BusyBee B048 Mill Upgrades

[terry_g]

I bought a new BusyBee B048 mill 14 years ago.

I thought I would share some of the upgrades I did to it. Some of them will probably work for other light milling machines. The first time I ran it I found it too low for my old tired back so I laminated a base from 3/4" plywood to raise it 5 1/4". That made a big difference.

The spindle had a threaded stop. It was 1/2" 20 thread which I found painful when I had to adjust it any amount. I replaced the threaded shaft with a straight shaft with a pinch clamp on it. Another big improvement.

The slowest speed was 270 RPM. For some things that could be a bit too fast so I made a pulley with an expanding arbour to give a lowest speed of 160 RPM. It require a shorter belt. The motor shaft only goes half way through the cone pulley.

There is a big gap in the spindle speeds between 420 and 950 RPM. I was able to solve this with a single belt giving 660 RPM.

 

[Former Member]

Other work you should consider......

Head spacer, adds space above table (4"min, 6"max).
Head Lock, prevents from rotating under load from the x-axis
CNC
Flood cooling
Cooling/Chip containment
VFD

All of these already done to mine (CT054).

In the process of adding ballscrews.
Upgrading the way oiling
And lastly rotary table (4th axis CNC).

 

[slow-poke]

Thanks for posting, with a touch of luck I will be doing the same soon. I have a nice 1.5HP, 3-P with VFD on my existing mill, I might swap it for the single phase if I actually get this thing.

I'm curious after setup do you mostly use the knee or the quill for Z travel?

Would like to get the details on your ball screws.

I will definitely make a platform, one thing I quite like about my present mill is the height.

I will definitely add CNC capability, not sure if I will use steppers again or servos?

I'm curious what size steppers people are using when adding CNC to this size mill? I would think turning the handles on this vs. my little round column requires about the same effort.

 

[Former Member]

Lots of questions.

I would definitely recommend the column extension, when you add vise, work and tool holder you quickly run out of travel in the knee.

Quill for Z
Servos Nema34 Clearpath SDSK only option.
Ball screws are dual nut 1605 setups, clearance and backlash reduction, dual nut also reduces wear and damage to the ball screw/nut system as they provide preload.

Control system Acorn CNC, bought from CNC4PC to get their add on board for the Clearpath, basically turns everything into Plug and Play.