For anyone that might want to raise the column of their novamill here is the drawing I did for mine, it might come in usefull.

Mike

Check out Axis contols in Southport for KB electronics.

http://www.axiscontrols.co.uk/default.aspx

You can buy these from J&L if you get stuck and if you look out for the discounts you can save a few bob. I think the easy change system is great but takes up a lot of room on an already limited head height machine. hence why I raised the column. There are some nice ISO30 collet holders about though.

Hi John, When I first got my machine a few of the guys I spoke too said that more modern stepper motors were better. If they are or not I dont know as I never used the originals. I did however replace them with more powerfull motors on all axis. The novamill is a really solid machine so I figured la...

I raised the column up 70mm as this is the distance from the centre of the stepper motor to the mounting holes on the bracket. So by rotating the bracket 180 degrees it looks down (into my new raising block) rather than looking up into the column casting as standard. However, you could make your rai...

This is good news! does this mean that mechanical spares would be available for the machines? This was always my concern that I would not be able to replace the ballscrew (for example) if I had an accident but the quality of this machine it will probably see me out! haha (and I'm only 31 ;)) This ma...

In my opinion these denford machines (Novamill, Triac e.t.c) blow away anything currently on the market for the model engineer. Good examples come up from time to time and once converted only cost equivalent money to the new chinese machines and offer far greater stiffness and precision. Maybe a gap...

Some machined parts

The assembled machine. I bolted a slighlty larger table to the original. This one is sold by Arc Euro Trade for the X2. Fits well and provides 3 T slots rather than the original 2.

I have had the machine running well for a couple of months now and the results are excellent. I have attached some photos of how I did the conversion. I took the opportunity of having the machine in bits to add a raising block to the column machined from cast iron (messy stuff!) The stepper motors w...

Solved my problem! I was reading the 0 as off rather than on on the switches on my controller. Silly mistake but all sorted now

Hi, Thankyou for the replies. The native units is set to mm in the config and the MM`s light is green in the settings page. I am still using the Demo version of Mach3 though as I wanted to see if everything was going to work before I bought it. Do you think this would make a difference? I have attac...

Hi Guys, After a few mods I have finally got my Denford Novamill up to the stage of configuring mach3. I have added new stepper motors, Nema 23 double stack motors on the X and Y axis and a Nema 34 single stack motor on the Z axis. The control I am using is from Rhonmac cnc with the controllers set ...