[AeroParty]

Hello all,

I just wanted to take a minute to thank you all for your knowledge and information. Not only has it helped me, but it has made me want to give back to the cnczone community.

I bought my X1 about 4 months ago. It had only been used twice and still had all the red grease and plastic film all over it. I bought a 3" precision vise, er32 collets + end mills to start. I also picked up various equip like indicators, drill bits, table clamps, etc. The mill is a great little machine to run manually and since I have never done anything else, it is very educational. My machine had .005 backlash on X an Y and about .015 on Z when I bought it so I cleaned and adjusted everything without any modifications and I got .003 on X and Y and .007 on Z....that seems plenty good for a hobby cnc conversion in the future, I don't need .001 accuracy...I don't do aerospace or biomed stuff.

The first mod was a 20 lb. gas spring mounted onto a coolant manifold(I will include pics and details in the next post) that attached to the bracket on the side of the column. I made a small aluminum "foot" for the skinny end of the spring and mounted it under one of the column bolts(nearest to the table). The gas spring has made it much easier to move the head and it doesn't have so much pressure that I can't plunge into the work easily.

The mod I am working now is the cnc conversion. I bought 2 steppers from All Electronics for $14 each, a power supply from All for $22, and I ordered one of those 3-axis Chinese boards for $86(trying to do diy cnc for under $200). The electronics/computer portion has been a breeze, I even got my flood coolant relay set up. The real challenge was to find a coupler that flexed enough to deal with misalignment but not so soft that it would contribute to backlash. I tried making slotted couplers(like on McMasterCarr.com) they came out as expected but did not work. Then I bought a Ultra-flex loop coupler(McMaster Carr) after reading about it here and that worked better but it was larger in size than I liked for X and Y. So, the solution that worked was a small length of 1/4" ID polyethylene tubing(white). It is stiff tubing used for water lines(Home depot). I drilled out one side to 5/16" x .5 deep and slid that portion onto the exposed lead screw with key removed. The other end slid onto my stepper shaft. Both slide fits were fairly tight and it took some effort to get them on. After testing and making adjustments, I have .003 backlash compensation on X and Y, still installing the stepper on Z. I put the Z on hold while I fine tune the X and Y so I can do cnc cuts from now on(including the Z-axis stepper mount) The poly tube was a perfect solution to my particular problem and I hope the info helps someone out there....now I can put off buying the $30 helical couplers for a bit.

The second mod was to install led lighting. I bought 3 led clusters from All Elec. and I ran them parallel using a 12V 1000mA adapter(they use about 100mA each). It's overkill on the power but I wanted bright lights and capacity to add lights in the future. These leds make everything easier since I can see what I am doing now plus they are mounted just under the spindle so there are no shadows on my table or work....nice!

Another mod that I almost forgot about is the brass gibs mod. I did this in a "cheap and dirty" way thinking that if there was no improvement I would just go back to stock gibs. Fortunately, I was wrong and the improvement was big. I bought 1/8" x 1/4" x 12" brass pieces from the local hardware store. I cut them to gib length, drilled the set screw indentations, and polished them up. I skipped the step where you mill the angles on the ends, I just left my pieces rectangular in cross-section. A 15 minute fix that made a big difference in table chatter and table movement when extended on a given axis(my table would make wavy cuts at the end of the table travel because the table would move when I cranked on the handwheel).

Well, I hope this info helps someone. I will post anything useful I find

*If anyone out there has a small job with moderate tolerances that could be cut on this machine, please let me know about it, I would love to get a paying gig....or at least another excuse to buy or make more tooling!

Once again, thanks cnczone. Now I'm off to look at a 7 x 12 mini lathe for $500 out the door(fingers crossed!)

[Mad Welder]

Hi there AeroParty...welcome to CNCzone fairly new member myself too....... it sounds cool and would love to see some build or part pics........


:cheers:

[AeroParty]

I will post details on my coolant manifold and my cnc set-up when I get home. I might even have a CAD dwg for the manifold. I will include my cnc components list too.

[AeroParty]

I found the cad dwg for the coolant manifold, here is a pdf version...I can't seem to be able to upload the jpeg...maybe too big. I used 1/4" loc line for the coolant hoses and they use 1/4"NPT.

[AeroParty]

Well, I bought a brand new 7 x 12 mini lathe for $480. The brand name is "Extreme Power" but it looks exactly like the jet mini lathe in white paint. The jet products may be nicer though, this lathe is pretty basic with poor to fair machined surfaces and carelessly assembled. The tailstock is about .25 higher than the chuck centerline plus about .1 off to one side. With some cleaning and minor adjustments I think this little lathe will be a perfect partner to my cnc mill. I had a brief moment where I wanted to cnc the lathe too but I decided to keep it manual and maybe convert 8 x 14 to cnc down the road.

[AeroParty]

My roommate is moving out and I can't stay where I am. So, I will be moving all of my machining equipment to a friends house for storage. I will continue to work on the electronics side of the X1 mill improvements and post what I find but I will not be making any chips for some time I just got my lathe running well too!