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I got most of my inspiration from this thread:
http://www.cnczone.com/forums/vertical_mill_lathe_project_log/59435-grizzly_g0602_10_x_22_a.html
Lots of great pics and ideas, I copied him pretty well, throwing in my
own little touches. I think he also includes CAD drawings of some of the
flanges and stuff.
I got the ballscrews and nuts from
www.Mcmaster.com,
GREAT place. To mount them I'm using stopblocks purchased from
hossmachine.info.
I got 425oz motors from
www.Keling.com, do not get less than 425, you need the power on Z
axis for drilling, mine stalls if I load it up too much or if too many
chips stick to the oil on the ballscrew.
Check out www.Shars.com for good
quality cheap Chinese tools and toolholders for your lathe, I placed a
big order from them and an very happy with their lathe toolholders. A
1/2" 35° right turning tool is my absolute favorite, especially for
slightly more complicated cnc lathe operations:
http://www.shars.com/products/view/8431/12quot_RH_SVJB_Small_Screw_Lock_Positive_Insert_Tool_Holder
Get a good parting blade and holder, I use these and am fairly happy:
http://www.shars.com/products/view/2682/NCIH264PS_Positive_Stop_Adjustable_Blade_for_SelfLock_Cutoff_Inserts
For a manly turning tool these are pretty sweet, they use trigon inserts
so you have 3 cutting edges, 6 if you use double sided inserts! But I
think the 3/4" ones are too big, you want 1/2", maybe 5/8".
http://www.shars.com/product_categories/view/80707/MWLN_RL_MultiLock_Toolholders
A boring bar is wicked handy too, a 1/2" bar that uses ccmt inserts, but
the trick is to mount it to the tool post because it needs to mount
higher than the normal slot for the tools.
That should get you started, I'm in love with indexable carbide tools,
HSS ones that you grind yourself are so oldschool and annoying for CNC.
I'm also using a
hobbycnc.com board for my lathe and mill. I've got the 3 axis
basic board for the lathe that I love, and the pro 4axis board for the
mill. My lathe board is quiet and great, but the Pro board is incredibly
loud, the stepper hiss is nearly unbearable. I'm recently learning
that the hobbycnc boards limit you to hooking your motors up in unipolar
configuration, which can really hinder the power that you're actually
getting out of them. Using a different board, like a g540 or
similar, you can run bipolar and get the full juice out of them.
So keep that in mind, because 425oz motors should be huge, but I'm
stalling them all the time.
You should really think about picking up a mini mill from grizzly,
they're SO handy and I couldn't have done my lathe cnc conversion
without it. But if you can spend the money buy the $1000 mill, it's much
bigger and stiffer. Also think about wiring up a tach sensor for the
lathe, that will let you cut threads! I do it all the time, love it.
Plans here:
http://www.davehylands.com/Machinist/CNC/CNC-Spindle-Encoder/Small/02-Cover-Off.html
And that's only half of it. There's a lot to this DIY CNC stuff, but
it's a ton of fun if you're into that sort of thing. Lots of threads
over at cnczone.com
about guys doing conversions.
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When zeroing the Z axis you usually want Z0 to be at the
front face of the part (although sometimes at the face of the chuck tooth,
or even chuck face). But you always always always want X0 to be exactly at
the centerline of the part. That way for a 2" od part, mach3 will know
where zero is so it just has to move outwards to 2" dia and then the tool
will be at the OD of the part. Hope that makes sense. So to face a 2" od
part the code would look something like this:
G0 X2 Z0 (RAPID TO TOP CORNER OF PART)
F5 (SPEED SET TO 5 INCHES PER MINUTE OR IPM)
G1 Z-0.010 (SLOW MOVE IN TEN THOU)
G1 X0 (SLOW CUT TO CENTERLINE, I USUALLY LIKE TO GO TO X-0.03 TO GO PAST
CENTERLINE TO MAKE SURE I DON'T GET A PIP)
G0 Z0.1 (RAPID MOVE OUT AWAY FROM PART)
G0 X2 (RAPID MOVE TO 2")
So that's how a quick face would look, I just wrote that by hand out of my
head, you get pretty good at that over time because it's simple enough.
-------------
Yup get a long ball screw and chop it down, my chop saw
did it no problem, an angle grinder would work, band saw would work, etc.
They are case hardened, so the outer layer. I forget if I made a video of
me turning and threading them, but I know I took pictures. I'll post those
pics on the little website I'm going to make so you'll know exactly what to
do. It's a great first project in manual turning and threading.
I've heard that the G540 is awesome. I use hobbycnc and am fairly happy, I
made my own power supply from a microwave oven transformer, and I also got
the motors from Keling.
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You will definitely want a 1/2" toolholder for boring,
attached is a pic of the one I milled for myself, I use it ALL the time. I
also made an identical one with 3/4" bore. I usually have a 1/2" boring bar
in there, but sometimes put a drill chuck in so that I can do CNC drilling.
For the 3/4" I use a Valenite centerdex endmill (google it) for boring 1"
dia holes in one pass, then I can also use it as a boring bar to make the
holes as big as I need. Love love love that tool.
Hoss has some really good videos describing Mach3, although all of them are
geared towards Mach3 mill. Hardly any vids to do with the lathe program, I
should get on that. What cad/cam programs do you have? I use solidworks
and solidcam for everything, LOVE THEM. But yeah the learning curve for
that is almost as steep as the whole CNC machine side of things. Practice
practice practice. Find an object in your house and re-create it in CAD.
-------------
These pics show how the ballnut attaches, it's threaded
so it threads into those aluminum blocks. However your kit will likely look
different than mine because I had to do some milling to get of the lathe
slide to get it to fit, for yours all you will have to do is drill and tap a
few holes.
Wait on the mcmaster order, there are probably some other
things that you'll want to get from there as time goes on, so start making a
list but save that one till last minute. They ship incredibly fast. You
can get all kinds of wonderful things from them.
--------------------------------
What voltage
power supply are you getting? Buy whatever will almost max out the g540.
I'm running around 45-50v on my lathe and am totally maxing out the hobbycnc
stuff.
Never tried or heard of camworks, but I'm sure it will work great. Honestly
you can do a heck of a lot with the built in wizards in mach3turn, they're
amazing. Between that and splicing some codes together or writing them
yourself, I did that for over a year without needing a cam program. It's
only for fancy profiles and weird arcs that you really need a cad/cam
program, but the resulting parts are quite a bit cooler. For example check
out the photo gallery on my new site (been working on it all night) to see
the wine stoppers, those were made in solidworks and solidcam and they cut
in just a few minutes each.
http://www.cravingboost.com/machining/photogallery.htm
My garage computer is just a POS old dell thing that I got for free with a
crt monitor. Nothing fancy at all, doesn't even have internet (would need a
wireless card) but I've got a laptop in the garage that gets wireless for
that purpose. All this computer does is run mach3, notepad and calculator.
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My ballnuts are pn 5966K16, $28.24ea (I paid $25ea 2 years
ago). It's like their picture of the square ballnut with flange,
but without the flange.
I
think my 425oz motors are hooked up in unipolar configuration, I'm
using 6 wires. That's what the hobby cnc boards require, I'm not
sure what you can get away with on the g540.
------------------
When turning and threading the ballscrews I just chucked onto the
ballscrew and it didn't dent it too badly. Besides for the lathe
you hardly ever have the ballnut go that far to either end. What I
did have to make was a bushing for the long Z ballscrew, because
when you chuck it in the chuck it's now got like 3' hanging off the
end and it liked to whip around, so I made a bushing that fit into
the back of the spindle and supported it about halfway down.
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Again that's
another order that you might want to wait on, because you can buy a ton of
amazing stuff from here.
www.newark.com. My absolute favorite place to buy electronic bits,
wire, plugs, circuit components, etc, they have it all. It's like digikey
but with a way better website.
Here is part of my excel spreadsheet of the parts that I bought for the
conversion. You won't need all of that stuff because I was doing some other
projects too, but look through it and see what parts you could use for your
conversion. For my mill I used these sweet plugs on the end of each stepper
motor wiring to connect to my wiring harness, they're great and waterproof.
1-480704-0 is the male side, you also need the female side, the connector
seal, and male and female pins, all listed below. The part series
1-480706-0 feel cheap and are a pain to plug together because the pins don't
line up well. Try to plan out your wiring harness before ordering from
them. You'll need other stuff than that too, so put your thinking cap on.
Ohh and to properly crimp the pins you'll need a special crimper.
I don't think the rpm sensor is listed, but pretty much everything you need
to know is posted here. I followed this pretty exactly.
http://www.davehylands.com/Machinist/CNC/CNC-Spindle-Encoder/index.html#02-Cover-Off.jpg
If you don't want to build your own board then maybe see if
www.cnc4pc.com has
anything, I'm sure they do.
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Newark stuff 08-04-09 |
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individual price
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qty
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$1.57 |
9 pin
TYCO ELECTRONICS / AMP - 794272-1 - Connector Wire Seal (2 req per
connection) |
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$0.79 |
2 |
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$0.36 |
9 pin
TYCO ELECTRONICS / AMP - 1-480706-0 - Male |
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$0.36 |
1 |
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$0.41 |
9 pin
TYCO ELECTRONICS / AMP - 1-480707-0 - Female |
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$0.41 |
1 |
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$0.76 |
9 pin
TYCO ELECTRONICS / AMP - 794277-1 - Connector Interface Seal |
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$0.76 |
1 |
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$3.08 |
6 pin
TYCO ELECTRONICS / AMP - 1-480704-0 - Male |
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$0.39 |
8 |
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$3.16 |
6 pin
TYCO ELECTRONICS / AMP - 1-480705-0 - Female |
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$0.40 |
8 |
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$8.40 |
6 pin
TYCO ELECTRONICS / AMP - 794275-1 - Connector Interface Seal |
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$1.05 |
8 |
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$17.98 |
6 pin
TYCO ELECTRONICS / AMP - 794276-1 - Connector Wire Seal (2 req per
connection) |
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$1.00 |
18 |
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$4.29 |
TYCO
ELECTRONICS / AMP - 350561-1 - Contact male |
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$0.03 |
130 |
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$9.00 |
TYCO
ELECTRONICS - 350537-1 - Contact female |
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$0.05 |
200 |
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$4.81 |
MOLEX
03-09-1061 female connector |
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$0.60 |
8 |
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$5.19 |
MOLEX
03-09-2061 male connector |
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$0.65 |
8 |
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$3.87 |
10a
MULTICOMP - SPC13261 - Power Cord |
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$3.20 |
QUALTEK ELECTRONICS - 738W-X2/03 - Power Entry Connector |
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$0.80 |
4 |
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$1.57 |
MULTICOMP - 2140 - Power Entry Connector |
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$0.78 |
2 |
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$12.60 |
HAMMOND - RM2095M - Instrument Enclosure |
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$7.86 |
15a
MULTICOMP - SPC13292 - Power Cord |
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$4.41 |
Limit
switches OMRON ELECTRONIC COMPONENTS SS-01GL13PT |
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$0.88 |
5 |
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$1.40 |
MULTICOMP - 2114S-04 - Wire To Board Connector |
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$0.14 |
10 |
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$0.56 |
MULTICOMP - 2114H-04 - Conector Housing |
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$0.06 |
10 |
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$1.23 |
STMICROELECTRONICS - 2N7000 - MOSFET |
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$0.12 |
10 |
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$0.59 |
TEXAS
INSTRUMENTS - SN74LS14N - Gate / Inverter Logic IC |
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$0.59 |
1 |
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$0.21 |
TYCO
ELECTRONICS / AMP - 1-390261-3 - DIP Socket |
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$0.21 |
1 |
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$13.56 |
TYCO
ELECTRONICS - T9AP5D52-12 - Power Relay |
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$3.39 |
4 |
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$6.77 |
SPC
TECHNOLOGY - SPC19928 - Serial Cable Assembly |
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$6.77 |
1 |
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$12.00 |
Shipping |
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While you're thinking of computers think about getting one of those
waterproof keyboards. Mount it with sticky tape or something to a piece of
plywood, because you'll want the rigidity for holding it with one hand and
using the arrows with the other (I do that all the time while watching the
machine up close). I just have an old white classic one but chips always
get stuck under the keys.
I've thought about larger ball bearings, IIRC the stock ones are 0.1245".
So even 1/8" balls would be an upgrade and are really cheap. Hoss has a few
videos describing the size balls that he tried and where he got them from,
or that might have been on his website/forum. I think you can buy them on
ebay, like 0.1255 or something.
--------
I just looked at a little notepad file on my cnc pc in the shop and I noted
that my lathe ballnuts had 67 balls in them and that they measured 0.1245
(think I also read that online somewhere), could maybe fit 5 more in each.
Fastenal.com sells 1/8" balls (0.125) for $2.50 for 100, cheeep. I've read
that you want to use grade 25 or better.
My milling machine ballnuts had 68 balls, I was able to stuff 71 balls onto
one of them but then it spun slower and had more drag, so my conclusion is
that the stock amount is sufficient. But then can definitely be a few ten
thou bigger. Although mach3 backlash comp works really really well, so I
haven't needed to upgrade yet. I only get about 1-3 thou per axis, and
backlash comp takes care of it no problem. The trick is must measuring
it very accurately.
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