Easimill Riser Block and LinuxCNC conversion

[junker398]

Hi

Just a picture to show both.

The riser is made of 3 of 2" x 8" discs bolted together internally with appropriate cut outs.
Just as well I have a big lathe!
It has revolutionised my work on the mill, I can use a large machine vice without running out of headroom and I can still bolt workpieces direct to the bed and reach them.

The conversion to LinuxCNC was quite straight forward. I kept the controller box, estop, start button and the PSUs.
As the post on the Mach conversion showed, every connection you need is on the 2 big multi plugs that enter the control box, no extra wiring required.

I changed the steppers for new nema 34 8.5Nm ones with 8.2A drivers and 58V PSU
I replaced the inductive proximity home sensors with self made hall effect proximity sensors, to simplify the wiring and PSU requirements by having TTL.
The limit switches were resolved by putting them through a logic gate circuit which goes high if any one of them activates, so all are on one pin.
(you can't chain them without a lot of re-wiring because they have a common ground)

As you can see the screen is built in with under-slung keyboard incorporating mouse pad, the computer is fixed to the wall behind.

A fair bit of work but well worth it.

regards

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[Denford Admin]

Looks great.
Is it controlled via parallel port and a breakout board ?

I can never understand why the old machines had so much Z travel into and past the table ? (the old Triacs also benefit from raising the column)
Maybe it's a rigidity thing ?

[junker398]

Is it controlled via parallel port and a breakout board ?

Yes, all on one parport cable with a second card used for the pendant MPG you can just see to the back left.

Spindle control via a speed board, converting step and dir into analogue voltage.

regards

[vandal968]

Junker398,
do you have any drawings or additional information about your riser? When I've measured and calculated travels, I came up with 6" as being the optimal height, looks like you did too. Any changes you'd make if doing it again?

cheers,
c

[junker398]

Hi

As per the PM

The discs are bolted together with M12 allen bolts internally, the top disc has studs set into it for the head to sit on and the bottom disc sits on the original studs, hence the cut outs to allow bolting down

The tricky thing is alignment, I drilled a M10 hole dead centre in each disc and used this as the reference for all the other operations, both in the mill and the lathe

Afraid it was back of an envelope stuff, I just had measurements and the stud PCD written down somewhere and worked from that

regards

A bit of a close up showing cut outs etc

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