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 (approx £354)- 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.
  • The ballscrews are imperial - but this shouldn't matter

From CNCFusion:

 Hi Elliot, from the specs listed, I believe the ChesterUK mill is the same as this one...
 http://www.littlemachineshop.com/3900 the specs are the same, maining travels and table
 width. There is an option at bottom right of X2 page, to add an LMS High Torque upgrade.
 You would need to add this upgrade for this mill.
 
 If you have any other questions, or need any help, just let me know.
 
 Cheers,
 Michael & Shelley Rodgers
 www.cncfusion.com

Budget estimation

(Note: the parts in this section were looked up by bluekieran, who doesn't know anything about this stuff, just to help estimate the total budget.)

• Motors - 3 x NEMA23. ~£100 (based on 3.1Nm torque motors seen on eBay. A forum post mentions motors with 290oz (2.04Nm) of torque should be sufficient.)
  • These were recommended by Nigle: Arc Euro Trade - 160-010-00300 - 180Ncm - 1/4" Shaft - Hybrid Stepper Motor - £24.95
• Controller - another quick look at the forum throws up a mention of the Gecko G540($399/~£252) as being "bad ass".
• Software - a third forum post suggests MACH3, which is free for hobbyist use.

Specification

• Must be reversible - so that we can potentially return the mill in the condition that it was lent to us. It doesn't have to be in the same condition, merely still usable without the CNC, drilling mounting holes etc. is fine. Nigle
• Axis: 3 would be a good starting point. But it would be a good idea if the chosen electronics had the capability of driving the rotary table and controlling spindle speed at a later date without having to be replaced. Nigle
• 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. I have no problem with that modification, if this is the best kit then go for it! Nigle
• 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

Approximate target: £700