You are off to a nice start!
The G0704 is a nice place to start, further I see you are committed to doing it right by starting not on the mill but in the tooling.
That straight edge may come into use more often than you think. Once you have one you will find uses for it. Being a fresh piece of iron it will like stress relieve itself over time so you should check it before use each time until you are confident it is stable. This is one thing that is often forgotten, metal will move, let's hope though that your piece of iron is stable.
As a point of curiosity how much did that hunk of iron cost you?
The only thing that bothers me is the "stand that integrates column support". Frankly if you are going to all that trouble why not just build a full custom mill? Maybe my perspective is wrong but in order to provide realistic support you need to build a stiff frame. At that point why not go whole hog and do the horizontal and vertical columns? Another alternative would be to buy a bigger mill.
The thing is this, if the column is flexing excessively would it not be reasonable to assume the machine is being driven to hard? It isn't like these things come with hefty motors and reliable drive trains.
Well that is just me, I like where you are going otherwise.
Nobody is saying stop, actually just the opposite.
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Originally Posted by
Whizbang
Many of us are about at this point we have made our basic hoss2006 conversion parts and are contemplating whether or not to try to scrape the ways and fix the gibbs to get more accuracy.
Nothing wrong with that! Frankly it is a normal part of machine maintenance anyway.
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I understand that these machines are only a grand, but what is the point throwing another grand worth of electonics in them if that cant hold decent tolerances. If any of you have ben following my thread i ended up shipping mine back because of poor craftsmanship and the x lead screw was cutting into the saddle. now i have to call grizzly every day and be the squeaky wheel to try to get a mill back to me that is half decent.
Well tolerances are an interesting discussion all on their own. Some users can accept far looser machines than others depending upon what they are doing with the machine. However with a $1000 machine one has to know when to stop.
In other words it is wonderful to be able to tighten up a machine and get it to work better than shipped. That is good. The bad is if you have expectations that are beyond the machines capabilities inherent in its design and manufacture.
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Let this gentleman do all of this and post as many pictures as possible because some of us are very eager to learn.
No one is suggesting that he stop, I'm not sure where that BS came from. I'm actually glad that the first step this guy took was making a straight edge as it demonstrates an intention to do the job right. This is a very good thing as far to many people screw up their mills right out of the box.
In a nutshell the only thing said here is not to get too wrapped up in the spindle runout which really isn't that bad all things considered. One could always attempt to grind the taper themselves but would it make sense to do that with the stock bearings?
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Hell I almost pulled the trigger on a $500 biax power scraping course offered july 27 in Minneapolis cause i want a nice tight acurate machine and cant find any rebuilders around me who will scrape a chineese mill in.
Training is always a good thing, however a Biax would be a bit of an overkill for this size machine. It does make me wonder why none of the local rebuilders where willing to scrap in a machine. I wouldn't be surprised to find out that part of the issue would be having to charge far more than the machine is worth.
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Ryan I love to see what your are doing many people will benefit on the zone from you insight and pictures your are providing.