Busy Bee knee Milling machine Mississauga On. $2500

[Susquatch]

With enough searching, one could probably locate a 1/2-12 tap or die!

With single point threading on a lathe there are no such limits. Thread pitch is independent of diameter.

 

[Dabbler]

If you are partial to tapping rather than single point, a Canadian company is in the business of making custom taps. I forget their name, but the prices are within reason. my question if it is 1/2 - 12 is it 55 degree or 60 degree threads?

 

[slow-poke]

If you are partial to tapping rather than single point, a Canadian company is in the business of making custom taps. I forget their name, but the prices are within reason. my question if it is 1/2 - 12 is it 55 degree or 60 degree threads?

Thanks to all above for the thread details. Now that I know what it is, no problem cutting a 1/2-12 because I have an ELS on my lathe. One tool I don't have is a torch so making that quirky bend like the original needs to be solved.

Made a little progress yesterday.
+ The pedestal is now standing
+ Slipped a ShopFox base under it to aid moving around
+ Bolted the head back on
+ Powered up the motor for the first time:
- Not sure what's up with the belt tensioner, appears to be missing something
- motor pulley is not aligned properly
- motor pulley has a slight wobble (much like my old mill when I purchased), I fixed the original with a taper lock pulley and I will do the same for this one.

+ ordered a 1.5HP 3-phase motor from Lenmark, Price $113 new surplus.

- Played with the quill, the mechanism that engages the quick lever is different than the one on my old mill and either I inadvertently released the return spring or it was broken or disengaged as shipped. Either way if anyone has any advice on how to fix the return spring please chime in.

Slow but steady..........

 

[slow-poke]

3-phase motor arrived, very well packed!

 

[neer724]

That motor looks familiar!

Check out this video:

 

[slow-poke]

New motor and used $50 eBay special VFD are running nicely. Hope this VFD is as flawless as my old Altivar, I quite like this variety, the manual is well written and it's easy to program.

Need to make plexiglass cover for VFD, but will revisit that later.

The pulley mated to the original motor had a small wobble nearly identical to how my original RC mill had a motor pulley wobble, a taper fit pulley was the solution for the old mill and runs true as true could be on this one as well. I really like those taper bore pulleys.

Runs very smooth and quiet. I'm a VFD fan boy.
VFD conversion cost: $113+50 = $163, will sell the old motor now.

Wondering why the goofy mounting plate, answer I use scrap when possible and that's what I had in 1/2" scrap.

 

[YotaBota]

Looks good.
Are you planning on a pot for rpm control and a tach to show the rpm?

 

[slow-poke]

Temporary pot was just for a quick test. I will make some sort of custom control panel similar to what I did for my old mill, but some other color, no more green.

 

[Susquatch]

Need to make plexiglass cover for VFD, but will revisit that later.

I LOVE THIS IDEA!

I want it where I can see it but I don't want swarf getting into it!

Totally rethinking my mounting plans!

Thank you!

 

[YotaBota]

no more green

Motor blue?

IIRC, you had a build of the control panel but I can't find it, do you remember what thread it was in?

 

[slow-poke]

Motor blue?

IIRC, you had a build of the control panel but I can't find it, do you remember what thread it was in?

Motor blue, yes I like that, motor blue it shall be.

I don't recall posting a thread about the control panel build but I'm happy to provide any and all details, short version:

I needed a way to get quite a number of I/O into Mach:
- lots of buttons
- lots of LEDs
- 6 limit switches
- spindle speed
- spindle control
- rotary encoder
- yada, yada, yada

I thought about purchasing a Mach compatible pendant, however seemed like people were having flakiness issues with limited support and I just imagined this flaky pendant never having a home and constantly falling on the floor making it even more flaky, so I figured I would just make what I want and mount it in a convenient place. Around that time I discovered this little programable board called a Pokeys57E that has hooks for Mach. It's an interesting little board that provides a bunch of I/O, encoder inputs etc.

So I made the green control board (see above), with a DIP connector on the back that accepts the Pokeys board. I still needed more I/O, so I used either a SPI or i2C (can't recall) type encoder for the keyboard matrix and another to drive the LEDs, so leveraged 3 or so pins to make about 50 I/O for the buttons and LEDs.

The Pokeys board comes with software called PoBlocks that lets you create logic graphical, for example a counter, that on each button press increments the counter and then rolls over at the count you specify. By adding say four comparators with the values 1...4) after that counter, pressing the button activates the output of the first comparator and subsequent presses activate the other comparators one at a time and then on the fifth press rolls over to zero and turns all the outputs off. So it was really easy to create a functional control panel with no actual programming. I probably have a spare (unpopulated) board if anyone is inclined.

 

[slow-poke]

A few images of Y axis ballscrew and servo upgrade.....

 

[slow-poke]

X-Axis ballscrew and motor mount is now complete. I put a handle on one end and a little spin and it rotates several revolutions just with the hand wheel momentum, ballscrews are sooo smooth.

Working on the electronics cabinet now, making a window to expose the bling.