Mill power feed

[dalee]

Hi,

Just finishing up my homebrew power feed on my G0704 mill. I'm too cheap to pay for a factory unit, ($300 ). So I built my own. I have well under $35 invested. I over payed for paint according my wife.

Power supply


Drive components


Drying Paint


dalee

[doubleboost]

Hi
Dalee
Is that a cordless drill motur hiding in your box
Better than winding a handle
John

[stevec]

Looking good Dalee, Is that torque limiter still operational? I was thinking it might come in handy in some instances.
Is the speed pot wired in place of the original drill trigger pot? Just curious.
Steve

[Highpower]

Brilliant! Do you have limit switches wired in as well?

[krv3000]

thats a good mod

[dalee]

Hi,

Thanks for the compliments and questions.

It is a scavenged HF 14.4v drill motor. A bad charger and batteries had it headed to the scrap heap. But it had a good motor. A not uncommon end for many cordless drills. It simple is cheaper to replace than repair. So there are a lot of these lying around that can be had for little or nothing.

I picked up a pwm, (pulse width modulator), with pot on eBay for $10 delivered from Hong Kong. I don't think you can afford to plug in a soldering iron for that here in the US. So none of the drills original controls were needed. But those could have been salvaged and used. It just wouldn't have been quite as neat looking I think.

The torque clutch is fully intact and is used instead of limit switches to prevent over travel damage. Limit switches could be easily wired in. But I want to try and keep it as simple and inexpensive as possible.

The motor is directly coupled to a pinned nut on the lead screw with a 14mm deepwell socket. I hemmed and hawed about engaging/disengaging the motor for a neutral to keep the manual feed intact. When it finally occurred to me that the motor adds such a little amount of drag that that a fixed coupling was all that was needed. I picked up a cheap import 1/4" drive socket and simply drilled and tapped it for the 3/8-24NF of the motor spindle. A bit of Loc-Tite and it's good to go.

The tricky part is the power supply. I used an 12V battery charger because I had an extra one lying around. But I'm told by those smarter about electronics than me, that an old computer power supply could be easily modified to run it. And that simple instructions can be found with a quick Google search.

Over all, I think it is a huge success for my mill. I can work just like the big machines now.

dalee

[stevec]

(09-09-2012, 10:56 PM)dalee Wrote: I picked up a pwm, (pulse width modulator), with pot on eBay for $10 delivered from Hong Kong.

Claudef queried me about one of those little pwm controllers but I couldn't advise him on it,
Claude did you complete the power feed set-up that you were working on?

(09-09-2012, 10:56 PM)dalee Wrote: I hemmed and hawed about engaging/disengaging the motor for a neutral to keep the manual feed intact. When it finally occurred to me that the motor adds such a little amount of drag that that a fixed coupling was all that was needed.

The drive that I used for the table feed I made for my milldrill has a worm reducer so I HAD TO incorporate a clutch.
   
The black button above the fwd/rev/neutral lever is a full speed button for rapid traverse.

[dalee]

Hi,

I didn't know anything about the cheap pwms on eBay either. But for $10 I figured it be a cheap education at worst. I pretty much picked one that 'looked' right to me.

From how robust your power feed appears, a clutch is very much needed. It looks like it could easily move several hundred pounds of table, fixture, and parts. I did not do a rapid switch. I didn't have a good way to over volt the motor to get a rapid travel.

dalee