Found Dreaming

dallen wrote:hey Mike, you gotta get yourself one of these and stick on the front of that mill.

Got one Dave just have to wait for it to turn up

http://cgi.ebay.com.au/ws/eBayISAPI.dll ... OC:AU:1123

Nudge wrote:Just plug it in and give it a go.
This guy can do it with his feet... I dont see why you can't.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnv0DAR_gWA

(Dam thing won't link up proper)

Is that guy left handed or right footed? Either way, that's impressive and more than a little humbling, it's hard to imagine a more primitive lathe but he's still able to produce high quality work.

BTW, the link works fine for me.

mite5255 wrote:

dallen wrote:hey Mike, you gotta get yourself one of these and stick on the front of that mill.

Got one Dave just have to wait for it to turn up

http://cgi.ebay.com.au/ws/eBayISAPI.dll ... OC:AU:1123

after you get it installed you will find that making adjustments to the mill on the Z axis will be a lot easier. since i have installed mine and used it thru a couple projects I wouldn't be without it, almost makes me wish that I had of spent the extra couple of hundred bucks for a Three Axis DRO instead of the 2 axis one that I bought.

I was considering buying a three axis dro, this will do for now but at a later date I may splash out and buy one

Mike

I plan to buy just the head and move the two axis one over to my 12 inch metal lathe. I can do that for about have of what it will cost for a complete three axis package I think.

I designed and built a CNC milling machine from scratch eight years ago. I did buy some solutions. A minimill head which interchanges with a Porter Cable router. I also bought a 4 axis kit from Xylotex. I got one Manual Pulse Generator from Chris Wood at Little Machine Shop and the rest I built from my design. It has six feet of X, 12 inches of Y and 10 inches of Z. Let me dispel a myth, the very best conventional machines are CNC's. A CNC is no harder to set up than a conventional machine. In fact they are easier. They are smooth and precise. When dialing in a hole you can set the MPG to smaller and smaller movements per click and reverse direction without the backlash present in every conventional machines lead screws. Sorry Harry, but CNC's are way easier to use.

Hey Barry, wed love to see your set-up, got any pictures?

I am a huge fan of CNC Barry, my dream shop is going to have a lot of them Sometimes people like to be able to manually operate the machine though because clamping down a piece of stock and squaring up the edges can be done faster without setting up tool paths. This can still be done on a cnc'd machine though as you noted using a MPG you only lose tactile feel of feeding with the handle on the machine.

One thing about using tool paths is once you set them on their course they just do as told so everything has to be just right for the whole part beginning to end as far as speeds and feeds.

I would also love to see some pictures of your setup. What minimill head did you get? This is one thing I have wanting to add to my machine.

Welllllllll, as I have said before sometimes things happen a bit slowly around here, I have now started to build the table for the wood lathe

Can someone tell me at what height should I have the tool rest, I'm thinking about navel height

Frame all ready for welding

Progress thus far, I'll brace between the legs and also weld angle iron to the bottom between the two legs to bolt to the floor to take ( hopefully ) any movement out of the table