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Mach4 General Discussion / Re: New people welcome !! Come in here and introduce your self!
« on: August 15, 2010, 02:45:48 PM »
Hi All, my forum name is tom senior, which is the old machine I have just converted to cnc control.
I am 62 years old, been employed in radio communications since the age of 15. Never done any mechanical engineering bar bash out a few designes for radio cabinets, so it is a steep learning curve, and as ever the first step is jargon busting.
I bought stepper motors, stepper micro controllers and ball screws from Zapp, and Gary was very helpful. The machine conversion was straight forward with the exception of the Z axis. On the tom senior the whole table moves to give Z, and it is very heavy. At this time I have used a larger stepper motor for Z and a counter balance weight to lighten the burden. The redial accuracy in all axis is as good as the ball screws >= 0.05mm, so I am quite happy with the resulting machine, but in the long term I think I will add a DC motor as a spindle drive and make a new slide, to turn the top of the machine into a quill, and use the old table adjustment as a "manually adjusted large gap".
I made my first post here (answered by HOOD), very helpful.
cheers all
I am 62 years old, been employed in radio communications since the age of 15. Never done any mechanical engineering bar bash out a few designes for radio cabinets, so it is a steep learning curve, and as ever the first step is jargon busting.
I bought stepper motors, stepper micro controllers and ball screws from Zapp, and Gary was very helpful. The machine conversion was straight forward with the exception of the Z axis. On the tom senior the whole table moves to give Z, and it is very heavy. At this time I have used a larger stepper motor for Z and a counter balance weight to lighten the burden. The redial accuracy in all axis is as good as the ball screws >= 0.05mm, so I am quite happy with the resulting machine, but in the long term I think I will add a DC motor as a spindle drive and make a new slide, to turn the top of the machine into a quill, and use the old table adjustment as a "manually adjusted large gap".
I made my first post here (answered by HOOD), very helpful.
cheers all