I wanted to lay out my goals and options here, just so everybody who sees it can understand.
This will primarily be to assist in dev of new parts and designs with a goal of having a degree of self-sufficiency so that there is less reliance on overseas machining and manufacturing at small group quantities. Hopefully this will allow for better testing and assessment of potential designs.
Current machinery:
Huisn WM-25VB Mill
I already have an ArizonaCNC ballscrew kit for the mill.
Grizzly G0602Z Lathe (no motor/drive)
Milwaukee 120v portaband in SWAG stand
Pendant rotary handtool/grinder
I plan to swap over my Clough42 ELS setup to the Grizzly from my supercheap 7x14 lathe. I Have a BLDC for the Grizzly but still need to design wiring/motor and pulley bonding, etc.
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For the mill, the plan is CNC. There are a few options, with one definitely being slightly less capable (but potentially less expensive)
- The Acorn Direction:
Using a Centroid Acorn board ($329) with their Digitizing capable software ($399), this still leaves motors, drivers, a host, endstops, etc.
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- The UCCNC Direction
UCCNC license is included with most board purchases, but are usually available for $60 or less if not included (when bundled with a board). A UC300ETH and breakout, or a C76 combo board, can be as low as $376.50. There is a CNC4PC box ( https://cnc4pc.com/closed-loop-nema23-stepper-controller.html ) which looks very promising. Minus 4x closed loop stepper kit (they are the wrong shaft size for the ArizonaCNC ballscrew/mount kit) and then I would need to source 2x NEMA23 closed loop controller/motor from OMC and 1x NEMA34 closed loop controller/motor.
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- The Duet Option
Duet has a control board for external steppers. Duet also announced a closed-loop NEMA23 which has an unknown and unmentioned release date. Specs are also unknown. It may be similar to the OMC/StepperOnline closed-loop motors, or it may not. It uses FDCAN so in theory the entire motion control could be CANBUS + endstops. No digitizing support. Lacks many G and M codes.
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Regardless of option, additional costs will be incurred in the form of an enclosure and control host. The control host could be as simple as a cheap surplus Lenovo mini PC from ebay. Pendant hacks exist, and can be made from game controllers.
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UCCNC and acorn can support a 4th (rotary) axis but I am unsure about Duet. I am leaning towards UCCNC, partly because CNC4PC has a configurator with cabinet, power supplies, faceplates, rear ports available. This option would greatly simplify life, because I would not need to build a cabinet.
As far as the level of 'fancy', my initial plan is for manual tool swaps, tool setting probe, and maybe speed control. The standard mill potentiometer does offer manual speed control, but I have yet to probe the voltage to see if it can be controlled with a board similar to the C89 from CNC4PC.
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Incidentals will take the form of grease fittings, tubing for ballscrew greasing system, fasteners, cable management, 19" rack and mounting hardware to mount the controller beneath the table, endstops, extra wire/cable, and some things I have surely forgotten.
'Good to have' would be a second matching Tegara vise or even a fixture plate. Saunders makes one ( https://saundersmachineworks.com/products/precision-mathews-pm-25-aluminum-fixture-tooling-plate ) and there may be others. This allows work holding beyond what can be done with just a vise and some angle blocks.
I already have a steel prep table from Grainger which I plan to use for the mill stand (to free up my tired Dewalt Planer table) but it will need some welded reinforcements. I have some steel and a TIG welder, and the table, but may need some angle steel to make a more robust reinforcement.
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No current plans to CNC the lathe. It just needs some fixing, and several SDP/SI pulleys and belts and other bobbins to integrate the ELS.