After hearing about manual mill CNC conversions, I'm curious... has anyone in Chief Delphi community built their own from parts/scratch?
We have a router table (6'x12') at work we built from scratch, but it isn't sturdy enough to handle metal cutting, just plastics and woods.
Hachiban VII: Do you have any pictures/videos of you guys installing the ball screws into that mill? I'm guessing you had to take the ways off of it and all... I guess you used an engine hoist or something? That's a ton of work to get your backlash down...
Also, it sounds like some people just want a CNC mill to cut shapes, speedholes, etc. out that go all the way through. This past summer (so, the 2008 season being the first one we've used it in) we got one of the
PlasmaCam machines out of the back of a Popular Science. It took us a while to get it all up and running, but now that it is... it makes nice parts REALLY fast (for example, it cut out all the brackets for our shooter in about 2 minutes).
We use a
Hypertherm Powermax 1000 8.4kW hand torch with our plasma cutting table. The biggest stuff we've cut with it so far was 1/2" aluminum plate, which it cut at about 30 inches/minute. The only two things you have to worry about are 1) You have to wear a welding shield because of how brilliant the energy beam is 2) You need REALLY good ventilation. For us, we open the garage door and put a big Snap-On squirrel cage fan in the shop.
Pair that with a pipe bender, an all-in-one bench top break/shear/roll, a box of U-bolts, and your usual assortment of hand tools... you woudln't believe how much you can make and how fast you can make it. (The whole top of our robot (everything but the frame) was prototyped using these tools alone)
If you want to know anything else just let me know... I could go on and on and on...
-q