The machine I purchased from CNC Router Parts / AVID CNC is approaching 8 years old and it is still going strong. With all the projects for myself, friends and neighbors this machine runs every weekend and often picks up a couple mid-week / work runs each week as well. Most of the projects on this machine are plasma cutting in steel, aluminum & stainless, but there are occasional parts on the router side of the machine and even a bit of 4’th axis - rotary work, here and there.
This project involved making a series of brackets. The complexity doesn’t come through in the writing and it involved making parts to achieve high precision mounting in multiple axis over a pretty good distance. The first thought was to machine these parts from steel on the mill, but a bit of design planning allowed me to make these as simple plasma cut, bent and welded parts on the AVID CNC plasma table.
I picked up an encoder set (eBay) for installation my 1960’s vintage Clausing model 5914 lathe.
I spent a good amount of time sketching out designs before arriving at one I liked and at that point it was over to the computer to drive some CAD, generate some G-Code and then head out to the AVID CNC plasma table to cut some parts.
It is hard to see in this next image, but this part gets installed on the back of the cross-slid fit in along side the taper attachment and picking up some of the existing mounting bolts used by it. The piece sticking up is welded to the X-axis linear encoder mount and the part sticking down offers two bolt holes to pick up slots in a mating part that attaches to the shuttle / encoder read-head on the Z-axis.
These were fixtured to keep them parallel during welding.
You can see the tab/slot design to keep this all in alignment.
Then back to to the plasma cutter to generate the next set of brackets for the Z-axis mount. After bending and minimal welding these look like the following.
There was a whole saga getting the precision needed for the mounting holes and getting those drilled and tapped in the lathe but this worked quite well.
I wasn’t kidding, I do still make sketches of parts capturing a few minimal dimensions of parts I need to make before heading to the computer do drive some CAD and then back out to the plasma cutter.
And of course everything gets a nice long-lasting powder coat finish…
And then mounting for the display head. You bet there was a small sketch, then some CAD then back to the AVID CNC plasma cutter.
These parts were powder coated and then a quick test fit. I didn’t grab an image of it, but I drilled and installed a pair of riv-nuts into the heavy duty shelving rail to attach this.
These last two images were a little washed out but this work turned out great.
There was a lot of work not shown like deep drilling and tapping the cast iron base of the lathe with hand tools and the problems of moving an ~1,450lb lathe so I could get in behind it to work on it and all of the related activities, but I’m glad to have the encoders to use and the project was well worth it.
-Kenneth