Chris Prossers' Blog

Abandoned: CNC Mill

I don't know about the rest of you, but I start a lot of projects that don't reach completion. I've become emotionally attached to the parts that I dragged around with me so I'm loathe to part with them, but I thought I would start documenting them.

Back when I lived in San Francisco and had full use of my arms I bought a Rong Fu RF-31 Mill/Drill from Enco:

Picture of 300 pound mill/drill machine

I was having a blast with it and lusting after making it CNC. But then I got a repetitive strain injury and lost the ability to wrench the bolts that hold the head in place. The mill languished for a long time at my studio at the Cataclysmic Megashear Ranch. When I moved to Seattle I left the mill behind in the care of Jamie Nasiatka. This was back in 2004, I haven't been a great friend and slowly lost touch with him. But a quick search just showed that he finished what I always intended: converting the mill to CNC.

I've since purchased a Mini-Mill that fits my shop and arm capabilities. Due to my CNC lust back in San Francisco, I purchased a number of the parts needed to convert the mill to CNC.

The parts are totally useless for my Mini-Mill.

Mini-Mill, small but easy on the arms.

Here are my parts that I'm still trying to come up with a creative use for:

36V 20A [Linear Power Supply for the Motors
Old Servo motor drives from Gecko (http://www.geckodrive.com/g320-p-46.html)
Servo motors with encoders from Dan Mauch at Camtronics

Parallel Port breakout card (sorta useless since I don't have a computer with a parallel port anymore).

Possible uses:

power drive for the lead screw on the 9x20 lathe. I doubt I'll cnc it, but it would be an mighty accurate power feed if hooked up to an arduino.