kevinj308

Hoss over on Cnczone put one on his g0704. That's the only time I recall reading about one. Might shoot him a pm. I recall it being a pita to acquire, but it might have gotten easier. That was a year or more ago. Lots of guys went the used treadmill motor route, but they don't seem to last long and it's tough to find one that spins the correct direction. Many of them the brushes on the motor won't allow them to be reversed. All things I've read anyway, enough that I stayed away from them. Are you concerned about the stock motor? Mine does stall out if I push it, but really with the belt drive and higher rpm it's doing really well. My back up plan if my stock motor ever dies is to go 3 phase with a vfd. That's a pretty standard setup where I work, and very reliable. There's a clearance concern but from the factory drawings a Baldor VM3545 will fit. It's a 56C framed motor, about $150 on ebay. A vfd from factorymation is about the same. For $300 you get a pretty robust set up with plenty of hp. Yeah you gotta make some parts to fit the motor, but hey we've got mills! http://www.ebay.com/itm/BALDOR-VM3545-1HP-1-HP-230-460V-3450-RPM-3PH-5-8-SHAFT-INDUSTRIAL-MOTOR-NIB-/301496415392?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item46329634a0 Very popular vfd on many forums for this sort of thing: http://www.factorymation.com/Products/FM50_115V/FM50-101-C.html

It's almost here!!!! I'm sure it'll be great, if I can help at all let me know.

Very cool man, wish I could have gone. One of my favorite youtube channels!

Made a jig to make the knife parts more consistent. I was having a problem getting everything to fit just right. 3x12 piece of aluminum and some spring pins helped a lot! So I watched this and now I have some fire bricks in my shopping cart at mcmaster.com Crazy how this kind of stuff takes on a life of its own.

I've been thinking about that jig too. If it wasn't perfect when you put it on your mill, it is when it leaves. Regardless of original manufacturer tolerance. Start at the rails and make it the way you want it per you model. Is that about it?

That's 7 minutes of bad ass right there!

http://www.brunoshooters.com/product/26167.html in stock at time of posting

got the belt drive going, speed is awesome! I'll post some drawings and dimensions when I get a chance. Started to try my hand at a custom knife.Having so much fun!

http://www.ebay.com/itm/400714167501?_trksid=p2059210.m2749.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT Thanks to Toolguy for the tip on the cutters. Used DeskEngrave on aluminum, .125" tall letters

That's crazy talk! The first steel that I ever cut was a 2011 slide Surely the first engraving I do should be on a stainless steel tube. I found this, seems like it works pretty well for being free. Takes a bit of editing on the gcode, but also exports as a .dxf. http://www.deskam.com/deskengrave.html Here's a test I did this morning with a sharpie. 0.5 tall letters, and a font I found called nymphette. That's a lowercase a and b for the swirly stuff. Lots of cool fonts out there for just about everything. Google dingbats or wingbats. ETA the "thank you" is for all the folk who've contributed to this thread! Did a little more with DeskEngrave. Used these cutters, thanks Toolguy for the tip earlier in the thread. http://www.ebay.com/itm/400714167501?_trksid=p2059210.m2749.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT 0.125" tall letters, font is freescript

Old knees and back not so much,The quality of beer, toys, and friends oh yeah! Old is cool with me

It's good. I have not had much time to goof around since I got everything set up. It seems that the next several weekends are filled with obligations and honey do's as well but I hope to get going on a new open build with the comp I got from Jared. Those are awesome. Cant wait to see it!

Thanks!!! And belated Happy Birthday! I saw the thread and forgot to chime in.

Good times

Dude how's your new hardware if I may drunkenly ask?

figuring out how to make CAM do cool stuff with it is my first project lol. I have a feeling that's gonna be a steep curve, but that's a lot of the fun of all this for me. I've got a couple other things on my plate. Still gotta finish the belt drive, want to make a knife. yadda yadda yadda. Always something cool to do! Need to save my pennies for a 4 jaw chuck for the rotary and a tailstock. That's next on the budget list.

Made a plate to mount my new Sherline rotary table to a angle plate. 1/2" aluminum, 10-32 screws to the table and 3/8-16 to the angle plate. Made a 1/2" tab to help line it up in the table slot, figure if it gets in the way I'll just take it off. Now I need a tailstock, grizzly has one that looks good. The Sherline tailstock just looks flimsy.

That's crazy talk! The first steel that I ever cut was a 2011 slide Surely the first engraving I do should be on a stainless steel tube. I found this, seems like it works pretty well for being free. Takes a bit of editing on the gcode, but also exports as a .dxf. http://www.deskam.com/deskengrave.html Here's a test I did this morning with a sharpie. 0.5 tall letters, and a font I found called nymphette. That's a lowercase a and b for the swirly stuff. Lots of cool fonts out there for just about everything. Google dingbats or wingbats. ETA the "thank you" is for all the folk who've contributed to this thread!

Toolguy as usual gives spot on advice. The only thing different I did is have the return hose dump into a smaller bucket in my coolant container. My coolant container is something like this http://www.amazon.com/Sterilite-19859806-30-Quart-See-Through-Titanium/dp/B002BA5F5C with this pump http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000X05G1A/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1# and this pail inside for chips to stay in http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000NNOWJO/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1 HomeDepot sells this by the foot, I used it for return hose. Slipped right over a sink drain fitting in the mill enclosure http://www.homedepot.com/p/Watts-1-1-2-in-x-50-ft-Polyethylene-Pool-and-Spa-Hose-RPSR-50/202257712 I cut holes in the lid for power cord, discharge hose and return hose. I put a small pail for the return hose to dump into. The excess liquid just goes over the edge into the big container with the pump but quite a bit of chips will stay in the little bucket. Every now and then I just pull the little bucket out and pour the liquid off. Dump all the chips out and back in business. FWIW I work in the water treatment industry and this is a common set up for us, albeit on a larger scale in a treatment plant. The lip of the little bucket is above the liquid line in the larger container and is a weir, or edge filter. Heavy stuff stays in the bucket and the cleaner liquid spills over into the "still well" or larger container with the pump. Doesn't get everything but there's no moving parts or anything to clog, so pretty maintenance free.

TRUTH!, and good luck to you indeed. With their new software and Mesa cards I'd love to have a 1100. Believe it or not all the horror stories I read about Mach kinda pushed me into the 0704. That and your original setup. Start making parts for your wife. Custom engraved steak knives or something. Christmas gifts, Valentines, whatever. I dunno might help.

Thank you, but too late for me my friend!!!! I already started making some brackets for a belt drive. Having fun making it that's for sure. I'll post some pics when it's running. Congrats on the new mill!!!!!!!!!

http://blog.cnccookbook.com/2015/02/17/tormach-moves-mach3-linuxcnc-pathpilot/?utm_source=CNCCookbook+Blog+Posts&utm_campaign=84267fbbec-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_df8004b230-84267fbbec-45461045 Some more tormach path pilot info. Interesting and awesome that they're also using Mesa cards. That's been a great combo for me.

I'm a complete noob to this but here's my take on it. With something like Solidworks or Fusion360, and others I'm sure, the Cam can be part of the software. So you draw the model in the CAD side then slide it over into CAM and you get a gcode program that will be your toolpaths. CAD is computer assisted drawing, CAM is computer assisted manufacturing. They don't have to be the same software companies by any means. I use Alibre for CAD and MeshCAM. The CAD will export the model into one of many file formats like .stp, .igs, or .stl. The CAM then imports that and helps you make the tool paths. Another term you'll hear is post. The CAM can have post processing choices for different kind of machine controllers. So if you're like me you choose Linux/EMC as your post and the gcode program you get will work for that control software. There's lots of different controllers out there, and some have some quirks to them. It just helps getting a program that's gonna work right out of the gate. I always end up doing a little manual editing though. Like I said noob. I know you didn't ask, but here's what I found to be the best learning experience for CAD/CAM. Cubify Invent CAD software is free for 14 days or buy it for $49. I ended up buying it because I was having so much fun figuring out models. It's very limited in the file types it uses. It can't import someone else's file and only exports in .stl. But it's super cheap and there's an outstanding set of youtube videos for it. I did end up upgrading my CAD software later, but Invent was perfect to learn with. Well worth the money, or free if you get it done in 14 days. Watch CubifyFan's 18 videos in order and you will be drawing parts in CAD, I promise. They're perfect little 10 minute or so videos that explain one topic at a time for total beginners. http://cubify.com/en/Products/Invent https://www.youtube.com/user/CubifyFan/search?query=invent Then get the free 15 day MeshCAM http://www.grzsoftware.com/ He's gonna send you a series of training emails that explain how CAM works, again for beginners so it's very easy to understand. The training course if free and you can sign up on his website too. I appreciated the CAM before I even had a mill. Took some of the voodoo out of it and also helped me think in terms of how to get a tool to do what I want. To buy it's $250, but that's pretty cheap for stand alone CAM. Fusion360 right now is free for a year to hobbyists/startups. It's CAD/CAM together. Much more professional software than the other ones I listed, but for me it's been pretty frustrating to use. Been watching alot of youtube on it, and I like the CAM but the CAD is not so easy. For me anyway. I went back to using the CAD I knew. I don't think I'd recommend it for someone who's brand new. It's pro level and there's a lot of choices to make that aren't always intuitive. http://fusion360.autodesk.com/pricing# Last but not least check out cnccookbook.com Bob's site has a ton of articles that explain eveything about the process. It's a great resource. I bought his Gwizard software for feeds and speeds, been very happy with it. Sorry if it was long winded take care Kevin Thank you. That was very helpful. I am looking at MicroKenetics CNC Express(http://www.microkinetics.com/index.php?page=express/express) that has MillMaster software. Based on the screen shots and what I have read MillMaster seems very, for lack of a better term "simple". Am I going to want a more sophisticated CAD/CAM?It seems like it would be ok for very straight forward parts/paths but lack the details CAD programs provide. Does anyone have any experience with either the machine or software? Or opinions? Keep in mind this a hobby level machine. Thank you Gunnar It looks like a BF30 or BF 45 class mill and for $9K I would go the Tormach route. With the Tormach system you have MANY more options like an auto tool changer. Millmaster is just the control software like Mach3 or CNCLinux. I would not let that be apart of your decision criteria since Mach3 is cheap and CNCLinux is free. My .02 anyway... Absolutely this ^^^^^^ This might help explain the different kinds of software involved better than I did http://www.cnccookbook.com/MTCNCSoftware.htm

That was awesome thanks! Seems like they've made some convenience improvements on LinuxCnc/EMC. The conversational cam stuff and the tool height setting particularly looked cool. The tool height stuff is a bit of a pita in Linux, the graphical set up they have is way easier.

I'll add that the z travel on a g0704 can be extended pretty easily. You just flip the head carrier around. I've got 16 inches between spindle nose and table. I flipped my head even when it was manual. Was really handy to have more z. I think it was hoss at g0704.com that came up with that to give credit where it's due.