johnsmachines

Just a quickie to show you a progress photo of my current project.

It is a very small milling motor with a small ER collet, mounted onto the toolpost of my Boxford CNC lathe, which will convert the lathe from 2 to 3 axes.

At this early stage the toolpost holder and cylindrical motor have been mounted to the water jet cut bracket on the right side.  Pulleys and drive belt yet to be fitted and I will trim the shaft at the left hand end of the motor.  Then the motor wires are connected to a speed and direction and on-off controller.

The usefulness of this tool is apparent in the following video of a completed unit in use.  The main spindle motor of the lathe is now a 750w AC servo motor, which can be controlled from Mach 3, to go to programmed positions and hold the position while a milling procedure takes place.  Of course the milling procedure will be with small cutters or drills, perhaps up to 3-4mm diameter.

The idea, plans, and some of the parts are courtesy of Stuart Tankard, my very clever friend, whose completed machine is the subject of the following video.

Stuart’s video is republished here with permission.  The original, with comments, is visible on YouTube.  If you have technical questions about the setup, I suggest that you contact Stuart via his YouTube post.