Hi everyone,
Like the title says the Orac is 90% done, just waiting a response from Homann designs on what spindle speed control board to use. Next up is the conversion of an AEW Viceroy vertical mill to Mach 3. The mill can be seen on Tony Griffiths website,
www.lathes.co.uk, mine is the plain vertical with no quill feed, Z axis feed is by elevating the knee. I am, starting to "acquire" componentry as in ball screws and next, steppers. I cant afford or find servos and I guess fitting those would be above my meagre budget and skills!! I used Nema 34 motors on the Orac but I am wondering if I should use bigger motors such as Nema 42 motors and while I will fit ball screws to X & Y what about Z? would a ball screw be okay to use as it would be elevating the knee? or should I stick with the current ACME lead screw? also I am gonna try & figure a way to retain manual table elevation as well as CNC so shall have to devise a toothed belt driven coupling to the screw direct instead of the bevel gear drive that the hand wheel uses. Has anyone else done a retro fit such as this, will I be able to use all of Mach 3s functionality while relying on table elevation as my Z axis? I feel a bit more confident in another conversion as I feel that the Orac went quite well, with big thanks to Hood for his help! Any ways, see what you think as I am open to all ideas!
On another note, an ex-colleague of mine bought new in 2007 a CNC masters Supramill, this has been the biggest pain in the backside ever, its just about useless, very unstable and prone to just doing its own thing like taking a bite out of a hardened milling vice or fresh air for no apparent reason, very, very dangerous to man and machine. anyone converted one to run Mach?
That's all for now!
Croz