Pledge: CNC Mill

We are looking at performing a CNC conversion kit on the mill in the space

The item

• CNC Fusion X2 conversions - Kit #4 at $559 - excludes motors, controller. Requires no physical changes to the mill so can be easily reverted. This kit provides 3 axes of control with upgraded ballscrews - presumably to reduce backlash.
  • Motors/Controller/Software must be purchased separately.

Specification

• Must be reversible - so that we can potentially return the mill in the condition that it was lent to us.
• Axes: 3 would be a good starting point.
• Max purchase cost: £?
• Construction: A kit solution looks best. Otherwise we'd need to machine adapters and various parts to couple the mill with the motors - harder still if we want to avoid modifying the mill itself.

Mill

• Loaned to the space by Nigle.
• The mill in question.
• This is actually a rebranded SIEG X2, which is an exceedingly popular mini-mill.

Kits that we considered

• KDN conversion kit. - Requires modification of the mill.
• Plans for X2 conversion - Not free - It will be a lot of work to convert the mill ourselves so we should probably just stick to a pre-fabricated kit.

Additional information

• Cutting sheet metal with a Sherline mill.
• Many mills to see at the London Model Engineering exhibition
• CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO yahoo group
• various projects, including another CNC hack
• source of various CNC kits
• Stockist of stepper motors and drives

Pledges

• £50 --Teabot 08:34, 18 July 2010 (UTC)
• £20 --Solexious 23:30, 25 July 2010 (UTC) (can increase in future)
• £50 --t0m 15:34, 10 August 2010 (UTC)
• £100 -- Blapto 17:26, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
• £50 --Meurig 08:22, 12 October 2010 (UTC)
• £50 --tobycatlin 09:28, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

Running total: £320