Well i tried talking my dad into buying a cnc router for at work. Well i got a router. It wasnt new. It was actualy older than me. It had so must rust on the linear products it could barly move. The electronics did not work. And the computer that came with it weighed like 200 pds.

As for the router. Its X and Y axis are belt driven. The steppers motors are 150oz. Which i am realy supprised by. but it is geared so it has good power. The Z axis is a ballscrew.

The linear rails are 1/2" fully supported rails. except the Z axis which is a unsupported 1/2" rail. But they have so much rust that they are worthless.

The spindle is a 5.5hp Penske spindle. Or that is what the guy who i bought it off of said. But it dont look like no perske spindle.

Its got 55" X 48" Travel.

Well we drove 4 hours to pick it up. Stuck it on a trailer and drove a nother 4 hours home. It weighs something like 1300pds. it was not the funnest thing to get on and off the truck.

I ended up stripping ever bid of electronics off of it. I striped the entire control box. threw it all away. Ordered new Thomson Linear rails. And Thomson Pilllow blocks. That was an amazing improvement over the crappy rusty rails and pillow blocks that was missing 1/2 its balls.

I took the steppers off and sent them to camtronics. Had him built me a custom made controller. He used gecko's and made a nice looking box for it all. Wired it all up.

Last week i got all the products in. Which was amazing but good. Wired the controller up and it works great.

Since then i have installed the X and Y home switch. Hard wired the spindle to a wall outlet. I realy had to get the machine running because my father had already promised parts out the comeing monday.

One thing i need to find is good home / limit switches. Wires for these switches. And a Good relay for my vacuum and spindle.

So here are a pic of it. Also a pic of that job i had to get out last week with it.

Hope you enjoy :-)

In this pic The only thing i have done is took the Z axis apart because the bearings was locked up. They had standerd bearings in it so i bought angle contact bearings for it. The standerd bearings left about 1/32" of play in the z axis. Also they had the ballnut half lose. So when i first saw the z axis there was about 1/4" of play in it. i was a bit worried.

This is a pic of that job i did last week. I used a 3/16" 3 flute HSS high helix end mill. Cut at 10imp. Took about a hour to cut this slug out of the middle. The alum. cut like butter.

This pic is of my Z axis after i installed new angle contact bearings. New linear rails. New bearings packs. It moves great. alot better than it did b4.

pic of the gearings of the X axis.

New Linear Rails. They work so nice. :-)

Want to see pic of anything else let me know. this is just what i had on my camera.

today at work i wanted to cut this turning in half. to make it easier to draw up in cad. Im making a cutting tool for a place that turns stair parts. I put a 1.25" Dia. X 1.25" Cut Lenght Carbide Tool. I was cutting 1" deep with 3/4" cut width. It was taking it like a champ. It was realy impressed by its cutting power.

If anyone knows a place to buy bellow covers please let me know. i need a bellow cover for my bridge. It never had one and i do not want to get dirty / chips in my belt or linear rails.

i am having problems with hooking up the relay for the spindle. i have been told that maybe my parallel port is only putting out 3.3v on the pin. making the spindle turn on and off. Right now its wired direct. The spindle its self has a speed control on the side of it. goes from 10k to 22k rpm. I have a meter thing. Is there anyway i can tell if my pin is putting out 5v or 3.3v?

I went to the hardware store today looking for better wires for my limits and homes. Right now im using speaker wire. i dont think thats the best stuff to use.

Well the thing has been rebuilt for months now. cut aton of stuff out on it. Finaly decided to upgrade spindles.

Went with a 1.34hp High Frequence Spindle. I am truly impressed by it. And at 24000rpm it aint nearly as loud as the other at 21000rpm.

I got it from Ekstrom Charlson. Its motorpack3 on this page.
http://www.ekstromcarlson.com/router_packages.htm

Its small size its only about 3X3X9. But it seems to have more power than my 3.25hp porter cable. And the runout is 0.000 when the porter cable had .01" in it.

It cost me about 2200$ in the end for everthing but it was well worth it. Here are some pictures of it.

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very nice - I like.

Nice machine !