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| Industrial Hobbies Mill - CNC Conversion | |
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Here is one of the small plugs I cut from an old mouse pad to fill the two unused holes in the X axis mounting block. |
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Here is the plug in place before I added some RTV to seal the hole. |
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I used some foam caulk backer rod cut in half to form a base for the RTV around the bearing holders. |
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The backer rod in place. I didn't want to take a chance on getting RTV into the bearings. Plus, it will make it much easier to removed if service is ever required. |
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A thin layer of RTV seals the bearings from any contamination from chips or coolant. |
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I backed out the bolts holding the cover on the encoder out a bit and ran a small bead of RTV in the gap. Then I tightened the bolts back up and cleaned off the excess. After wrapping the mount with adhesive foam tape, I flexed the Lexan cover over the mount and tightened it in place with two band clamps. Ready for full flood coolant when I decide to add it. In the meantime, I won't worry about chips causing any problems. The X axis was an exact repeat. |
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The Z axis was mostly the same except for the Lexan cover. On the Z it is two pieces, front and back, help in place by two straps. A band clamp wouldn't work due to the clearance for the pulley. |
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Here you can see one of two straps holding
the Lexan covers in place. I drilled and tapped the mounting brackets
for 8-32 screws rather that using the supplied sheet metal screws. I'm
thinking of adding small Lexan pieces to fill the gaps. I doubt that
anything will make it around the head but it won't hurt anything either. The next update should have the electrical wiring finalized and the chips will be flying! |
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Update 01/23/09 The back panel and assorted wiring bits showed up so I spent some more quality time in the shop. I laid all the parts out and marked the panel for drilling and tapping all the mounting holes. |
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I fabricated a mount for a male-male DB-25
gender bender and installed it in the cabinet. This is on the lower
right side of the cabinet. Tapping 4-40 threads is always a tense moment, you can actually see the tap twisting. The tap survived and all the tiny holes were completed. |
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After cutting some huge holes in the top of the cabinet I installed two 100VAC fans. The one on the left blows air in to the cabinet and the one on the right exhausts the warm air. One of the early projects on the completed mill will be some spiffy aluminum grills to go over the fans with some filter material to keep errant chips out. |
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On the bottom left side of the cabinet is where all the mill wiring enters the cabinet. I bought all the hose barb fittings the local hardware store had on hand, the others should arrive in a couple of days. They are installed into holes drilled and tapped with pipe threads. From left to right they are the X axis, Y axis, Z axis, and E-stop and 5VDC from the computer. Each axis has one for the servo motor power, encoder, and limit switches. It makes for a nice clean install. |
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After installing a power switch and indicator I mounted the cabinet to the wall to the right of the mill. Another fun project for the mill will be some labels to go on the front panel. |
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Here are all the bits mounted to the rear panel. You can see the parallel breakout board on the lower left and how it connects to the gender bender in the lower right. I've since replaced the gender bender with a low profile one I found buried in a box. You can just make it out in the next picture. |
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Here is the cabinet with most of the wiring completed. The mill is ready to run. Still left on the punch list is to install a 24VDC supply for the Gecko fans, mount the e-stop button, and install and wire the limit switches when they arrive. I'm also going to add a wire support for the Z axis servo and encoder wiring to provide a bit more strain relief. |
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