Gotta new toy

[John Stevenson]

Got this last week.



Took it out the crate on Friday and stripped it down into big lumps.
Bare base, carriage, bed and column now reside on the bench.
Only got a couple of hours to play last night so started on the Y axis ball screw.



Turned the ball screw down to accept two precision angular contact bearings and made a short Oldham coupling to fit the end and set preload.



On honey do duty this weekend making fancy iron pagoda roof supports for the patio [ ugghh ] so won't get onto this until Monday night.
Next job is the make a front bearing mounting up, can't use existing as it won't hold the angular contacts and a new nut block.

The X axis is virtually the same as the Y just a different mounting position for the front bearing mounting.

.

[IOWOLF]

Keep us posted,Your off to a good start.

[BobWarfield]

John, I really like the look of those little Sieg mills. They seem infinitely more right than a silly round column mill/drill. I can't imagine why I need 2 mills, or I would have to order one on the spot. I can't wait to see how your CNC conversion comes out.

Best,

BW

[DBW]

It looks like a great project! May I ask what brand that mill is? I"m down sizing my shop and sold my 50's clapped out BP and am looking for a lighter replacement.

[Evan]

Whatcha going to do with it John?

[John Stevenson]

Whatcha going to do with it John?

Evan,
It's going to be a test bed more than a working mill.
I have a Bridgy BOSS 1 and a Beaver NC5 mill [same size as a BOSS II ] that I use for work so not reliant on this unless it's small stuff.

I have been watching these X3 mills for a while and within the last year the quality has improved twofold.
I feel there is a market out there for add on's to these very affordable machines and I have a few idea's that are either in the works or serious paper idea's.

Here's a quill DRO kit



Wrong length scale but it was just a mock up.

I am also working on a tilt head for the manual machine boys.



Working on a bare head casting borrowed from the importer.

I feel these are a bit of an untapped source and what few limitation they do have can easily be overcome.

There have been quite a few CNC conversions already, about 5 on this size of the pond but some are little more than bolt on motor conversions.
I want to make this one on a par with commercial practice hence the NSK ball screws, double angular contact bearings and the high spec motors.

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[Evan]

Speaking of the motors, what are those rated at and what sort of drivers will you use if you don't mind me asking?

[John Stevenson]

Converted into English they are 312 oz/in

The drivers are on this page at the bottom.

http://www.arceurotrade.co.uk/en-gb/dept_144.html

They will run on either driver but run better on the bigger one as the motors are rated at 7.5 volts and the smaller driver has a safe voltage limit of about 35 / 36 volts which is only just under five times the rating.
The larger driver is 10 times the rating which will give better acceleration.

.

[BillH]

Keep up the good work John, I always liked the X3 mills.

[S_J_H]

I got one a few weeks ago. I'm pretty impressed with the quality of this machine and it has good power and cutting ability IMO.At least for what I do.
I have already cnc'd my little x2 and for a pretty crude little machine I can make some darn nice parts with it now. But it is very limited in parts size and cutting ability so I wanted something larger but still easy and affordable to convert to CNC.
So I went with the X3.
Steve