CNCing my mini mill

[SnailPowered]

Woohoo!! A little frustrating on needing three computers to try but at least it moves!!

[dallen]

just glad it stopped at the third one, cause I had a few more I could of tried,

[SnailPowered]

I saw an Enco CNC mill for sale from an estate auction. I was definitely extremely tempted to see what it would go for.

[dallen]

Auctions can be pretty exciting specially if you got a couple guys that want the same item and they don't use their brain cell, the price can go out the roof kinda like some of the prices on EBay where you see used items sell for more then you could buy a new one for.

Anyway I got a little work done on the mill yesterday, I cabbaged onto a ride acrosss town so I didn't have to use my gas and picked up one of the bearings that I needed for the Z Axis and a Lovejoy coupling that I used to hook up the motor on the X Axis with.

I had also removed the motor from the Y and hooked it to the computer and driver that I have to make sure I could drive it with what I have component wise. We're good to go there so I will probably see about loading up the Software onto my old HP Laptop so I can take it all in by the mill and see if I can get the table to move back and forth on the X Axis. Guess about the only other thing that I can do is see about locating the other bearing that I need for the Z Axis drive.

I know there are a dozen little things that will crop up to keep me busy on the mill, like now that I have a couple I need to see what I have to do the align the Z Axis mount so the motor is in line with the leadscrew, but as long as I don't get in a hurry maybe I won't find all the little things when its time to actually try to cut some metal with it.

[dallen]

got a little more done on the mill

   

[EdK]

That looks to be a decent sized stepper motor on the top. That should work out well for you.

Ed

[dallen]

well it might if I can get the thing to work like its suppose too, I would think that the motor would spin the head up and down with no problem but I'm missing something somewhere cause it will barely move it.

[EdK]

What are you using to drive the stepper motor?

Ed

[dallen]

right now I have a cheap unipolar driver hooked up to Mach3 I can get the motor to move but it doesn't have any power, and I know its big enough its a 485 Oz In motor, it should jerk hard enough to unscrew the thread on the acme nut screwed into the timing cog (brass part)

[EdK]

I'm not familiar with Mach3 but it sounds like not enough current is being commanded to turn the motor. What power supply you are using to power the stepper motor and what brand and model number is the stepper motor?

Ed