Flying together

As of Monday the Bridgeport CNC mill has been 100% complete, but that depends on what "complete" means. For now it's a functioning 3 axis mill with computer actuated spindle direction and speed with an automatic air brake for tool changing. Things on the list to come are a digital encoder to track spindle position which enables rigid tapping, a fourth axis CNC rotary table/lathe , a servo to power the knee up and down, and possibly a trunion table for 5 axis machining. For now I'll be pursuing production of custom race car components which may have a market with FormulaSAE racing. More to come on that.


Custom limit switch hook ups using CAT5e cables, stepper motor wiring needed to be reconfigured

Brake resistor which emits all the heat from electronic braking of the spindle. A healthy dose of thermal paste as usual.

 Variable speed drive being reassembled. I plan to replace this with a one-to-one belt drive, but for now I'll put up with the flappy noise it makes.

I had to lay the head over to get the extra long drawbar in. This thing is really tall!

Now, more importantly, check out this sweet eagle on a globe.

Alamo Aviation

Here at Alamo CNC we can cut big designs out of foam. Like this drone airplane fuselage. I'm just really glad I bought the blue foam and not the pink. Huge mess.

Now for the video. I know, you just can't wait ;-)

Thanks for reading!

Saturday night's all right for wiring!

Wiring is boring, tedious, and may catch on fire when finished. Great.

The computer board on the left is for translating data coming from a PC computer and giving orders to the red motor controllers on the right. It also controls the speed of the spindle motor and many other on/off devices needed for production milling.

Homemade cat5 cables

Below on the left these red/black wires provide 63V power to the stepper motors thanks to the big round power transformer. The large fuses bring in 230V single phase power which can be split into 115V when needed.

The 24 pin parallel port connectors were painstakingly installed on the side of the metal box. Each one took 30 minutes to grind out with a dremel. Looks nice though. The one below the plug outlet speaks to the PC computer, and the other will communicate with a MPG (manual pulse generator) ((a hand wheel doodad that moves the machine table around))

 I wrote a "quick" cnc program to drill the many holes needed for the Gecko motor controllers

 Show a little thermal paste love. Making this plate and the four legs took a while :-/

Huge thank you to Phil Hope at PMH Machining in Cuero, TX. Phil did a fantastic job gun drilling this spindle 9/16" by 24" deep. I'm very pleased with the quality and speed of his service. Highly recommended!

 This will soon be a homemade drawbar for keeping the cutting tool snug!

To get some proper cleaning done I decided to remove the table and ball screws. Everything inside the machine looked very nice.There was minimal buildup of metal shavings and the ways are very clean.

At this point I chickened out, because when removing the saddle and y axis ball screw the re-alignment procedure gets more advanced than I felt comfortable with considering no parts were being replaced.

Last weekend I got the whim to "print" this dinosaur I found on cnczone.com.

Thanks for reading!