My RF30 mill to CNC conversion - the cheap way

[stioc]

Thanks! I do have backlash in my RF30 but the software compensation is good enough for now. I guess the biggest issue I've noticed is that if I cut a circle it'll come out .003-.006" too small. The backlash compensation in the software helps when changing linear directions but not so much when you're cutting circles but it hasn't been a huge issue and the circles are still smooth. In fact, it may be that I can eliminate more of it by remeasuring the backlash and adjusting it the software again, the first time I did it was a quick job to get me going with CNC. Rick's site is great, I've read a lot of his stuff but I haven't yet felt the need or found the motivation to take on a project that would put the mill out of commission for several days. May be down the road.

As for Paul's CNC kit I don't have any complaints- it got me up and running very quickly, inexpensively and so far I haven't had any issues with it. Especially considering other options for the RF30 and the cost I think it's a great bang for the buck.

Like with anything else though you start with something and then you want more/faster/better so I do sometimes wish I had a wizbang mill that had flood coolant, full enclosure, ATC but probably most of all something that'll do 100 ipm rapids and faster spindle. There are some people doing 700 ipm cutting while I'm doing 8-10ipms - then again I'm not a production shop, never will be so I can't afford/justify a $50-100k CNC. May be a $5-6k one some time down the road. For now the RF30 conversion is all I need for making random ****.

Long winded but hope that helps.

 

[Brunow]

Thanks for the input!

90% of my milling i would not need a CNC and could use a DRO far better.
By the time i have a program for the cnc i could do it manual...

Especially with a http://www.yuriystoys.com/p/android-dro.html it would be a huge improvement. But still the idea of a CNC in the garage to make stuff would be cool...

 

[stioc]

That sounds familiar!
I had the same DRO (still do) on my mill before the CNC conversion and it's great. Do you have a RF30 too?

 

[kkroger]

That sounds familiar!
I had the same DRO (still do) on my mill before the CNC conversion and it's great. Do you have a RF30 too?

It does sound familiar... doesn't it...

 

[Brunow]

Yes i have!

 

[stioc]

It does sound familiar... doesn't it...

Like a Deja' vu hahaha

Yes i have!

Nice!

I got distracted by squirrels but I did manage to install a tilt/swivel monitor and keyboard stand. It was getting a bit too crowded for my taste and it's always a struggle to house all the **** I have in a 2 car garage and keep the place functional for various types of work.

Oh and I also added a pendant...I really like having the controls right at the machine.

 

[whateg01]

...

Almost broke my thumb yesterday, forgot the wrench on the drawbar (I was always afraid of that) and turned the motor on then stupidly/instinctively tried to grab the wrench instead of turning off the motor. Woke up with a blue thumb (I was never much of a green thumb anyway) - could've been worse! I post this as a PSA.

I guess that's why the shop rule is never leave a chuck key in the chuck unless your hand is on it. Same with the drawbar wrench.

I use my drill press as a tapping machine, but turn it with a handle that clamps to the spindle pulley. I remove the key from the switch to make sure that I don't forget about the handle and turn the drill press on. I bet it would leave a helluva mark on my forehead if I did that!

Dave

 

[stioc]

I guess that's why the shop rule is never leave a chuck key in the chuck unless your hand is on it. Same with the drawbar wrench.

I use my drill press as a tapping machine, but turn it with a handle that clamps to the spindle pulley. I remove the key from the switch to make sure that I don't forget about the handle and turn the drill press on. I bet it would leave a helluva mark on my forehead if I did that!

Dave

Yeah, it could've been a lot worse if the wrench came off and went flying straight for my head/face. I should start wearing a helmet lol

Like your drill-press switch I've been meaning to put like a cover or something on my spindle switch too where I have to think about it before I can just simply turn it on. In fact, I almost need like a pre-flight checklist because when you do all these steps in random order it's easy to forget something:
- Is the air/coolant line plugged in
- Do I have the right version of the g-code loaded
- Is the part secure
- Is the correct tool loaded
- Remove the drawbar wrench
- Did I pick up the work coordinates already
- Turn on the spindle
- Hit GO

 

[kkroger]

I watched a guy tighten up the chuck on a lathe (15" if that matters) three times... then turned and mounted the tool on the toolpost, then tightened the chuck again... then glanced around and before I could yell to get the chuck key he reached over and hit the switch and engaged the spindle and the chuck key made a third of a turn and hit him right in the chest... bout knocked him off his feet... He whined for a week about how bad it hurt...

 

[stioc]

Man, what an exhausting weekend- I knocked out three garage projects back to back. Exhausting yet somehow so satisfying because despite a few minor challenges it was all a 100% success and I didn't even lose an eye. In Ice Cube's words "today was a good day".

So it all started with this SnapOn wheel balancer I picked up that had been in storage for about 4 yrs, whether it worked was questionable due to lots of rust etc. It runs off of SnapOn batteries or the AC adapter but the guy didn't have either. Anyway, I got it cleaned up, de-rusted etc and wired up to my Craftsman C3 battery and whatdaya know, it lit up like Kitt after being burried in the sand for a long time. I go grab a spare tire off one of my cars and realized the three cones it came with are too big for the hub bore. No problem I say to myself, I can make a cone myself.

Oh wait, ****, I realized I had the lathe's top apart because I was taking measurements to eventually make a beefy compound slidemount. These 9x20 lathes have a very wimpy 1/4" thick 2 bolt mount.

OK so let's make that first and then make the cone. So after the CAD/CAM work I started the fun part. Cut out a chunk of 5/8" CRS steel plate

Pick up the the edge of the workpiece and drill a hole for all future operation tooling to enter the stock. My first time CNC cutting steel.

Shape the part, using a corn-cob rougher and adaptive clearing, DOC 5/8", WOC .005, 5 IPM, 1200 RPM:

Once I got close I used a 4 flute endmill to creep up .002 to .008 a few times on the diameters (using pocketing operation) due to machine/mechanical error etc and I wanted a very nice and tight fit without slop in either the inside or the outside hole- both radially and axially:

The effort was well worth it:

Flipped it over and flycut the surface:

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Comparison old vs. new:

Drilled, counterbored and bolted in place, this took a while, especially grinding the regular nuts into T nuts and using an endmill to counterbore

I really like the heft of the new mount. The only issue is that if I swivel the compound I can't access one of the bolt so I'd have to do with 2 or 3 bolts depending on the access. I can mill the top ends flat until it's level with the counterbore's floor. Then I can make a short allen wrench to get to the bolts.

 

[cooljoe57]

The mechanical parts

OK, so far everything was really straight forward: simple, inexpensive and readily available. However, the mechanical parts was a bit of a challenge for me. I really didn't feel like building parts myself unless I had no other choice. Remember from post #1 of this thread:

Goals: cheap, quick and easy.

I briefly looked at Grizzly's kit and I mean...briefly- as soon as I saw the $5k price tag I closed the browser window . Then I found FlashCut, at the time I didn't know it's their kit Grizzly sells so I emailed them asking if they'll sell the mechanical parts to me. I got no response

At this point it was looking like if I wanted it cheap, it wouldn't be quick because I'd have to take the project on myself. I was coming to terms with this when I came across someone's kit by the name of PaulCNC - I saw the youtube video, then found the pricing online and thought the price was right up my alley. However, I wasn't sold on the design, it just looked too simplistic to me and I wasn't convinced it would work effectively. I'm not a mechanical engineer so when I build mechanical things I often tend to over-engineer things and make them more complex than they need to be perhaps. Anyway, I reached out to Paul via email asking for availability of the mechanical kit. As of this writing Paul sells a complete kit all put together for you to just plug in for $820. He also sell the complete DIY kit for $620 and the mechanical kit for $320 (he loves $20 I see). BTW, Paul's kit is geared towards Mach3 which doesn't matter much to me since it's the same interface as LinuxCNC just different control software.

http://paulcnc.ipower.com/site/

I asked Paul for a reference of a customer whom I can talk to about their experience and longevity of the kit. Paul sent me a contact- this gentleman happens to have a really informative website about all sorts of machining stuff. From his website I gleaned quite a bit of info already and realized he bought Paul's kit several years ago and has since made lots of things on it.
Anyway, I reached out to the contact and as suspected got a very positive feedback. OK Paul, here's my $320 via paypal...and two days later the kit was in my mailbox:

The kit allows you to use the handwheels too, this was important to me as I didn't want to lose that capability if I could help it. I could see times when I'd prefer to run a job manually (e.g. repair work on say a...cylinder head, I know mighty ambitious of an example, but hey...).

Hey Stioc do you know if Paul is still selling ktis? I tried this link you posted, but get an error like something is wrong with the link or his site. Any contact info you can share would be appreciated.

 

[stioc]

Hey Stioc do you know if Paul is still selling ktis? I tried this link you posted, but get an error like something is wrong with the link or his site. Any contact info you can share would be appreciated.

Not sure if he's still selling the kit, I haven't spoken to him since my initial build but I do have his email: pthomps2 at gmail dotcom

 

[cooljoe57]

Not sure if he's still selling the kit, I haven't spoken to him since my initial build but I do have his email: pthomps2 at gmail dotcom

Thanks! I'll shoot him an email

 

[kkroger]

Latest job I did with my mill, bottom is Their Drawing, Middle is MY drawing (one of the dims doesn't match and literally can't match... but I digress) top is the Fusion 3D Model and of course the actual parts sitting there.

 

[stioc]

Nice! the latest job I did with mill...was like months ago and at this point I feel like I can't even remember how to turn it on or how to use F360 anymore. The curse of having too many interests, hobbies and laziness...mainly laziness haha

 

[TerryH]

Catching up on the thread...

Very nice work on the compound mount for the lathe. I have a new to me G0752 lathe that I'll pick up in a few days that needs the same mod. Just waiting on the guy I bought it from to get enough **** cleared out of his "shop" so we can get the lathe moved out. I have the same Enco RF-30 mill also sans the CNC of course. I built the stand for it. Here you can see it and my G8688 mini and the 61" Husky workbench patiently waiting for the G0752 lathe.

 

[stioc]

Congrats on the new lathe! I do recall seeing your thread either here or on Hobby Machinist about the new stand you built for the RF30, it looks great! Nice, clean shop too.

 

[TerryH]

Congrats on the new lathe! I do recall seeing your thread either here or on Hobby Machinist about the new stand you built for the RF30, it looks great! Nice, clean shop too.

Thanks! Now if I could just get the guy in gear so I could get it from him...

 

[Gator-J]

Bringing this back from the dead.

This thread inspired me to purchase one of Paul's kits. Got lots of parts in transit now.

Thanks for putting together the details you did.

 

[stioc]

Glad you found the write up helpful.
It's a very quick and inexpensive way to get your feet wet with CNC if you already own one of these inexpensive mills. Enjoy the build!