# My round column RF30 mill to CNC conversion, the cheap way



## stioc

So almost exactly 1yr after the purchase of the mill I've decided to convert it to CNC.

Let me get some things out of the way first, this is going to be a cheap build. Yes in a perfect world I'd have a Tormach 1100 but that would be an overkill for how much I'll use it. Nope, not even going to convert it to ballscrews, at least not yet.

Goals: cheap, quick and easy 

Hopefully, this conversion will help someone out who has wanted to do this but wasn't sure about it, didn't know how, or thought it was too expensive. If it all blows up, it'll at least provide some entertainment! :lol_hitti

How the mill sits today:


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## stioc

My CNC experience: until about 2 months ago I knew almost nothing about CNC. Then I decided to build a small Arduino+GRBL based CNC router/engraver for knowledge and fun. This went better than expected, while I have a degree in computer engineering and did a lot of PLC and microcontroller projects back in college anyone can do this stuff these days with the help of Youtube and just general info available on the Internet. In fact, too much info so you have to weed through it all to find what you're looking for sometimes.

I had a budget of $300 for the router and I came just under it by a couple of bucks. It would've been cheaper if I didn't waste $30 or so on crappy endmills from Amazon based on their good reviews. However, the endmills from ebay seller drillman1 totally changed the tiny router from being nothing but an engraver to actually being able to cut mdf and HDPE.

Bench testing the electronics of my last CNC project



Done - took about 6-7hrs to assemble it from scratch



An example of what I made with it:



My biggest hurdle with CNC is not being good at Fusion360 or CAD/CAM in general but I manage to stumble through it once I have a design/idea in mind.

Anyway, this was/is my entire CNC knowledge but while the router is fun I want to be able to tackle bigger sized projects. Its working capacity is only about 8"x11" and the spindle is pretty weak. Sure I can upgrade, modify to suit my needs, I was even considering buying a Shapeoko XL but then I thought, I already have a 750lbs mill with a decent sized table why not convert that to CNC?


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## stioc

So here's the breakdown of the electronics that I'll be using.

*CNC software*: While I enjoyed the simplicity and speed of GRBL running on Arduino (2 sec from boot up to being ready!) for the little router, for the mill though I wanted something with more features even if I don't have a use for most of them at this time. I boiled my options down to either Mach3 or LinuxCNC. I've chosen the latter for now. Cost: $0

*Computer:* I have an old Athlon X2 desktop sitting around in the garage, I'll start with it and see if I need to upgrade to something better. It's not the fastest of desktops made even back then lol. Cost $0

*Stepper motors:* Three Nema 23, 270 Oz from Amazon. Cost $98 total

*Drivers:* Three TB6600 clones from Amazon. Cost $45

*Parallel port interface/Breakout board:* 5 axis generic BoB from Amazon, comes with cables: Cost $17

*Power supply*: 400W 36V PSU from Amazon. Cost $36

Total cost for all electronics: $196


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## FOMOGO

Cheap is good, as long as it gets you where you want to go. This should be interesting, I'll be following along. Mike


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## Holescreek

I converted an RF30 many years ago as cheaply as possible - sort of.  Even after making the mounts and brackets myself I had $1k in it.  Nema 23's are going to need som good gear reduction to work IMO, especially with original acme screws.

I used ball screws driven 1:1 with nema 40 500 ozin motors X&Y, geco drives, and homemade 72vdc power supply. IIRC the first 3 geckos ate up $600 of the cost. I added a 4th axis later on.


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## stioc

Thanks guys. I'm doing this not just in a cheap way but also quick and easy way, hopefully, stay tuned! Also, I'm all ears for any words of wisdom along the way.

@Holescreek, that sounds like a great setup, I'd love to see pics as well as more info on it.  The prices have come down quite a bit lately and my electronics are cheap and generic unlike your Geckos  Yes, the motors will have gear reduction


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## Boswell

stioc, 
This will be a great build log. I see post from time to time of people trying to understand how to get into CNC with the least cash outlay so this build might help a lot of people. Not only for how to do it simply but also after you get it built to be able to talk about what trade-offs and limitations you encounter.


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## stioc

@Boswell - thanks, the idea was to learn and share with others and if nothing else set an example of 'how not to do a CNC conversion'


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## stioc

*LinuxCNC setup:*
I installed LinuxCNC 2.7 on the old HP desktop. It was pretty straight-forward, I chose the lazy way and downloaded the full version that's self contained, meaning it'll install Linux and LinuxCNC altogether on a bare disk/computer. I did have to build a bootable USB drive - which is easily done using Rufus (Google for it) on my Windows laptop.

LinuxCNC isn't as intuitive as Mach3 for the uninitiated so I'll give a couple of pointers below. A quick background story on Mach3 first- I was really considering Mach3 but for the first time in my life i got banned on a msg board...I guess for asking questions (perhaps too many?) about backlash compensation. Their Administrator quietly banned me, funny thing is he only banned one of my IP addresses so I can use an open proxy and still cruise around and even post if I wanted to since my account is still active. However, I realized if that's their mode and attitude for providing support I should look elsewhere. I know this is probably atypical as Mach3 is used by so many people but I'm a principles guy so...onward and upward for me.

So after I first installed LinuxCNC and logged into the system I couldn't figure out where to start, I ended up in the main panel in demo mode and got frustrated pretty quickly. Then some RTFM later you're supposed to start with the Stepconf Wizard where you fill out some basic information about your mill i.e. axis config, speed, parallel port pin setup etc. When you finish it creates the initial config files etc and places a shortcut to launch LinuxCNC with those settings.

The pic below isn't my actual settings, I'll be playing around some with the numbers and post the config at some later point once I've finalized them. The default velocity and acceleration settings are on the high side in my opinion so I'll be dropping those down quite a bit to start with. Probably 1in/s for Velocity and 5 in/s/s (second squared).


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## stioc

*Bench test and file transfers from Windows to Linux:*
OK, so I got quite a bit done today...

I configured LinuxCNC enough to do a quick bench test to make sure the parallel interface/BoB, the drivers and the motors worked. It was a successful test and no smoke so that means I got the connections setup right lol The key is to remember not to mix up the polarity or the smoke will happen.

The wiring is messy but it'll all get cleaned up soon.



The drivers can microstep to something like 64k steps per revolution but I only opted for 800 steps per rev. This is to ensure as much torque as possible while still getting a decent resolution.

Oh I also got setup to do file transfers from my main workstation in the house to the LinuxCNC computer in the garage over wifi. I'm using sFTP via Filezilla which makes it drag-and-drop simple from left to right.




Next I'll talk about the mechanical parts...


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## stioc

*The mechanical parts*

OK, so far everything was really straight forward: simple, inexpensive and readily available. However, the mechanical parts was a bit of a challenge for me. I really didn't feel like building parts myself unless I had no other choice. Remember from post #1 of this thread:

Goals: cheap, quick and easy.

I briefly looked at Grizzly's kit and I mean...briefly- as soon as I saw the $5k price tag I closed the browser window . Then I found FlashCut, at the time I didn't know it's their kit Grizzly sells so I emailed them asking if they'll sell the mechanical parts to me. I got no response 

At this point it was looking like if I wanted it cheap, it wouldn't be quick because I'd have to take the project on myself. I was coming to terms with this when I came across someone's kit by the name of PaulCNC - I saw the youtube video, then found the pricing online and thought the price was right up my alley. However, I wasn't sold on the design, it just looked too simplistic to me and I wasn't convinced it would work effectively. I'm not a mechanical engineer so when I build mechanical things I often tend to over-engineer things and make them more complex than they need to be perhaps. Anyway, I reached out to Paul via email asking for availability of the mechanical kit. As of this writing Paul sells a complete kit all put together for you to just plug in for $820. He also sell the complete DIY kit for $620 and the mechanical kit for $320 (he loves $20 I see). BTW, Paul's kit is geared towards Mach3 which doesn't matter much to me since it's the same interface as LinuxCNC just different control software.

http://paulcnc.ipower.com/site/

I asked Paul for a reference of a customer whom I can talk to about their experience and longevity of the kit. Paul sent me a contact- this gentleman happens to have a really informative website about all sorts of machining stuff. From his website I gleaned quite a bit of info already and realized he bought Paul's kit several years ago and has since made lots of things on it.
Anyway, I reached out to the contact and as suspected got a very positive feedback. OK Paul, here's my $320 via paypal...and two days later the kit was in my mailbox:




The kit allows you to use the handwheels too, this was important to me as I didn't want to lose that capability if I could help it. I could see times when I'd prefer to run a job manually (e.g. repair work on say a...cylinder head, I know mighty ambitious of an example, but hey...).


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## stioc

*Mechanical parts fitting and a couple of oops:*

So the mechanical parts in theory should be a matter of replacing the handles with these parts. That is if you're not me lol, for me it's not a project  without some oddball issue cropping up or me messing things up. In this case it was both.

*OOPS #1*, looks like the hand me down mill was previously 'modified' in that the Y-axis shaft collar doesn't have 3 jaws like the X-axis...so Paul's collar can't mate with the jaws of the leadscrew collar.

The way the Y axis should've been (this is my x-axis):



My Y-axis leadscrew collar:



I decided to drill and tap Paul's collar and use set screws, similar to the hand-wheel that was on it. My table-top Craftsman drill-press has too much run-out for precise holes so I moved its small X/Y vise to the mill, since I'd removed the mill's handles and didn't feel like putting them on.




Done, two set-screws in place, the other is opposite to the one in the pic.




*OOPS #2*, (self inflicted of course) when you order the kit from Paul you have to measure a few things to get the correct kit. This is due to the fact there have been man RF30 clones  sold over the past few decades and there are slight variations of the shaft size etc. Well when I measured my Z axis shaft I thought it was a 1/2" dia. but it was more like 13mm so when I put it on it was *very* snug, while not realizing the issue I gave it a few taps with a soft hammer to get it about half way onto the shaft. Then when I went to remove it by tapping it back out it wouldn't even budge  Well it doesn't know who its dealing with so I break out my slide hammer :scared: a few gentle taps and I see it moving...wait, its not the collar moving but the whole shaft is coming out of the housing :lol_hitti I quickly tapped it back in hoping I didn't mess up anything inside (I didn't even know what the inside looks like as I've never messed with any internals of a mill, ever.). After some head scratching and cursing I decided to take the housing apart. Luckily nothing was visibly damaged :bowdown:




I clamped it in a vise, then used a vise-grip as a stop for the shaft sliding out of its housing but this collar was not coming off! I ran through a couple of options in my head, slice the collar to get it off and reorder it from Paul and thought this might be my last resort. Then I thought, it's aluminum on steel, I should be able to heat it up with my propane torch and that should help. Boy, did that help, let me tell you just 1min of heat and the thing slid right off! Then I put everything back together the way it was before. At least I put some synthetic grease on the gears.




Finally, I chucked up the collar on my 9x20 lathe and faced off the end and bored out the hole a few thous for a good fit.




Lesson learned: a bigger hammer is not always the best solution


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## stioc

*Back to the electronics*
I only had about 5hrs of shop time but most of the control side wiring, layout and control board is done now, yay! I didn't even have to go to Home Depot, everything I needed I found in the garage, or put another way, I used what I had lol

I got the these cables with the breakout board, I cut one end of the connector to wire up the drivers. This made for very nice and clean looking wiring.





I then added power/ground by daisy chaining it to keep the wiring as clean as possible.




Finally, decided on a layout that I liked and one that wouldn't stress the parallel port and USB cable, marked out some holes...




...and it's all done!


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## Boswell

Your moving right along


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## stioc

*It's ALIVE!!!*

I got all the wiring completed and the control panel mounted.







Then I dialed in the backlash using the Touch DRO...the 1.000 on the DRO screen represents the 1" jog command on LinuxCNC for each access - and they match up perfectly! In all honesty I would've been happy with a .002 error too since this is just backlash (and not the full screw mapping, which I don't know how to do yet).




My backlash settings/config, I'm still playing around with some of these settings so if anyone has any thoughts/advice I'm all ears:



...and finally its first test under CNC power...using a pencil:



*OOPS #2.1*:
There's a problem, of course...remember when I had to bore out the Z axis coupler? Apparently I didn't indicate the part properly so when the shaft spins the whole motor/assembly started wobbling round and round, son of a...

OK so what now? I could give Paul a call and buy another coupler which he sells separately on his website. Then I thought, dummy at least try to fix your mess and learn to do things properly...a learning opportunity you see? So I chuck up the collar in the lathe, indicate it to within .001" this time and bore it out to a bigger size 0.70". Then I take a scrap piece, bore that out to 1/2" and then turn it down to 0.685".










Then I cut out the appropriate length and pressed it into the collar, took a bit of an effort, which is what i wanted. Finally, drilled and tapped a hole. The whole thing now turns perfectly!







I now declare my conversion complete.

*Total cost*: $516 (btw, Paul sells his kit for only a $100 more than this and I would've gone that route had I not already bought some of the stuff before finding Paul's website. Also for $820 he sells a turn-key bolt-on kit which if you consider the amount of time involved in wiring is a fantastic deal.)
*Total time*: about 3 full days given a couple of issues I ran into
*Difficulty factor*: hard to quantify this but I'd say if you already use things like mills, welders, automotive stuff then probably a 2 out of 5 (5 being the hardest).

Not bad for a hobby machine, I couldn't be more pleased 

Now Fusion 360, that's a solid 5 for me, and I'm an IT guy- I'm just not good at drawing/CAD etc. I made a design for engraving in Fusion 360 but couldn't quite get it to work right, some letters it wants to deep engrave while the others it barely touches. I think it has to do with it trying to be too smart about how wide the engraving bit is. I'm going to try the Trace function instead.

LinuxCNC also has a learning curve...I've just barely scratched the surface on it.


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## Boswell

stioc said:


> I now declare my conversion complete.



Great seeing how quickly you were able to get this running!


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## stioc

Thanks Boswell. It was a fun and easy project and hopefully the documentation will give others a cheap way to CNC these inexpensive mills, afterall most people that buy these mills wouldn't want to spend $5k (or even $2k) on a $1500 mill. Also, the round column mills are written off but I really like mine. I used to have a mini mill and there's just no comparison, this thing weighs about 800lbs, very rigid in comparison and not much more money either.


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## agfrvf

I plan on doing something similar to my 2.5ton horizontal using a makerbase and some 50Nm steppers.


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## gzoerner

stioc,

Many thanks for your write up.  You've inspired me to build a 3-axis router project.  I'm just finishing my first arduino/stepper motor project for my 9x20 lathe.
Glen


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## Paul Thompson

$516 has to be some sort of record.

Very resourceful


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## stioc

agfrvf said:


> I plan on doing something similar to my 2.5ton horizontal using a makerbase and some 50Nm steppers.


Awesome! pls post a link here when you do.



gzoerner said:


> stioc,
> Many thanks for your write up.  You've inspired me to build a 3-axis router project.  I'm just finishing my first arduino/stepper motor project for my 9x20 lathe.
> Glen


That's fantastic, glad to share- do you have a thread or pics somewhere? I have a 9x20 that could become my next cnc victim lol



Paul Thompson said:


> $516 has to be some sort of record.
> 
> Very resourceful



Thanks Paul, I'll be honest I can't take a lot of credit here because I couldn't have done it for this cheap or this quickly and easily without your kit. Thanks for all the tech-support too after I ran into my self-inflicted issues. I hope you post more on the forums such as this because I feel you have so many cool ideas and things to share especially with your Mech Eng. background.


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## stioc

OK I decided to make something on the newly converted CNC mill. It's a carriage stop for my lathe, the idea is to be able to attach it to the ways where it's fully movable along that axis. I started by taking some physical measurements of the ways profile, then sketched it out in Fusion360, extruded it to 3D, then generated the toolpath. I'm kinda getting the hang of this. For the toolpath I could've done contour and it would've been much faster but I decided to do a pocket because I really wanted to see how that comes out and the machining time of 54 mins would stress everything enough for me to have a good idea of what the machine is capable of. 

I tried a shallow cut on wood first...broke the first 1/8" expensive endmill because I forgot to turn the motor on before I hit 'play', by the time I realized the damage was done, what an idiot! :lol_hitti

After swapping it out for another one I started the program again. This time the feeds and speeds that F360 picked were too aggressive and the second bit also bit the dust. Ugh, it's going to be a lot of expensive trial and error I guess 

Third attempt, I set all the feeds and speeds to 5in/min and depth to .03in per pass  It worked...well until I accidentally hit the ESC key on the keyboard, which is basically ESTOP...awesome! :willy_nil

Fourth attempt, this one worked, but I had to pause it because at one point the chip brush fibers got caught in the bit as I was trying to clear the chips...I won't be doing that again. Luckily I was able to resume it where I left off. Although the dimensions came out just a bit more loose so I wonder if that was the reason.

Anyway...here it is all done, my very first metal cut on the mill since the CNC conversion. Pretty exciting for me .




My fancy plywood sub-plate :lol:



That mark to the left is from the second broken bit



I'm using an old drill-bit as the stop since I didn't have a 3/8" rod handy.


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## stioc

CNC'd this address plate out of 1/4" alum 6061 - thinking of scrotch-brite'ng it to get the brushed-alum look?






Here's a quick 20sec video of it in action:
https://streamable.com/bbab2

Will need to build some sort of a box to keep all this off of everything around the mill and the garage floor!


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## jwmelvin

This is awesome; nice work.


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## stioc

Thank you!


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## magicniner

stioc said:


> I was really considering Mach3 but for the first time in my life i got banned on a msg board...I guess for asking questions (perhaps too many?) about backlash compensation. Their Administrator quietly banned me, funny thing is he only banned one of my IP addresses so I can use an open proxy and still cruise around and even post if I wanted to since my account is still active.



I've been on there for 4+ years and if they ban you they do it at account level and you don't get to log in from anywhere, if they blocked your IP it's for something else, sometimes people lose access when problematic addresses are blocked such as when an attack uses a spoofed IP address. 
There's a long and funny story about a man who's lawn mower died and was reluctant to ask his neighbour if he could borrow his, the tale boils down to not telling someone to shove something until you've actually asked for it first  ;-)


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## stioc

I'm pretty sure it wasn't done at the account level because that would be visibile to everyone else on the thread that the user was banned. If you do it at the IP level then it's under the covers. Anyway, lots of people I know have had good luck with Mach3 and all I say is good for them but while there's a bit of a learning curve to LinuxCNC I find it far superior and customizable for the price. In the end it all worked out for the better for me.


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## HBilly1022

WOW!!!! You certainly achieved your goals of; easy, fast and cheap. Very nice work and thanks for posting.


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## stioc

I'm getting better at F360, I used to get very frustrated with it, I can now do the basic stuff pretty quickly from CAD to CAM so that's encouraging. I loaded my 5 most used tools into the TTS collet chucks created a tool library in F360 as well as in LinuxCNC.






This height gauge had about 8thou error in repeatability due to a wobbly base, after sanding it I got it down to 1.5thou.





I then realized I needed a collet rack. No worries, let's design it in F360 real quick and let's test the tool changes for the first time on a real part so this will be a single gcode file with different operations and different tools. I also want the endmill to plunge where the center drill drilled the holes. So far so good.






Now, let's go cut it...well, except I don't have any suitable stock material. Wait, I have this set of 1/8" aluminum toe alignment-setting plates left over from my racing days back in the early 2000s...time to sacrifice, err recycle them. So I rough cut one with the plasma. Mounted it on a 1/4" plywood spoil board (I really need a better spoil board), said a prayer or two and hit the go button :bowdown:

The machine asked for Tool 4, the center drill, popped it in, it set the correct offsets and made perfect starting holes. It then moved back up to z0 and asked for the next tool (the roughing end mill), popped it in and hit ok...it read the correct offsets and started plunging. Pretty quickly though I realized something was wrong because it plunged hard and black dust came out of the hole. Oh crap, that's the mill table it's roughing out! crap!!! I hit the Esc key, manually jogged the z axis up...yep, I definitely milled my mill!  But how? wrong tool offset? nope. Ah, what a dummy! I input -0.7" in for stock bottom in CAM instead of -0.07...that's going to leave a mark!






After that it was all good, actually just about perfect how it all worked out. The engraving toolpath however, left me a little unhappy because it was trying to draw these tiny hair-lines that don't show up in the design, it was mostly cutting air (almost like trying to engrave a 3D part) so it was wasting time. I'll have to look into it a bit more or try to find a better way to engrave. Which btw I used a 1/16th carbide ball endmill for (running at 4 ipm at .005" DOC). Engraving toolpath did require that I classify it as a chamfer bit (i used 60deg so it doesn't try to plunge into the valleys) or else it wouldn't generate the toolpath. I really need to find single line text fonts for these simple engraving needs.






I spent pretty much all day in the garage cutting out this part, something i could've ordered for $20 on ebay I'm sure with a single mouse click but it was satisfying to see it come out as I'd envisioned it.


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## kvt

stoic  Question,   How are you keeping the head in line if you have to raise/lower it.   That has been one of things I was wandering about.   I have a RF30,   It seems like shallow stuff is ok,  But if I was to work on something requiring more depth,  or longer tooling could be a problem.


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## stioc

Head alignment, in my personal experience, isn't a huge deal and doesn't need to be perfectly square when you first set it for a job. However, once you've set it, it does need to stay for the duration of the job. So when you first set it make sure your longest and your shortest tools can reach and you have room to change them too, the z fine feed can move about 5 inches on mine and that's usually enough for a job. The collet system helps with this too as your can change the bits and keep the lengths similar. However, there are times when you do need to move the head and while there are several methods to keep the head in alignment I find this one the best for its simplicity. Hope that helps.


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## kvt

Thanks,  That is the way I have done it for a couple of tool changes for long drills that I had to do.   I have seen several ways and was wandering what you were doing.


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## stioc

Yes, standard drill bits will do that to you, you want to get a stub aka 'jobber' drill bit set if you do a lot of drilling on the mill. They're great for machining with low z clearance since they're about a total of 3" or so long.


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## kvt

problem was I needed to do just over 4 inches of depth, both  drill and ream.   And flat the spot above it.   Which meant 3 diff tools and 2 tool changes.   Have a couple more like that that I will need to do.


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## stioc

Made a fixture plate with dowel-pin holes as well as threaded screw holes. The plate can be mounted in the vise or directly to the table. . As usual ran into a couple of issues but managed to overcome them. This was a few different operations.







*Millng:* I started with milling the shoulders. Unfortunately this is where I ran into the biggest issue- unbeknownst to me the TTS collet holder worked itself down out of the TTS R8 adapter, likely because of my heavy cut (.25" DOC using a .25" roughing mill). This made the shoulders uneven/crooked  So once I tightened it well I had to take several passes to get the shoulders to be flat again.






*Drilling:* I was a little worried about the feed rate (plunge rate I guess) but 7ipm worked great using chip breaking and pecking at .4". Except I did this on top of a piece of plywood and despite the alum plate being 3/4" thick it bowed in places because when I flipped the plate over the drill bit had only broken through a couple of the rows.

Drilling after spot drilling:





Top side of the fixture plate with only two rows of actual holes 





Since I'd already lost my 0,0 on the x/y I decided to drill from the other side (top side). Oh and I lost my 0,0 because the plate is almost as long as my x-axis travel (14") so I had to fudge it a little to get started.

Honestly I had to think about how to do this (drilling from the other side and meeting the hole half way). Now I'd never used the wiggler center finder before, nor did I really know what it was for until I had the eureka moment. So as shown in the pic above I found the center of a specific hole, then used g91 (relative move) backward to 0,0 (e.g. g91 g0 x-1.45 y-1.134) then touched off to reset G54. Now I'm sure everyone probably knows or uses this trick  but I felt like a genius that it actually worked :thumbup:

*Tapping 30+ holes:* I don't have a tapping head nor is my spindle cnc controlled so again using a little bit of thinking I came up with a hybrid solution. I'll use the CNC to guide me to each hole and then I'll use the spring loaded tap guide to help me thread the first 4 or 5 turns. After that I'll power tap using my hand drill. So I took the drilling g-code and removed all the z axis stuff and after every x,y move I added m6 t1 and m6 t2 (alternating it) so that after each move the machine waited for me to "change the tool" but in reality it just paused the motion so I could hand tap the first 4 or 5 turns then hit continue and do the same thing for all the rest of the holes. 






Worked like a charm! :thumbup:






All in all I enjoyed building it and with each bump along the way I feel like I'm starting to find ways around the challenges


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## TomS

Nice job on the fixture plate.  What are the dimensions of your plate?  I'm planning on making one similar to yours once I get my shop up and running.


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## stioc

Thanks Tom. It's 13.9" x 6.2". The hole spacing is 1" and every other hole (on the X plane) is counter-bored .25" with a 1/4" drill-bit for the dowel pins. 

I should mention that the dimensions weren't of my choosing, I happened to find a 3/4" plate off-cut at the metal shop which cost me $10 or so. I was originally thinking of making a bigger fixture plate, about 18x8 or so but I think this will work fine especially since I can hold it in my 4" vise which allows me to leave the vise in instead of having to remove it and remount it for different types of work.  I also noticed someone out of east coast is selling them on ebay in various sizes, just as another option for anyone interested.


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## Boswell

No need to answer my question about PECK in the other thread. I had to work on a part that was just slightly larger than my X travel so I milled a small slot near the center that did not interfear with the design of the part and I use that to zero the part. I could do the Left of the slot then move it and do the right of the slot. I could turn it over and do the the same thing. Very handy as long as you have or can add a feature near the middle with a flat in both the X and Y planes.  I also find that when I am drilling thru holes, It works out best to specify a hole depth .01 to .005 deeper than the material to get a good clean hole.


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## stioc

I already replied to your question in the other thread lol Doesn't hurt, there might be someone else wondering the same thing.

I did use -.05 from bottom of the hole, I guess the plywood was quite distorted? I want to say I've had better luck with MDF.

That's a neat trick about having a scribe or something to split a large work piece in half (or more). So when you slide the work piece over to do the second section you somehow keep it square too in the y plane too right? like by using a square as a stop against a known location on the table?


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## Boswell

Yes, you still have to square the part. In the times that I have had to do this, I had a long straight edge that I could indicate off of to ensure that I was square.


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## stioc

A short speeder wrench for the vise...but really just another excuse to use the mill and to try designing/making something I haven't before.






















BTW - I almost broke my thumb yesterday, forgot the wrench on the drawbar (I was always afraid of that) and turned the motor on then stupidly/instinctively tried to grab the wrench instead of turning off the motor. Woke up with a blue thumb (I was never much of a green thumb anyway) - could've been worse! I post this as a PSA.


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## Boswell

Glad it was only a Thumb. That could have been ALOT worse


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## stioc

Oh for sure, like my face/head etc. I guess my next project should be a power draw bar...which was in the plans but since I use TTS now I just don't know how to only spin it part way so I can remove the TTS collet holders from their R8 adapter without undoing the R8 adapter.


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## stioc

Chip containment devices  16ga sheet metal and cheap Home Depot Lexan sheet with magnets...next time it'll be polycarbonate because Lexan shatters too easily if you drop it.


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## Mjohnson

Lexan is polycarbonate. You're good to go.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G900A using Tapatalk


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## stioc

Thanks, my bad. I got acrylic instead of Lexan/Poly.


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## stioc

I got remote access to my LinuxCNC box working using MobaXterm on my Windows 10 desktop, you need to have Putty installed too which MobaXterm uses for X11 over SSH. Works great!

Now if I can just teach the dog to go chuck up the stock I can run and monitor the mill from my desk inside the house


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## MontanaAardvark

stioc said:


> Now if I can just teach the dog to go chuck up the stock I can run and monitor the mill from my desk inside the house



Just tell the dog he's got to earn his kibbles and do something useful around the house.  

It worked when I was training my cat.  

Of course, I was training him to take a nap and that comes pretty easy for a cat.


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## stioc

Man, what an exhausting weekend- I knocked out three garage projects back to back. Exhausting yet somehow so satisfying because despite a few minor challenges it was all a 100% success and I didn't even lose an eye. In Ice Cube's words "today was a good day".

So it all started with this SnapOn wheel balancer I picked up that had been in storage for about 4 yrs, whether it worked was questionable due to lots of rust etc. It runs off of SnapOn batteries or the AC adapter but the guy didn't have either. Anyway, I got it cleaned up, de-rusted etc and wired up to my Craftsman C3 battery and whatdaya know, it lit up like Kitt after being burried in the sand for a long time. I go grab a spare tire off one of my cars and realized the three cones it came with are too big for the hub bore. No problem I say to myself, I can make a cone myself.

Oh wait, crap, I realized I had the lathe's top apart because I was taking measurements to eventually make a beefy compound slidemount. These 9x20 lathes have a very wimpy 1/4" thick 2 bolt mount.






OK so let's make that first and then make the cone. So after the CAD/CAM work I started the fun part. Cut out a chunk of 5/8" CRS steel plate






Pick up the the edge of the workpiece and drill a hole for all future operation tooling to enter the stock. My first time CNC cutting steel. 





Shape the part, using a corn-cob rougher and adaptive clearing, DOC 5/8", WOC .005, 5 IPM, 1200 RPM:





Once I got close I used a 4 flute endmill to creep up .002 to .008 a few times on the diameters (using pocketing operation) due to machine/mechanical error etc and I wanted a very nice and tight fit without slop in either the inside or the outside hole- both radially and axially:





The effort was well worth it:





Flipped it over and flycut the surface:





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Comparison old vs. new:





Drilled, counterbored and bolted in place, this took a while, especially grinding the regular nuts into T nuts and using an endmill to counterbore 





I really like the heft of the new mount. The only issue is that if I swivel the compound I can't access one of the bolt so I'd have to do with 2 or 3 bolts depending on the access. I can mill the top ends flat until it's level with the counterbore's floor. Then I can make a short allen wrench to get to the bolts.


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## TomS

You are killing me!  I've moved and my machines have been shut down for the better part of three months.  My tools are stuffed in my future shop while I get the house in order.  The picture is after I reorganized my stuff.  LOL  Anyway, nice compound clamp.  My first lathe was a G4000.  Sold it for a larger one.  Wish I kept it.


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## stioc

TomS said:


> You are killing me!  I've moved and my machines have been shut down for the better part of three months.  My tools are stuffed in my future shop while I get the house in order.  The picture is after I reorganized my stuff.  LOL  Anyway, nice compound clamp.  My first lathe was a G4000.  Sold it for a larger one.  Wish I kept it.



Nice shop Tom, congrats! Take your time setting it up. I love the tall ceilings and the RV height doors, how big is the garage and what lathe do you have now? I can see myself putting a 2 post lift, a gantry and setting it up like ZMotorsports (Mike). Someday I'll have a shop like that in my retirement home (once I can get off the hamster wheel) and have bigger/better machine tools like you  I'm a newbie to both CNC and machining so the RF30 and G4000s are giving me plenty of opportunity to learn...and suck me into the whole tooling whirlpool too but I tell myself that many of the tooling is universal (v blocks, collet chucks, measurement tools etc) so hopefully it will last me my lifetime.


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## TomS

stioc said:


> Nice shop Tom, congrats! Take your time setting it up. I love the tall ceilings and the RV height doors, how big is the garage and what lathe do you have now? I can see myself putting a 2 post lift, a gantry and setting it up like ZMotorsports (Mike). Someday I'll have a shop like that in my retirement home (once I can get off the hamster wheel) and have bigger/better machine tools like you  I'm a newbie to both CNC and machining so the RF30 and G4000s are giving me plenty of opportunity to learn...and suck me into the whole tooling whirlpool too but I tell myself that many of the tooling is universal (v blocks, collet chucks, measurement tools etc) so hopefully it will last me my lifetime.



Thanks for your comments.  My shop is 32 x 45.  Plenty big if I didn't have an RV taking up half of the space.  My previous shop was 2000 sq. ft. and no RV taking up real estate.  I'm having to do some serious downsizing but not complaining.  

My current lathe is a 12 x 36 gear head Enco.  It's 1989 vintage and made in Taiwan; it's a nice machine.  The previous owner bought it new and rarely used it.  When I bought it most of the cosmoline was still there.  I also have a RF30, a PM-932 converted to CNC, and a few other shops tools.  I'm relatively new to CNC but enjoying every minute of the learning curve. 

Keep posting.  I like your enthusiasm.


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## lustenaderj

stioc said:


> Engraving toolpath did require that I classify it as a chamfer bit (i used 60deg so it doesn't try to plunge into the valleys) or else it wouldn't generate the toolpath. I really need to find single line text fonts for these simple engraving needs.



One of the recent updates to F360 added single line fonts specifically for that purpose, they just didn't label them super intuitively.  Any of the fonts with the suffix of .shx are the single line fonts for engraving.  Use the "trace" routine in the 2D toolpaths and set an "axial offset" in the passes tab to control your tool depth.  It lets you use a wider variety of tools as well, doesn't force a chamfer bit on you.


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## stioc

^ great tip on the new fonts, thanks!


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## Jester966

Stioc, how do you find moving the table around manually with the steppers engaged, particularly with the 2.5:1 gear ratio?
Are the handwheels much harder to turn, and do you feel any cogging?  Is it still practical to use the mill manually for jobs you don't want to CNC?

Thanks


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## stioc

Good question jester966 as that was one of my concerns in the beginning. I didn't find the turning of the handwheels difficult per-se but the resistance is higher than before. I do feel the cogging because as you turn the handwheels the motors generate electromagnetic field and thus put up the said resistance so every half a turn or so I feel that clicking/cogging as the motors try to brake. So while a standard manual operation is doable it doesn't feel smooth like a manual machine.

Having said that I do use the machine in manual mode but I use the motors for the movements instead of the hand wheels, I find it easier, it's kind of like playing a video game using the arrow keys on the keyboard (I now have a pendant so I use that but keyboard worked just fine). What's great about this method is that you can use the stepper to make those .0005" moves very easily. So like most things in life you win some, you lose some but I have not regretted the CNC decision one bit. The cool thing about Paul's kit is that if you really want to use the hand-wheels (say your cnc system blows up and you have a big project to work on) just like a manual mill it takes less than 10 mins to remove the motors. Hope that helps!


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## stioc

While I'm here, I wasn't satisfied with the 4 bolt compound mount so I made some modifications. This was also a good opportunity for me to learn how to do operations on the other side of the part in F360.
I like the compound mount much better now, easier to get to the bolts as well as read the angle.


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## MontanaAardvark

stioc said:


> Having said that I do use the machine in manual mode but I use the motors for the movements instead of the hand wheels, I find it easier, it's kind of like playing a video game using the arrow keys on the keyboard (I now have a pendant so I use that but keyboard worked just fine). What's great about this method is that you can use the stepper to make those .0005" moves very easily. So like most things in life you win some, you lose some but I have not regretted the CNC decision one bit.



I had a Logitech Rumblepad that I had gotten for a different purpose sitting around (control a telescope mount), and found that it was a really simple thing to get Mach3 to recognize that.  Mach3 comes with a program called Keygrabber that you run first, and then once you start Mach, you can control the mill with that.  There's a bunch of buttons available to program and I use one so that if I hold it down, the mill's steppers move .001" at a time.  Makes it very easy to find edges, for instance.  

Like you say, I've machined a few things using the Rumblepad in place of hand wheels.  

I prefer the game controller over the keyboard because if I've got my head stuck in the mill enclosure, trying to find an edge or something, I can bring it with me.


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## stioc

I'm using the Contour ShuttleXpress, same thing that Tormach sells (still?) with their CNC.  I do wish it was cordless though!


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## MarkM

Could you use your mill during the build.  Or would you suggest having another mill if work needs to be done and keep it off to the side as a project?


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## stioc

MarkM said:


> Could you use your mill during the build.  Or would you suggest having another mill if work needs to be done and keep it off to the side as a project?



I guess that depends on how you're doing the build. Are you converting a RF30/clone using Paul's kit like I did? If so, the down time is minimal and no need to make any parts on the mill. That and the cost was the biggest reason I went with Paul's kit. Now, I had to tweak a few things due to me ordering the wrong size and a couple of other self-inflicted issues. However, if you order the correct parts you just remove the handles and bolt on the motors (10-15 mins per axis). If you're doing your own electronics as opposed to getting those from Paul too then that might take a little more time but if that's the case I'd do those first, then bolt on the mechanical parts. If you get the whole kit from Paul I'm sure it can all be done in a day (or worse case one weekend) with a little planning ahead (more on the controller/electronics/PC side).


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## MarkM

Your Experience sums it up!  Been looking at Pauls kit for some time.  Thanks for posting this thread!


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## Cadapult

kvt said:


> stoic  Question,   How are you keeping the head in line if you have to raise/lower it.   That has been one of things I was wandering about.   I have a RF30,   It seems like shallow stuff is ok,  But if I was to work on something requiring more depth,  or longer tooling could be a problem.



If you set up a dial indicator on a magnetic base, zeroed while touching the quill you can crank the head up or down, extend the quill as needed and then nudge the head from side to side until its zeroed again. That should have you lined up and back in business.


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