Morning! Has anyone replaced the spindle motor for an equivalent PMDC motor or even a brushless motor and had good results? My spindle motor has now stopped working (after a lot of use so cant complain!). At first the motor was hunting then it refused to start in one direction, then twiddling the po...

Sorry to be a pain, but I would split the raising block 'the other way' so you have two lengths that run front to back, each containing 3 mounting holes. This way you will have one continuous surface to mount each side of the column too. These 2 blocks would suffice but for completeness and to keep ...

A casting is a nice idea but probably not enough interest to cover the tooling costs. I think making it from pieces and bolting it together would be a good compromise. The structure of cast iron will suppress vibrations being transmitted through the structure of the machine but there is plenty of ca...

An aluminium block of this size would compromise the stiffness of your machine. However, it depends on what you plan to do with it, if it's light machining of plastics and Ali you might get away with it but I wouldn't recommend it. Are people refusing to quote? That would be strange as normally peop...

.... I remember now . If you look at my other thread on my conversion to mach3 there is a photo of the raising block. I machined more of the strap away to allow the cables to pass through. It probably only serves the purpose of giving the block a bit more rigidity when machining etc.
Mike

Hi Ben, In the existing column the stepper motor is mounted to the column casting rather than the base casting as you may expect. As you are raising the column up so are you raising up the stepper motor mounting point so to overcome this you mount the stepper motor to the column via the top two hole...

The idea behind using cast iron is to suppress vibration as it travels from the mounting area of the workpiece through the machine and to the cutting tool. Cast iron is particularly good at this hence why most machines are made from this material. A similar thing can be achieved by adding more joint...

Hi Ben, I paid £90 for the material and I would expect about £250 for machining given there aren't many tight tolerance dimensions, might be worth contacting more of a jobbing shop? Plus its a one off job. When I enquired about getting it made I couldn't find anyone that wanted to take on cast iron ...

I raised the column on my Novamill by about 70mm as there was not much room for a workpiece once a vice went on especially if you use the easy change system (which is great for quick tool change!). I think the drawing for the raising block is on here somewhere.

Does anyone have a Multifix size AA tool holder body that they are not using and wish to sell?

Thanks

Mike

The 'blue' PCB in the bottom left of the photograph looks like your motor control board. You can certainly keep the motor and motor control board. The other parts are slightly different to mine but looks like boards for the power supply and stepper motor controller which I think you will change.

Hi, I think your machine is newer than mine and some of your electronics is different. The PCB's with the large heat sinks are the stepper controllers and whatever else electronics were used to communicate with the computer, you will probably replace these. The optical sensor mounted on the perforat...

You should be able to use the spindle motor controller no problem but I think the best option is to use new stepper motors and controllers as these are not expensive items. A modern packaged power supply will also make the wiring easier. You may not need an additional 5V supply, this will depend on ...

Hi, If you dont mind the extra cost then change the stepper motors and controllers as I did. I used NEMA 23 double stack stepper motors, 4.2A peak stepper controllers, breakout board (which requires a 5V power supply) and a 42V power supply for the stepper controllers. You will have to check what mo...

You may be able to get your starturn working on Mach3 using all the original electronics but I decided to replace the stepper motors, controllers, power supply and add a modern breakout board. How much of the original electronics you will be able to use will depend on how good your knowledge of elec...

After some searching around the normal model engineering suppliers I could not find the vice that I wanted for the projects I had in mind so I decided to design and make one :3D: I cant say I`m a fan of making tooling (would much rather be making parts for my rc models :D ) but this seemed like a go...

Bargain!

I sold my electronics box and used new steppers and controllers. Now the same package sits in a box the same size as a shoe box .

The only expensive bit will be the spindle motor controller.

It is indeed.

I nearly sold my easychange holder, glad I didnt now as I use it all the time.

Hi Rob, What`s a sensible offer...ish?

I`m not sure there would be enough interest to get a decent discount. If you decide to go for the complete unit then you would have to do some trials to see exactly what it is capable of doing. A big-ish job on a machine like a TRIAC may be a bit too much for it. They are sold for cnc router use rea...