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This gantry mill was a Techno-Isel Series I XYZ table on which I mounted a Sherline
milling head. It is made of aluminum extrusions and equipped with 2mm-pitch
ballscrews and linear ball bearings. The overall size of the mill was 39 W x 35 D x 29 H,
and it had a working volume of 19.7 x 19.7 x 3.9 inches.
The table surface (made out of T-slotted extrusions) is 30 x 30 inches. I outfitted
the mill with a 13 x 10 inch tooling plate (with grid of
10-32 threaded holes) and a 3-inch Enco toolmaker's vise.
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I made an adapter plate to mount a Sherline milling head to
the Z axis. I installed the Sherline 10000 RPM pulley set, and
a quick-change motor mount of my own design (change from high to low
speed range in less than 30 seconds) based on the Sherline 10krpm mount. In the spindle control
box I installed a DigiSpeed controller card which let me control spindle speed
through the gcode program, and I added a filter
capacitor across the spindle motor brushes to minimize electrical noise.
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The driver box had a 3-axis Xylotex card, a 30V switching power supply
(the maximum the Xylotex will handle), high-efficiency switching
converter for the 5V logic supply, a filtered power entry module, fuses
on both AC and DC, optoisolators on the input lines, ferrite EMI filter
beads on all output lines, and a metal EMI fan filter. Stepper cable
connectors had threaded locking rings (Radio Shack CB microphone plugs.)
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The mill was outfitted with Igus high-flex-life CNC-rated cables running
in Igus cable chain and trays. I routed the spindle AC cord separately to minimize line noise.
It was capable of rapids at over 100 inches/minute, but I set the rapids at 60 in/min.
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