- Joined
- Sep 17, 2023
- Messages
- 2
Hey, folks!
Started a new job recently and they have a very neglected PM25MV mill. I finally got a chance to disassemble that baby last weekend in an attempt of bringing her back to life (the place ran the poor thing without any aprons on the Y and Z).
My main concerns were the backlash and the locking mechanisms. I have successfully reduced the backlash on the Y to virtually nothing, however the X still gives me about a quarter turn before engaging ( which is way better than before). The X split nut was in a rough shape, permanently bent with the split ends touching.
I am advocating for a CNC conversion, but given the price, this may take a while to get approved. Now I’m wondering if it would be possible to do a ball screw conversion without the CNC part, just a more precise manual mill.
If I do get an approval for a full conversion, are there kits out there that would still let me use the mill manually when I need to? We don’t fabricate much, mostly fix mistakes of our Chinese manufacturers and I need the ability to quickly throw a piece on the mill and do 1-2 passes without all of the programming.
Another thing that is driving me nuts is the locking mechanism. Before I took the mill apart for cleaning and adjusting, whenever I would lock an axis, it would go off coordinates by as much as 1mil. On top of that, if I have one axis finally locked in the right place and would proceed to locking the second one, that would throw all of the coordinates out of whack. I would spend 5 minutes just locking the machine at a right place. Since the cleanup, it got better, but never fully went away.
I already have some smaller (cheaper) mods planned, like a one-shot oil system and of course a single knob Y locking.
Thanks in advance
-MV
Started a new job recently and they have a very neglected PM25MV mill. I finally got a chance to disassemble that baby last weekend in an attempt of bringing her back to life (the place ran the poor thing without any aprons on the Y and Z).
My main concerns were the backlash and the locking mechanisms. I have successfully reduced the backlash on the Y to virtually nothing, however the X still gives me about a quarter turn before engaging ( which is way better than before). The X split nut was in a rough shape, permanently bent with the split ends touching.
I am advocating for a CNC conversion, but given the price, this may take a while to get approved. Now I’m wondering if it would be possible to do a ball screw conversion without the CNC part, just a more precise manual mill.
If I do get an approval for a full conversion, are there kits out there that would still let me use the mill manually when I need to? We don’t fabricate much, mostly fix mistakes of our Chinese manufacturers and I need the ability to quickly throw a piece on the mill and do 1-2 passes without all of the programming.
Another thing that is driving me nuts is the locking mechanism. Before I took the mill apart for cleaning and adjusting, whenever I would lock an axis, it would go off coordinates by as much as 1mil. On top of that, if I have one axis finally locked in the right place and would proceed to locking the second one, that would throw all of the coordinates out of whack. I would spend 5 minutes just locking the machine at a right place. Since the cleanup, it got better, but never fully went away.
I already have some smaller (cheaper) mods planned, like a one-shot oil system and of course a single knob Y locking.
Thanks in advance
-MV