RIP Bruce Nelson from Heavy Metal CNC. He got me my start with my first PM conversion kit and after he died I bought his Sharp SV2412 that made all the conversion kits for Heavy Metal CNC. Its in my garage now.
I'm a 77 year old retired Journey Machinist. CNC was in it's infancy at that time. Numerical control was coming out at that time. Punch tapes, or manually entering the codes at that time. I like seeing young people getting involved in this type of work. All the machines I operated where manually operated. The big thing in my time was DRO's, where coming out.
Wish I had the GREEN STAMPS you had to get you to this point!! I’ve ALWAYS HAVE HAD to settle on harbor freight crap to begin to build and fabricate anything. And you know that crap NEVER HOLDS UP to much of anything! Yea I’m jealous, something like this setup would have served to be relaxing entertaining and somewhat enjoyable Deterrent while I go through my cancer therapy and pain management treatments. We all need something to help relieve the bad situations that happen in our lives, even if the outcomes are terminal like in my situation, this is the perfect mind altering solution to help occupy some of the hard days a cancer patient can have. Good job on your setup I hope it brings many years of enjoyment as you grow with it!
Good job amigo - You've got what we call "the knack" :) You may lack the experience, but you make up for it with your critical thinking and research. Keep your head on a swivel and stay away from corners, you'll do just fine!
I'm in school to become a machinist, and we do videos a minimum of 25 minutes long, and have to write and answer questions on that video. The hardest part is finding a good video to do is that most videos have no commentary and give very little to ask about. You did an awesome job, and it's very easy to learn from this video. Definitely will be using your videos more.
Go for it Adam - you are learning skills that you will use forever. Machining is a tough but rewarding career or hobby. There is sooo much to know and remember and calculate and thousands of different tools and methods for doing things. I’m totally Jealous, I’d love to go back to where you are now and discover that incredible world all over again. Use the machines and test yourself with new skills and ideas as much as possible when learning. Nothing beats hours on the machines to become a master machinist. Cheers young fella, and all the best.
This is very inspiring content for someone like me that just started working with manual lathes and mills, I appreciate your channel and you as an individual for the good, smart work that you do. Keep it up!
Hi, great video. Just a quick note about the (apparently) hand scraped ways. The regular scrape marks you see on these import machine ways have less to do with generating a flat surface than providing shallow pockets for the lubricant. In my youth, as an apprentice (mid 1970s) in the machine tool industry here in the UK I did plenty of scraping. Sometimes the objective was to create a flat surface usually to mount large sub assemblies and sometimes we would deliberately pocket an already very flat machined surface for oil retention. Hand scrapers could be bought or made in all shapes and sizes for different purposes. Flat scrapers were usually made from an old file using an off-hand grinder to get rid of the file teeth and create a gentle bevelled curve on the end. Everyone had at least one scraper in their toolmakers’ chest for general scraping jobs including removing old gasket material. Anyway good luck with your workshop endeavours, all the best from the UK.
A note in case you make more of those chill blocks that will help ensure accuracy of drilled hole and also drastically speed up machine time per block... Spot drill all the holes with a large enough 90° spot drill to a depth that will give you the finished chamfer you want then come though with your drill and drill the holes. Drills (especially jobber length drills) tend to walk to some degree and the spot drill opp will prevent this. Plus if the spot drill opp is done to the right depth, then you will already have your chamfer ahead of time and the run time for each hole will be less since a single Z axis move to spot to proper depth is much faster than a G02 or G03 circular interpolation move. Quick simple math will will tell you how deep you want to set you spot depth that will give you the chamfer that you want. For example, say that you wanted a 1.5mm x 45° chamfer on your 6.5mm hole, then with a 3/8" spot drill, you would spot drill to a depth of 4.09mm. Since Spot drills are 90°, you dont even have to do any trig to figure out your depth, just need to know the finished hole size and the chamfer size along with the subtraction amount since like all drills, spot drills do not come to a perfect point. The math is just Hole diameter / 2 plus the chamfer size minus the truncated amount from the tip. The Truncated value for spot drills is pretty standard and are as follows Ø 3/8" = .026" (.66mm) Ø 1/2" = .035" (.89mm) Ø 3/4" = .045" (1.14mm) Ø 1" = .060" (1.52mm) So for your case with a 6.5mm hole and say for example, the 1.5mm x 45° chamfer mentioned above, math for the depth would be, 6.5/2+1.5-.66= 4.09 As an alternative, if you know the diameter that you want at the top face / surface, then its just simply take that diameter, divide by 2 and subtract the truncated tip amount for the spot drill you are using. Like say for example, you had a hole that you wanted to major diameter of the the chamfer to be 10mm and you were going to use a 1/2" spot drill, then the depth would be 4.11mm (10/2-.89=4.11) The math is the same if you are working in imperial sizes, just use the imperial truncated values instead of the metric value's. Along with that, assuming you want a 45° chamfer around the perimeter of the block,spot drills work great as "chamfer tools" too. It also should be noted that many drill manufactures will tell you that you shouldn't use a spot drill with an included angle of less than the angle of the drill that you intent to use to drill the hole because it can cause heavy wear in one area of the drill where is first contacts the spotted hole. While this is true, in soft materials like aluminum or fairly soft steels, this is not generally a problem or a concern. Harder steels, yes, definitely a problem but soft materials (especially aluminum or plastics and such), I've never had a the problem and have been doing it for year with probably millions of holes at this point. Lastly with facing, running all the way off the part will help eliminate the lines left at the end of the cut. Even with a head that is perfectly trammed, you will still see a line where the cutter stopped. I'm not very familiar with Fusion360 since we use SolidCAM with Solidworks at work but from the little that I do know about Fusion, I know that there is a setting that you can set that will cause Fusion to do just that, "take the cutter totally off the part in X or Y before it stops and / or lifts the Z axis. I'll bet Fusion probably has a setting or something for the Spot depth mentioned above too.
Yaaaaaaaassssss!!! or use a mill-drill to spot as you would with the spot drill, then before changing tools, chamfer the profile of the part. Then drill holes.
@@chrisr2941 Honestly, you don't even need a mill-drill, just a standard 90° spot dill will run edge profile chambers all day with no problem, especially in aluminum. I call / use spot one of my spot drills any time I have to run a chamber in aluminum. On steel however I do tend to use a regular 4 flute chamfer mill because I've found that with harder steels, the cutting edges of a regular spot drill do tend to get chipped when doing small edge chamfers on things like say Pre-hard 4142 for example but a HSS spot drill will leave a beautiful edge chamfer on aluminum. Mill-drill in my opinion are a waste of money because really the only advantage they offer is a tiny bit quicker cycle time if you have to mill out a thru pocket on a thinner part since they will bore the initial thru-hole faster thru the material than a helical ramp or a straight plunge with an end mill. Unless you have a lot to do, you really are only saving a few seconds of machine time by using a mill drill in this situation.
@@CJ-ty8sv cool good to know! I typically dont use mill drills at the place i work now but just another option i guess. That is one of the joys of machining. there is 50 ways to do anything, and the machinist community sharing different ideas and methods is priceless. just cant find that in a textbook.
@@chrisr2941 Yep, there are a lot of things that can only really feasibly come with experience and sharing of what works and what doesn't. The technology advances far faster than text books can and then there is the cases that may not have come to light at the time of writing a particular book so knowledge of what might seem like an unorthodox use of something that works well simply wasn't known at the time. Sure, _"having a tool for that"_ is always nice but at the same time, there are times I feel that it can hurt you by removing the drive to think outside the box and find new and effective uses for things. You never know when "knowing of another way to use a particular tool" might come in handy when you least expect it.
Very nice work. I assume that you will at some point want a DRO for absolute measurement accuracy or switch to servos. Steppers can slip. Also, great job tramming your column, but consider that the shim and the rear of the column are now interfacing ideally along 2 lines rather than a plane. There is special filler material that will again make your column and base intersect in a plane. In machining stiffness is everything - you can never have enough. Outstanding video though. I've always wanted a CNC mill, but am out of room with manual mill and lathe. I would be happy to collaborate on parts in the future, if you are interested. I also have a surface grinder.
Hey everyone! I'm back with my second video in 2020. This CNC mill is the largest project that I have ever undertaken, but it was totally worth all the time, energy, and money that my friends and I put into it. I am now able to create parts out of aluminum and steel that would have cost my left leg at the local machine shop, but now cost me next-to-nothing. Let’s just say I have already started working on some exciting projects that you are not going to want to miss out on! Thanks for checking out my newest video.
That some solid documentation you've got there ! Your article is pretty detailed, guess it would help me when I get into it. (Currently running grbl on a cnc router)
I have a hard time finding some feedback about probe basic. Do you find any drawback using it ? Like a weird 3d view, some bugs or not well made interface menus etc etc
I am definitely biased... I have been hanging out with the Probe Basic dev team over on their discord (discordapp.com/invite/463hMhd), and they are really awesome guys. The GUI is still largely in beta with some of the more complex features like the handling of the ATC being glitchy. If you have a simple setup like I do then it will work fine. They are quick coders, so I would assume all the issues will be ironed out in the near future.
Just a tip: if you use the left upper corner of your workpiece as (0,0) and align the material with the left edge of your vise, you only have to probe once for all parts done in the vise independent of the size. disclaimer: I am an electrical engineer so I am used to do just the bare minimum necessary to make installations safe enough for certification with the minimum amount of costs for my company.
Another thought.... WD-40 is a great lubricant for cutting aluminum. May not be the cheapest obviously but spraying a small amount on the surface of the material works wonders. Also, a poor mans enclosure is to use PVC pipe hung from the ceiling and a shower curtain suspended from that. At least all of the chips from the mill will end up at the bottom of the mill and not all over the place. Third, look into build a fog-less coolant mister. works awesome. the plans are on CNC Zone
Dr. D, Great freaking video! While probably not critical for your chill block project, I'd recommend a spot drilling operation on those holes first. With those longer jobber length drills they can wander of center, flex, and potentially break, particularly with smaller diameter drills. Not a seasoned machinist by any stretch, but have definitely broken some tools in my college machine shop skipping this step. Can't wait to see what else is in the works! Thanks for sharing.
I almost remember the missus' giving me that look while doing something inherently dangerous. Wasn't long before the feeling went from worrying about my safety to worrying about blowing a chunk off the house. I take that as a sign of trust that I know what I'm doing. 😁
Seeing kids do that is almost as funny as seeing me doing that. Luckily my dad will guide me so there will be only one person laughing! Excellent class!!!
As a manual and (recently cnc machinist) for over 20 years, I never set my origin (or 0.00 x 0.00 y on the movable side of my vice. The reason for this is, the movable jaw of the vise, can move side to side slightly. The work piece will not always be exactly the same length and width, thus changing your zero.
Ok, so this is really interesting to me. I have this same exact mill. Purchased it from Matt about 2 years ago, or whenever they first came out. Looking at doing this to mine soon. I see you have a build log too... Awesome!!!!
You have a new subscriber. I’m utterly impressed with this project you’ve undertaken. You explained the process incredibly well. I really look forward to you upcoming videos. Again, fantastic job.
NEMA23 motors are more than adequate for this mill, especially if you are using ball screws. If you run into something, a whole lot of torque can cause damage. Ball screws do reduce backlash a lot but they do nothing for accuracy over a lead screw. The biggest advantage of ball screws is how fast you can spin them. Very nice build.
Looks like you have a keyless chuck on there. Those are really meant for drilling holes and not milling as they can't handle the side forces. They can loosen and you'll lose a bit. Look into an ER collet system or and R8 Collet.
Hey Brendin! I am only using the keyless chuck for a spiral drill bit. The facing mill comes with an R8 collet and the chamfer bit is in an R8 collet as well.
The face mill fits into the head on a taper to ensure a snug fit, no side or lateral forces will affect the tips, same for the keyless chuck...chuck taper fits into the Head taper then the drill is hand tight into the chuck....
Great video and very helpful. I was hoping you could share more about the NUC you used including specs and has it worked out well for this application.
Very en-lighting to say the least, at 68, I am on a path to converting a RF-30 that we (Bride & I) just purchase used over to CNC. Not a high tech as yours on this video, but it already has power X, DRO to x,y,z and new 3hp Baldor with motor controller, so a plus. Sold our '80 Enco that was a great mill, but out dated. Will be coming back often to your channel. Bears Rod Shop
You should bolt the vise directly to the table, instead of having it on the swivel base. Also, great job! Fantastic results for a first time. You must have nailed the speeds and feeds to drill all those holes in aluminum without it gumming up on you (if it does, WD-40/kerosene works great to prevent aluminum sticking to tools).
Wow I just saw your channel after two years. I would really like to see your setup now, the last I saw it was on Setup wars and on your channel two years ago!
First time seeing this channel, very impressed with the simplicity of getting major points across. Video quality is also spot on, would be really great if you could throw some acoustical panels on the walls or maybe use a wireless mic...for those of us that use hearing aids, there is a big echo/reverb...could be my crappy speakers though:-)
try changing the working tips from the facing mill, just rotate the inserts and take care that they are mounted correctly, and add some WD40 to the surface before the finishing cut, and I bet you will get a better surface finish, nice job!
you are correct about flaking ad what it does, however, that's all that's there. those machines have not been scrape, the telltale is the price point and quantity sold. scaping that many machines would need an army of pro scrapers, It would easily take a pro to do that machine a day. i'm positive about that.
I'm looking to purchase a 833 mill, why did you chose gear drive instead of belt drive? From what I've seen in the forums most people prefer belt drive.
Your tram is off or the mills inserts are not at the same height. Hey congrats on that part. Would a plunge chamfer cut be more efficient than interpolating every hole??
Pro tip, put shower wall panels the thin plastic 4x8 cfrom home depot on the walls behind and sides around the mill. You will be using oil and coolants with a air nozzle spraying all over your nice walls and it will destroy them.
Suggestion, consider grease lubrication. If you stay with way oil you need a suction filter and line filter. You should hit up lube usa Never use compressed air to blow chips away always brush them away. Number 1 you will blow a chip in someone’s eye. Number 2 you will blow a chip somewhere it gets lodged in the dovetail
Do you have a little more information on the wiring of your tool length setter? Can you list where you hooked up the 4 wires? I cant get linuxcnc to respond to mine. I am currently using a 2.5K pull up resistor. Your wiring diagram shows the probe wired to the board ground but the other ground wire is not terminated. thank you.
woow, best cnc conversion video. All in one. Crazy! Subscribed. Bring more content about it! Igf possible also a work through how to set up linux CNC you used will be great. Currently running Mach3 but thinking of switch to Linux CNC.
Its late and I should be sleeping but question! Would it be possible to measure your backlash on each axis then modify your g-code to account for this variance and run it out in the process during drive directional changes?
Making the spindle speed computer controlled is probably quite simple. On my cnc conversion it was as simple as replacing the potentiometer with the pwm speed control of my breakout board (Leadshine MX3660). If your breakout board has the same feature this should be as easy as attaching 3 leads
These large stepper motor have high detent torque (the amount of torque the motor produces when the windings are not energized). It think it would be an arm workout to do any manual milling, which I didn't plan to do.
0,007" out of square in YZ tells me the 'scraping' was superficial flaking to get oil retention, but definately not done for accuracy of the machine tool, otherwise the thing would be square. And talking about squareness, was the XZ tested at all? Wouldn't trust it if already one direction had a lean to it. Regarding the tramming of the spindle relative to your table, at 12:23 you can see the indicator moving many numbers when traveling in Y direction, which would indicate that the tram is maybe good in X direction, but the Y direction was not checked nor trammed for. And as above squareness gave away, I wouldn't be too surprised to see this spindle tram to be out of alignment either.
Also, the mill has a quill. Would check the travel of that in XZ and YZ also against a square once the Z-axis is squared both ways and the spindle tram is good in both directions.
Precision Mathews used to offer pre-converted CNC mills fairly recently, I have one, I'd like to buy more, but it seems they have stopped offering the CNC'd ones at least for a while.
also UCCNC is a great option I can do rigid tapping with it etc, very responsive service, great forum, can use MODBUS to talk to auxiliary microcontrollers, robots etc I ditched MACH3 because of glitches that were abandoned when they went to Mach 4 and can't do fine encoder resolution (rigid tapping/threading). I chose UCCNC over centroid Acorn because of UCCNC's modbus scripting capability, Centroid mentioned doing this at one point..instead they went with relay expansion boards which are nowhere near as flexible/capable as MODBUS. Other than no Modbus and cost, I would consider Acorn, a more costly good alternative, although I have not tried Acorn.
Thanks for an outstanding conversion. I would like to as a few questions and would like to work out a list of parts that I will need to get. I have a similar mill
I am considering buying the Precision Matthews mill 833T just so I can do this conversion. Is a good option (I dont currently have a mill) or is there a better option i should be looking at? 3700 + 5000 cnc conversion.
Im surprised you had to use a shim for the column, unless you took one out. If you were out its because you either have a paint chip caught, or you should try and tighten the front bolts before doing the aft one.
Any relation to Precision Matthews? As soon as I received the mill, I disassembled it to install the ball screws. I never checked the tram of the mill out of the box. To be honest, I was a little surprised that it was 0.007" out of tram over 8", but this was my first mill conversion, and I really didn't have a great reference for what the tram should have been... I did make sure that that there were no paint chips/debris on the machined surfaces and I did tighten the bolts in a couple different patterns, but the tram didn't change. I threw a couple pieces of shims underneath the front of the base and I was good to go.
You may want to remove the swivel base from the vise. I found I don't use it and it takes up valuable clearance. Also if you indicate of the fixed jaw it'll save you a couple steps. What kind of backlash compensation are you dealing with?
I am curious what you did if anything to set the current on your drives for your stepper motors. On the video they sound a little rough to me. But that's hard to tell just with audio. With a MESA board I guess you know PCW now.
RIP Bruce Nelson from Heavy Metal CNC. He got me my start with my first PM conversion kit and after he died I bought his Sharp SV2412 that made all the conversion kits for Heavy Metal CNC. Its in my garage now.
I'm a 77 year old retired Journey Machinist. CNC was in it's infancy at that time. Numerical control was coming out at that time. Punch tapes, or manually entering the codes at that time. I like seeing young people getting involved in this type of work. All the machines I operated where manually operated. The big thing in my time was DRO's, where coming out.
Why does this not have more views? This is brilliant, kudos to you my dude.
Maybe because of too many ad breaks
Wish I had the GREEN STAMPS you had to get you to this point!! I’ve ALWAYS HAVE HAD to settle on harbor freight crap to begin to build and fabricate anything. And you know that crap NEVER HOLDS UP to much of anything! Yea I’m jealous, something like this setup would have served to be relaxing entertaining and somewhat enjoyable Deterrent while I go through my cancer therapy and pain management treatments. We all need something to help relieve the bad situations that happen in our lives, even if the outcomes are terminal like in my situation, this is the perfect mind altering solution to help occupy some of the hard days a cancer patient can have. Good job on your setup I hope it brings many years of enjoyment as you grow with it!
Good job amigo - You've got what we call "the knack" :) You may lack the experience, but you make up for it with your critical thinking and research. Keep your head on a swivel and stay away from corners, you'll do just fine!
High quality content! Realistic, yet ambitious. You do have a beautiful mind! Thank you for this.
I'm in school to become a machinist, and we do videos a minimum of 25 minutes long, and have to write and answer questions on that video. The hardest part is finding a good video to do is that most videos have no commentary and give very little to ask about. You did an awesome job, and it's very easy to learn from this video. Definitely will be using your videos more.
Did you align the z-axis column to x-y?
Go for it Adam - you are learning skills that you will use forever. Machining is a tough but rewarding career or hobby. There is sooo much to know and remember and calculate and thousands of different tools and methods for doing things. I’m totally Jealous, I’d love to go back to where you are now and discover that incredible world all over again. Use the machines and test yourself with new skills and ideas as much as possible when learning. Nothing beats hours on the machines to become a master machinist. Cheers young fella, and all the best.
This is very inspiring content for someone like me that just started working with manual lathes and mills, I appreciate your channel and you as an individual for the good, smart work that you do. Keep it up!
This guy just told you how to multiply the value of your mill machine 6 times.
Thank you sir !
That has to be one the best explanations of a CNC Mill conversion I have ever seen. Awesome video! Keep it up.
The most underrated CNC video on the planet 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥 genius
Hi, great video. Just a quick note about the (apparently) hand scraped ways. The regular scrape marks you see on these import machine ways have less to do with generating a flat surface than providing shallow pockets for the lubricant. In my youth, as an apprentice (mid 1970s) in the machine tool industry here in the UK I did plenty of scraping. Sometimes the objective was to create a flat surface usually to mount large sub assemblies and sometimes we would deliberately pocket an already very flat machined surface for oil retention. Hand scrapers could be bought or made in all shapes and sizes for different purposes. Flat scrapers were usually made from an old file using an off-hand grinder to get rid of the file teeth and create a gentle bevelled curve on the end. Everyone had at least one scraper in their toolmakers’ chest for general scraping jobs including removing old gasket material. Anyway good luck with your workshop endeavours, all the best from the UK.
A note in case you make more of those chill blocks that will help ensure accuracy of drilled hole and also drastically speed up machine time per block... Spot drill all the holes with a large enough 90° spot drill to a depth that will give you the finished chamfer you want then come though with your drill and drill the holes.
Drills (especially jobber length drills) tend to walk to some degree and the spot drill opp will prevent this. Plus if the spot drill opp is done to the right depth, then you will already have your chamfer ahead of time and the run time for each hole will be less since a single Z axis move to spot to proper depth is much faster than a G02 or G03 circular interpolation move.
Quick simple math will will tell you how deep you want to set you spot depth that will give you the chamfer that you want. For example, say that you wanted a 1.5mm x 45° chamfer on your 6.5mm hole, then with a 3/8" spot drill, you would spot drill to a depth of 4.09mm. Since Spot drills are 90°, you dont even have to do any trig to figure out your depth, just need to know the finished hole size and the chamfer size along with the subtraction amount since like all drills, spot drills do not come to a perfect point. The math is just Hole diameter / 2 plus the chamfer size minus the truncated amount from the tip. The Truncated value for spot drills is pretty standard and are as follows
Ø 3/8" = .026" (.66mm)
Ø 1/2" = .035" (.89mm)
Ø 3/4" = .045" (1.14mm)
Ø 1" = .060" (1.52mm)
So for your case with a 6.5mm hole and say for example, the 1.5mm x 45° chamfer mentioned above, math for the depth would be,
6.5/2+1.5-.66= 4.09
As an alternative, if you know the diameter that you want at the top face / surface, then its just simply take that diameter, divide by 2 and subtract the truncated tip amount for the spot drill you are using. Like say for example, you had a hole that you wanted to major diameter of the the chamfer to be 10mm and you were going to use a 1/2" spot drill, then the depth would be 4.11mm (10/2-.89=4.11)
The math is the same if you are working in imperial sizes, just use the imperial truncated values instead of the metric value's.
Along with that, assuming you want a 45° chamfer around the perimeter of the block,spot drills work great as "chamfer tools" too.
It also should be noted that many drill manufactures will tell you that you shouldn't use a spot drill with an included angle of less than the angle of the drill that you intent to use to drill the hole because it can cause heavy wear in one area of the drill where is first contacts the spotted hole. While this is true, in soft materials like aluminum or fairly soft steels, this is not generally a problem or a concern. Harder steels, yes, definitely a problem but soft materials (especially aluminum or plastics and such), I've never had a the problem and have been doing it for year with probably millions of holes at this point.
Lastly with facing, running all the way off the part will help eliminate the lines left at the end of the cut. Even with a head that is perfectly trammed, you will still see a line where the cutter stopped.
I'm not very familiar with Fusion360 since we use SolidCAM with Solidworks at work but from the little that I do know about Fusion, I know that there is a setting that you can set that will cause Fusion to do just that, "take the cutter totally off the part in X or Y before it stops and / or lifts the Z axis. I'll bet Fusion probably has a setting or something for the Spot depth mentioned above too.
I appreciate comments like this. Thank you sir!
Yaaaaaaaassssss!!! or use a mill-drill to spot as you would with the spot drill, then before changing tools, chamfer the profile of the part. Then drill holes.
@@chrisr2941 Honestly, you don't even need a mill-drill, just a standard 90° spot dill will run edge profile chambers all day with no problem, especially in aluminum.
I call / use spot one of my spot drills any time I have to run a chamber in aluminum. On steel however I do tend to use a regular 4 flute chamfer mill because I've found that with harder steels, the cutting edges of a regular spot drill do tend to get chipped when doing small edge chamfers on things like say Pre-hard 4142 for example but a HSS spot drill will leave a beautiful edge chamfer on aluminum.
Mill-drill in my opinion are a waste of money because really the only advantage they offer is a tiny bit quicker cycle time if you have to mill out a thru pocket on a thinner part since they will bore the initial thru-hole faster thru the material than a helical ramp or a straight plunge with an end mill. Unless you have a lot to do, you really are only saving a few seconds of machine time by using a mill drill in this situation.
@@CJ-ty8sv cool good to know! I typically dont use mill drills at the place i work now but just another option i guess. That is one of the joys of machining. there is 50 ways to do anything, and the machinist community sharing different ideas and methods is priceless. just cant find that in a textbook.
@@chrisr2941 Yep, there are a lot of things that can only really feasibly come with experience and sharing of what works and what doesn't. The technology advances far faster than text books can and then there is the cases that may not have come to light at the time of writing a particular book so knowledge of what might seem like an unorthodox use of something that works well simply wasn't known at the time.
Sure, _"having a tool for that"_ is always nice but at the same time, there are times I feel that it can hurt you by removing the drive to think outside the box and find new and effective uses for things. You never know when "knowing of another way to use a particular tool" might come in handy when you least expect it.
You made a beautiful CNC milling machine. 👍
Very glad I'm going to have access to a forklift when I do my conversion
love the dr. d-flow sequence... damn
you are really professional😁
Very nice work. I assume that you will at some point want a DRO for absolute measurement accuracy or switch to servos. Steppers can slip. Also, great job tramming your column, but consider that the shim and the rear of the column are now interfacing ideally along 2 lines rather than a plane. There is special filler material that will again make your column and base intersect in a plane. In machining stiffness is everything - you can never have enough. Outstanding video though. I've always wanted a CNC mill, but am out of room with manual mill and lathe. I would be happy to collaborate on parts in the future, if you are interested. I also have a surface grinder.
I have no clue what you're talking about but it sounds smart as hell😂😂👍👍👍
Hey everyone! I'm back with my second video in 2020. This CNC mill is the largest project that I have ever undertaken, but it was totally worth all the time, energy, and money that my friends and I put into it. I am now able to create parts out of aluminum and steel that would have cost my left leg at the local machine shop, but now cost me next-to-nothing. Let’s just say I have already started working on some exciting projects that you are not going to want to miss out on! Thanks for checking out my newest video.
Hi. Having a thick anti-fatigue mat in front of the CNC machine will protect your joints in the long run.
That some solid documentation you've got there !
Your article is pretty detailed, guess it would help me when I get into it. (Currently running grbl on a cnc router)
I have a hard time finding some feedback about probe basic.
Do you find any drawback using it ?
Like a weird 3d view, some bugs or not well made interface menus etc etc
I am definitely biased... I have been hanging out with the Probe Basic dev team over on their discord (discordapp.com/invite/463hMhd), and they are really awesome guys. The GUI is still largely in beta with some of the more complex features like the handling of the ATC being glitchy. If you have a simple setup like I do then it will work fine. They are quick coders, so I would assume all the issues will be ironed out in the near future.
Great man, high quality content
Nice job man. I can tell you have a gift of great intelligence. Look forward to seeing more videos you're very informative.
Just a tip: if you use the left upper corner of your workpiece as (0,0) and align the material with the left edge of your vise, you only have to probe once for all parts done in the vise independent of the size.
disclaimer: I am an electrical engineer so I am used to do just the bare minimum necessary to make installations safe enough for certification with the minimum amount of costs for my company.
lol, you got me on that last part!
owning a CNC machine and a 3D printer, man that widen your building and inventing oppertunity by as much as alot of fuckin percent , good job!
Absolutely splendid presentation and implementation of high level intelligence all around 👌
Another thought.... WD-40 is a great lubricant for cutting aluminum. May not be the cheapest obviously but spraying a small amount on the surface of the material works wonders. Also, a poor mans enclosure is to use PVC pipe hung from the ceiling and a shower curtain suspended from that. At least all of the chips from the mill will end up at the bottom of the mill and not all over the place. Third, look into build a fog-less coolant mister. works awesome. the plans are on CNC Zone
My company machines aluminum castings often, we buy 4 gallons of wd-40, online, for around 20usd per gallon. locally they are twice that.
I use oatys cutting fluid...less fumes.
Dr. D, Great freaking video! While probably not critical for your chill block project, I'd recommend a spot drilling operation on those holes first. With those longer jobber length drills they can wander of center, flex, and potentially break, particularly with smaller diameter drills. Not a seasoned machinist by any stretch, but have definitely broken some tools in my college machine shop skipping this step. Can't wait to see what else is in the works! Thanks for sharing.
I almost remember the missus' giving me that look while doing something inherently dangerous. Wasn't long before the feeling went from worrying about my safety to worrying about blowing a chunk off the house. I take that as a sign of trust that I know what I'm doing. 😁
Seeing kids do that is almost as funny as seeing me doing that. Luckily my dad will guide me so there will be only one person laughing!
Excellent class!!!
This motor is incredibly quiet, even as it is revving up to its max rpm.
No one:
CNC mill: sounds like a C17 on takeoff
All in fun! Great video
As a manual and (recently cnc machinist) for over 20 years, I never set my origin (or 0.00 x 0.00 y on the movable side of my vice. The reason for this is, the movable jaw of the vise, can move side to side slightly. The work piece will not always be exactly the same length and width, thus changing your zero.
As a guy thats new to machining, I appreciate the advice!
Nice choice on the mesa, I just got mine a few weeks ago and love it!
Ok, so this is really interesting to me. I have this same exact mill. Purchased it from Matt about 2 years ago, or whenever they first came out. Looking at doing this to mine soon. I see you have a build log too... Awesome!!!!
Excellent video and nice job! Keep going!
You have a new subscriber. I’m utterly impressed with this project you’ve undertaken. You explained the process incredibly well. I really look forward to you upcoming videos. Again, fantastic job.
NEMA23 motors are more than adequate for this mill, especially if you are using ball screws. If you run into something, a whole lot of torque can cause damage. Ball screws do reduce backlash a lot but they do nothing for accuracy over a lead screw. The biggest advantage of ball screws is how fast you can spin them. Very nice build.
Dude why don't you have more subs? Your videos are great.
Looks like you have a keyless chuck on there. Those are really meant for drilling holes and not milling as they can't handle the side forces. They can loosen and you'll lose a bit. Look into an ER collet system or and R8 Collet.
Hey Brendin! I am only using the keyless chuck for a spiral drill bit. The facing mill comes with an R8 collet and the chamfer bit is in an R8 collet as well.
@@DrDFlo Good stuff and nice job!
The face mill fits into the head on a taper to ensure a snug fit, no side or lateral forces will affect the tips, same for the keyless chuck...chuck taper fits into the Head taper then the drill is hand tight into the chuck....
You should cover up the inductive sensor. Any metal chip could trigger it and cause stoppage
Awesome content, I wish I had even a portion of the knowledge you have my guy
yo this shit aint easy at all. appreciate it. good video. too expensive for me right now but i will certainly do this after i have a house
Nice Video very well explained
Extraordinario el Dr. D-Flo :)
Great video and very helpful. I was hoping you could share more about the NUC you used including specs and has it worked out well for this application.
nice work and thanks for a great video!
Congratulations for your job...
On drilling op, you should peck and crank up your retract speed. That will make it much faster.
Brilliant work, thanks
Very en-lighting to say the least, at 68, I am on a path to converting a RF-30 that we (Bride & I) just purchase used over to CNC. Not a high tech as yours on this video, but it already has power X, DRO to x,y,z and new 3hp Baldor with motor controller, so a plus. Sold our '80 Enco that was a great mill, but out dated. Will be coming back often to your channel. Bears Rod Shop
Nice work!
You should bolt the vise directly to the table, instead of having it on the swivel base. Also, great job! Fantastic results for a first time. You must have nailed the speeds and feeds to drill all those holes in aluminum without it gumming up on you (if it does, WD-40/kerosene works great to prevent aluminum sticking to tools).
Wow I just saw your channel after two years. I would really like to see your setup now, the last I saw it was on Setup wars and on your channel two years ago!
Could you make the machine into a 5 axis. Like is Z axis high enough to lift up for that?
Good video Dr. D. Question do you remember the length of the ball screws? I want to source them myself to save $. Thank you.
When using an adjustable wrench or pliers etc..MOVEABLE jaw in direction of rotation.
This is clutch man 🙏🏽
My gosh, what a beauty!!! ⚡🤖👌🏻💥
First time seeing this channel, very impressed with the simplicity of getting major points across. Video quality is also spot on, would be really great if you could throw some acoustical panels on the walls or maybe use a wireless mic...for those of us that use hearing aids, there is a big echo/reverb...could be my crappy speakers though:-)
Would love to see what projects you are doing with your mill meanwhile...
try changing the working tips from the facing mill, just rotate the inserts and take care that they are mounted correctly, and add some WD40 to the surface before the finishing cut, and I bet you will get a better surface finish, nice job!
Thanks Antonio!
This is awesome! Your website has been super impressive as well.
I understand you got the ball screws from heavy metal cnc. Where can I get all the electronic components? Thanks
you are correct about flaking ad what it does, however, that's all that's there. those machines have not been scrape, the telltale is the price point and quantity sold. scaping that many machines would need an army of pro scrapers, It would easily take a pro to do that machine a day. i'm positive about that.
I'm looking to purchase a 833 mill, why did you chose gear drive instead of belt drive? From what I've seen in the forums most people prefer belt drive.
I wonder if stepper motors are the only solution - isn't there a measurement ruler that can also be used? Thanks!
Your tram is off or the mills inserts are not at the same height. Hey congrats on that part. Would a plunge chamfer cut be more efficient than interpolating every hole??
Pro tip, put shower wall panels the thin plastic 4x8 cfrom home depot on the walls behind and sides around the mill. You will be using oil and coolants with a air nozzle spraying all over your nice walls and it will destroy them.
Suggestion, consider grease lubrication. If you stay with way oil you need a suction filter and line filter. You should hit up lube usa
Never use compressed air to blow chips away always brush them away. Number 1 you will blow a chip in someone’s eye. Number 2 you will blow a chip somewhere it gets lodged in the dovetail
Love the new LinuxCNC inteface!
Do you have a little more information on the wiring of your tool length setter? Can you list where you hooked up the 4 wires? I cant get linuxcnc to respond to mine. I am currently using a 2.5K pull up resistor. Your wiring diagram shows the probe wired to the board ground but the other ground wire is not terminated. thank you.
woow, best cnc conversion video. All in one. Crazy! Subscribed. Bring more content about it! Igf possible also a work through how to set up linux CNC you used will be great. Currently running Mach3 but thinking of switch to Linux CNC.
Its late and I should be sleeping but question! Would it be possible to measure your backlash on each axis then modify your g-code to account for this variance and run it out in the process during drive directional changes?
Making the spindle speed computer controlled is probably quite simple. On my cnc conversion it was as simple as replacing the potentiometer with the pwm speed control of my breakout board (Leadshine MX3660). If your breakout board has the same feature this should be as easy as attaching 3 leads
question: why not use a double ended shaft stepper and allow a handle to be used ?
These large stepper motor have high detent torque (the amount of torque the motor produces when the windings are not energized). It think it would be an arm workout to do any manual milling, which I didn't plan to do.
What a knowledgeable video. Thanks, keep up the good work!
have you updated to the latest Probe Basic?
Since these mills come with tilt it would be nice to see them with some kind of precision motor to control the angle. 4Axis to cnc.
0,007" out of square in YZ tells me the 'scraping' was superficial flaking to get oil retention, but definately not done for accuracy of the machine tool, otherwise the thing would be square. And talking about squareness, was the XZ tested at all? Wouldn't trust it if already one direction had a lean to it.
Regarding the tramming of the spindle relative to your table, at 12:23 you can see the indicator moving many numbers when traveling in Y direction, which would indicate that the tram is maybe good in X direction, but the Y direction was not checked nor trammed for. And as above squareness gave away, I wouldn't be too surprised to see this spindle tram to be out of alignment either.
Also, the mill has a quill. Would check the travel of that in XZ and YZ also against a square once the Z-axis is squared both ways and the spindle tram is good in both directions.
hey! Glad to see you're still around! I shot you a DM
Did you align the z-axis with x-y?
Backlash isn't always a bad thing. IMO far better to close the loop with scales on each axis to have a completely accurate position.
woh super and perfect diy project
Precision Mathews used to offer pre-converted CNC mills fairly recently, I have one, I'd like to buy more, but it seems they have stopped offering the CNC'd ones at least for a while.
also UCCNC is a great option I can do rigid tapping with it etc, very responsive service, great forum, can use MODBUS to talk to auxiliary microcontrollers, robots etc I ditched MACH3 because of glitches that were abandoned when they went to Mach 4 and can't do fine encoder resolution (rigid tapping/threading). I chose UCCNC over centroid Acorn because of UCCNC's modbus scripting capability, Centroid mentioned doing this at one point..instead they went with relay expansion boards which are nowhere near as flexible/capable as MODBUS. Other than no Modbus and cost, I would consider Acorn, a more costly good alternative, although I have not tried Acorn.
25:44 Got some real Marty Chang vibes from that delivery.
Thanks for an outstanding conversion. I would like to as a few questions and would like to work out a list of parts that I will need to get. I have a similar mill
00:45 Ok so why cant you just replace the handles with stepper motors if you replaced the lead screw with ball screws?
What kind of motion controller did you use?
Breakout board? And are you happy with the inputs/outputs?
Which component inside the electrical cabinet powers the inductive limit switches? Thanks!
I read somewhere that Bruce passed away and you can no longer get your hands on these conversion kits.
yeah.. read the same, shame. Website is also down.
Any idea on anyone else who's doing anything similar or good sources for these screws and motors?
heavy metals website seems to be down. Any other way of contacting them? I would like to buy a Z axis kit.
What is the name of software do you use for this CNC Mill?
Great work and thanks very much for sharing.
Dr. D-Flo how did you support the z axis at the lower end ?
You should support the z axis with a counterweight to relieve the ballscrew
can you make a fourth axis from the spindle tilt?
The sensors is that how your software basically talk to the machine?
How would I select stepper motors for a much smaller mill conversion?
I am considering buying the Precision Matthews mill 833T just so I can do this conversion. Is a good option (I dont currently have a mill) or is there a better option i should be looking at? 3700 + 5000 cnc conversion.
Im surprised you had to use a shim for the column, unless you took one out. If you were out its because you either have a paint chip caught, or you should try and tighten the front bolts before doing the aft one.
Any relation to Precision Matthews?
As soon as I received the mill, I disassembled it to install the ball screws. I never checked the tram of the mill out of the box. To be honest, I was a little surprised that it was 0.007" out of tram over 8", but this was my first mill conversion, and I really didn't have a great reference for what the tram should have been... I did make sure that that there were no paint chips/debris on the machined surfaces and I did tighten the bolts in a couple different patterns, but the tram didn't change. I threw a couple pieces of shims underneath the front of the base and I was good to go.
Excellent video. Regards Kevin
You may want to remove the swivel base from the vise. I found I don't use it and it takes up valuable clearance.
Also if you indicate of the fixed jaw it'll save you a couple steps.
What kind of backlash compensation are you dealing with?
What touch screen monitor is that?
I am curious what you did if anything to set the current on your drives for your stepper motors. On the video they sound a little rough to me. But that's hard to tell just with audio. With a MESA board I guess you know PCW now.