A freind of min in South Africa is building a CNC milling machine and needs some bits for it.

This is waht he is after

"I need 3 servo motors and the power supply plus the controller, basically I need the complete kit to convert a 3 Axis Manuel milling machine into cnc.


I have a 800mm bed that moves 600mm on the X Axis and 300mm on the Y Axis

the Z Axis moves 300mm.


I want to machine precision clearances, so the servo motors must have more then normal steps in a single rotation."


Does anyone know a good reliable UK supplier who would be able to provide these parts?

Cheers
Dai

Whats the original milling machine? The size of that will determine which supplier to get steppers (not servos, servos are precision but less than one rotation) from.

Depending on how much geekery the chap possesses, I currently have a fair love for Grbl as a controller, I build a little laser cutter with it and its super easy. For a pro workshop piece of kit, you'd want to look elsewhere, Grbl needs you to put motor drivers and things together.

The bed size is 800mm that moves 600mm on the X Axis and 300mm on the Y Axis the Z Axis moves 300mm

I can ask what make and model miller he is building it from. Could well be one we don't all to often see over here.


I had a feeling this is a question you might be able to help on

I'd be looking to see if the factory offered the conversion, if so what motors were used, otherwise hunt round for people doing the conversions on similar sized equipment. Stepper choice is going to be critical for something of that size, but it won't be cheap.

http://www.arceurotrade.co.uk/Catalogue ... per-Motors

Start there, Arc are pretty damn awesome for not bad quality kit at cheaperness prices. They have stepper drivers one level up, all of which can be driven by pretty much any controller. 65Nm of torques out the biggest one, which should be enough for most things, but the maths might work out he can get away with a smaller. Working out how to couple the motors to the bed is always interesting, depending if he'll ever want to use it as a "normal" mill again.

Then working out how to deal with the backlash of the standard acme screws is the next bit of fun, proper CNC gear uses ball screws to get round it. Arc sell them again, but by this time you are putting a lot of money into the project and you havn't even started on the time!

I have passed that link onto and he is well made up finding them