The Shop > CNC
Desktop Mill CNC Conversion
lesterhawksby:
Sieg SU-1. It's the oddball, tiny horizontal-to-vertical convertible nobody but me is daft enough to buy. Accepting its limitations, and one actual defect I never had the opportunity to get corrected, I actually rather liked it - though used it only very lightly due to circumstances. Joules has been concocting an exciting plan to CNC it for ages and finally bravely bought it from me (my workshop arrangement is changing and I don't think it's part of the new picture). I can't wait to see what he does with it.
Joules:
OK bit more about this project.
The mill is pretty unique in that it's a very small (modern, Asian) knee mill. From the above picture you can gather the head has no travel, it's all done via the knee. This also means you do have a small Z axis, well not such a problem here as my other mill for the last 20+yrs has been the Taig at the side of it. I have an idea to use a high speed spindle for the vertical and use something like a Myford vertical slide to allow the spindle to be raised and lowered independently. This should allow some degree of drilling, manually and allow the Z to have an extra 50mm or so without major modifications. It should also still use the existing overarm attachment.
The horizontal is where we have a bit of an issue. Whoever bored it was in a bit of a hurry or had a boozy lunch, its on the piss :palm: I might need to call in a favour with someone that has a Bridgeport to re bore and sleeve the horizontal. I don't want to use the horizontal for milling, but rather turning. I looked at Taig's new CNC lathe and have been following Grimsmo Knives on YouTube. I really like the ganged tooling approach. I figured the little SU1 would make a great CNC small part turning machine with ganged tool plates for the bed. It allows me to try some ideas see if they work, the current spindle would probably end up dedicated to horizontal use if the high speed spindle works out, if not it can still be swapped over as originally intended for this machine.
Thats the plan, I need to move towards CNC machines for the workshop. My hands getting worse as the years go by and the 3D printing has been such a success for me, it seems only a small step from plastics to metal in relation to G Code anyway. I seem to have the CAD side covered, lets see where it goes, I should also add first job is to get it as good as I can as a manual mill first, need a bit more tweaking for smooth running, slight taper on the Y axis dovetail somewhere and the knee can be a little sticky, pretty sure a bit of gentle hand scraping will sort those issues.
Joules:
OK, small set back.... Whilst setting the knee up I just couldn't get shut of some play, loosen the gib it improved, OK but the table still moved a bit, tighten the gib and it moved a lot.
I had one of the column mounting bolts give me some concern when it wouldn't tighten properly, well now I know the result. Strip back down ready to blue the parts and sort it out.
The base came up nice, I don't have a small surface plate (which would have been so handy later on) so figured I will scrap it to the base.
First blue, or rather lack of...... Hmm I spy with my now blue eye, two pivot points. The thick blue and the shiny blob. No wonder it was rocking, break out the new Sandvic scraping tool and get to work.
Some time later we have a column that no longer rocks. Still needs more contact area.
Hours later, my back breaking lifting and flipping the column over, I have a much better result. Time to call it a night and continue tomorrow. All I want is contact around the outer edge and a bit of clearance round the bolt holes so they snug down. I find this work really satisfying, just take your time and be patient.
Night all.....
Joules:
Ahhhh, done as much as I need for good contact of the column to base.
Had a visit from Rob Wilson :wave: He reckons the bore for the horizontal can be rebored and sleeved to get it all back true, cheers Rob will take you up on that offer.
I made a start on making a mock up of the ball nut 1204 that might be used in the conversion.
Printing finish when Rob arrived so he was able to see one hot, out the machine.
It's going to be, interesting making two of them fit in the knee space available, at least I can try different printed nuts before I commit to buying any.
John Stevenson:
Hope you kept an eye on the perpendicular it both planes when scraping ?
Give those hole a light countersinking so when they are tighten up you don't raise any stress points to hold off that lovely clean, flat scraped surface
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