[Galane]

I just brought a used prolight mill home today, its probably the exact same model you have. Mine is missing the cnc control box, but the spindle electronics attached to the back looks pretty good. I am planning to upgrade all to new steppers and g540 controls, Unless I can find the original electronics somewhere which I hear is not cheap.

I will be paying attention to your attempts at rebuilding.

If you have steppers it's a PLM1000. One of those minus the big black box and proprietary ISA or PCI card... you are stuck with refit/upgrade unless you can locate replacements for the missing hardware.
The PLM 2000 and 2500 had servos and the controls all in the box attached to the mill, with a single RS232 connection to a computer without any additional proprietary hardware.

The 2000 had the option of a 5,000 or 10,000 RPM belt drive spindle. The 2500 had a 42,000 RPM direct drive spindle. 1000 and 2000 are R8 spindle and the flat on the nose is big enough to work with Tormach TTS holders. For some reason the 1000 was the only model to have Windows software (and DOS) while the other two only had DOS software.

I got mine running, some doofus had cut one of the spindle motor wires and added in a pair of 5 ohm wire wound resistors in parallel, vaguely "connected" with alligator clips. After removing that and reconnecting the wire properly, I ran it with the two test files that come with the DOS software. Used an old Micron laptop booting off a DOS boot floppy made with Windows 7, using a USB floppy drive because the only old laptop I have with a built in floppy drive doesn't have a serial port.

http://www.intelitekdownloads.com/Software/
http://www.intelitekdownloads.com/Manuals/CNC/Obsolete/
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0Byhq...NhVXBnT00/edit <-Lots of useful technical info on Light Machines, stuff that was "eyes only" for LM dealers and techs. For some reason it's an archive file in an ISO. WinRAR can extract the archive from the ISO, then you can delete the ISO file.

Hopefully someone who knows the deep, dark secrets of software like LinuxCNC will get inspired to use that info to add support for Light Machines mills, and their PLT3000 lathe.

I have no idea what material the frame, saddle and head are made of on this mill. Nonferrous because a magnet doesn't stick. Cast aluminum? Some kind of resin? Plenty heavy for the size. There are assembly instructions in that big archive which mention steel inserts to mount the rails. I like the use of round linear bearing rails and the bellows protecting them.

Do NOT unscrew the lifting eye. It's glued in with locktite.

[Winterwatchers]

If you have steppers it's a PLM1000. One of those minus the big black box and proprietary ISA or PCI card... you are stuck with refit/upgrade unless you can locate replacements for the missing hardware.
The PLM 2000 and 2500 had servos and the controls all in the box attached to the mill, with a single RS232 connection to a computer without any additional proprietary hardware.

The 2000 had the option of a 5,000 or 10,000 RPM belt drive spindle. The 2500 had a 42,000 RPM direct drive spindle. 1000 and 2000 are R8 spindle and the flat on the nose is big enough to work with Tormach TTS holders. For some reason the 1000 was the only model to have Windows software (and DOS) while the other two only had DOS software.

I got mine running, some doofus had cut one of the spindle motor wires and added in a pair of 5 ohm wire wound resistors in parallel, vaguely "connected" with alligator clips. After removing that and reconnecting the wire properly, I ran it with the two test files that come with the DOS software. Used an old Micron laptop booting off a DOS boot floppy made with Windows 7, using a USB floppy drive because the only old laptop I have with a built in floppy drive doesn't have a serial port.

http://www.intelitekdownloads.com/Software/
http://www.intelitekdownloads.com/Manuals/CNC/Obsolete/
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0Byhq...NhVXBnT00/edit <-Lots of useful technical info on Light Machines, stuff that was "eyes only" for LM dealers and techs. For some reason it's an archive file in an ISO. WinRAR can extract the archive from the ISO, then you can delete the ISO file.

Hopefully someone who knows the deep, dark secrets of software like LinuxCNC will get inspired to use that info to add support for Light Machines mills, and their PLT3000 lathe.

I have no idea what material the frame, saddle and head are made of on this mill. Nonferrous because a magnet doesn't stick. Cast aluminum? Some kind of resin? Plenty heavy for the size. There are assembly instructions in that big archive which mention steel inserts to mount the rails. I like the use of round linear bearing rails and the bellows protecting them.

Do NOT unscrew the lifting eye. It's glued in with locktite.

Thanks for the info. Some of the manuals links on other sites go to a page that no longer exist. I have steppers and other cnc stuff that I bought to go with a x2d mini, but the prolight jumped out at me and it is a tad more expensive than littlemachineshop. It is heavy and putting it in the basement is a pain.

The headstock, z carrier, and saddle are aluminum, and most of the bolt holes in the polymer concrete are aluminum as well. I was surprised by that. I originally thought everything besides the frame is cast iron. It put a slight dent in my enthusiasm. I will see how it performs cutting steel, if it sucks I might buy some durabar or just sell it.