I picked up a CNC milling machine to replace my manual mill and in the future I'd like to get a CNC plasma table. Most of the ones I look at need 3 phase Plasma supplies to get a decent depth of cut and duty cycle for the constant running.
I did seriously consider bringing in 3 phase from the street but this was just a whole lot less hassle. If I find I have more demand for 3 phase in the future I can pay to get it pulled in and sell the converter but there's only a couple of things I'll need it for.
The unit does support adding a neutral pin. I just set it up the same as the plug on the new milling machine. I can easily swap it out later if I have an application that needs it.
Probably just going to run the one outlet at this stage. It's in a central spot in the shed and I figure I'll only be running one machine at a time. I've put a long lead and a new plug on the mill
So about the Mill...
I've had a few different milling machines over the years. My first was a combination lathe mill which gave me an introduction to machining. Unfortunately I don't have a pic of it.
The next was a bench top geared head mill drill. This was a great improvement over the combination mill. It had a decent sized table and travel in X and Y. Here it is machining out some engine cases for a motorcycle big bore kit.
I then picked up an old Cincinnati Tool master Knee mill. It was in pretty poor shape when I got it.
I restored it, replaced a bunch of bearings, broken pins etc and converted it to single phase by adapting a new motor to it. I could do a lot more serious stuff with this machine.
For my 40th Birthday my wife got me a new Lathe to replace the old Chinese machine I had (Another fixer upper). I had a lot of fun and made a heap of stuff with the CQ6230.
But the new AL1000C with DRO that my wife got me is just so much better (Thanks Honey).
So I sold the old Lathe on eBay and got reasonable money for it. It was well sorted and still ran great.
I looked at the old mill and thought I wonder how much it would go for? So I listed it on eBay and sold it for reasonable money too. I scraped up some extra cash and bought a new BM30 mill. This was a good quality Taiwanese made machine and so much nicer to use than the Cincinnati. I optioned it up with a 3 axis Eason DRO (the same brand as on the Lathe) and I was in another world with the possibilities of what I could make.
Here it is nice and clean and new.
For a while now I've become interested in the possibilities of CNC and been looking for a mill. I looked at bringing a machine in from China and looked at converting the curent BM30. I eventually found a second hand CNC mill locally. This is only a 2 axis machine and it runs a ProtoTrak controller which is a conversational controller and very intuitive. There are programs that can compile code from CAD that it will run but mostly you just program it on the fly.
It's a manual machine that has been converted but it has all the right drives and zero backlash ball screws on the X and Y feeds. The cool thing is I can still run it as a manual machine like my BM30.
It's got a bunch of other neat stuff on it like an air draw bar for quick tool changes. A constant variable speed head like my old Cincinnati and a misting coolant system which uses a jet of air mixed with coolant to both cool the cutter and blow the chips out of the cut. The latter was something I was planning to add to the BM30.
My job over the Christmas new year break is to get it all in and running which should be fun. Then in the new year my faithful BM30 goes up for sale.
Cheers
Mike
DOH.......I knew that. Swap out everything from the Commodore you can use as it will be easier to register.
