cheaper for the money, hence “you just doing this for fun?” which is always an acceptable answer. fun to say you did it, misleading to say it will be better/cheaper than lots of the other alternatives.

what type of travel are you hoping to end up with? how many HP is that unit you’re starting with? It may be the pictures, but it looks pretty small.

Do you still deal with CNC? I haven’t found anything in ny for less than 10k that’s in decent shape, and the few i did got me worried because people said there were issues finding posts for them that worked well. Where are you finding this stuff? I always figured for the cost, there’s no better alternative, but there might be a market that I never looked. In the future I hopefully want to upgrade to something bigger so it would be helpful to know where to look.
My mill is 3/4 hp. Travel is 6x14, anticipated accuracy of a thousandth.

[walter]

@stuiephoto

Do you still deal with CNC? I haven’t found anything in ny for less than 10k that’s in decent shape, and the few i did got me worried because people said there were issues finding posts for them that worked well. Where are you finding this stuff? I always figured for the cost, there’s no better alternative, but there might be a market that I never looked. In the future I hopefully want to upgrade to something bigger so it would be helpful to know where to look.
My mill is 3/4 hp. Travel is 6x14, anticipated accuracy of a thousandth.

I’ll look when I’m back in the office if I remember. I haven’t bought a used unit in about 2 years. With used stuff you kind of just sort of have to keep an eye out. Knowing a good dealer/broker that will keep an eye out for you is the best. Also good to have good relationships with machine shops. Lots upgrade to increase capacity that are just fine for job-shop or smaller work.

Your unit is pretty small which will make it hard to find something comparable. Usually you pay the same for a full size unit as a small/micro unit.

[stuiephoto]

I finally found someone to help me figure out the wiring. It was ridiculously simple once we figured out what some of the stuff actually meant (there were a few terms that were used interchangeably on different wiring diagrams that screwed me up before).

http://s16.photobucket.com/albums/b35/johnms88/?action=view&current=2012-07-29_17-41-00_390.mp4

Got one of the motors running and all of the cables made. Time to mount them up, then set up travels. Hopefully I will be making chips in a couple weeks.

[stuiephoto]

Finally got around to cutting something. Made a front plate delete for my buddy-- says “CORNFEDD”, which is his license plate. He obviously runs e85. I think im going to add turbo snails on the blank end parts. Will be blasting it and doing some paint work once that’s done.

[JDMSIR]

Nice, I try to learn stuff from the old man I work with, hes fucking 90 years old(oldest public employee in Buffalo) and he knows his shit. We have old machines at work and he basically built all the parts for them to get them running again.

[stuiephoto]

@JDMSIR

Nice, I try to learn stuff from the old man I work with, hes fucking 90 years old(oldest public employee in Buffalo) and he knows his shit. We have old machines at work and he basically built all the parts for them to get them running again.

No replacement for experience.