Better explain the title first, it is a Beaver NC5 mill that was manufactured by Balding Engineering
I bought the mill from eBay, it cost me £208 and then a further £500 to get it transported from Wales up to Scotland. Originally it had a Heidenhain 145 control and Contraves DC servo drives and motors. There was a Z axis fault but a clean of the drive contacts sorted that out and I was able to test things out, all axis moved freely and rapids were 8m/min. Originally I had intended keeping the DC motors and drives but they whistled at a frequency that really annoyed me so they had to go. I sold the control and drives on eBay and got around £500 for them. I picked up some 1.5KW and 3KW AC Servos and drives from eBay Â
The cabinet that was on the Beaver was at the back and huge, it was far too big for the small workshop so I fitted the drives into one of the old cabinets I had from the Bridgeport and mounted it to the side, above that I fitted an electrical box which houses the computer and breakouts etc. I am using the pico motherboard, a SmoothStepper, a PMDX122 and and Acustep Breakout boards, a few relay circuits I bought and a few I made and finally a PLC. At the moment I am only using the analogue Inputs to the PLC, this will let me have load meters in Mach for all of my motors but future plans include a tool changer so I will need some of the inputs on the PLC for that.
My workshop is cramped so the pics are not that great but heres some anyway. I am about a week away from getting it completed but afraid finding that weeks worth of time is a problem, maybe as the weather warms I will spend more time in the evening at the workshop.
Hood