Replacing the 220 V DC motor on an Optimum BF Mill with an AC servo motor
The Optimum BL20 mill was acquired by a late friend of mine, Peter McKenzie. Another friend of mine, Ockert Lombard bought it from Peter’s estate, and converted it to CNC. I acquired the converted mill from Ockert again. Although I was very satisfied with the CNC converter mill, the electronics of the 220V DC spindle motor was constantly giving problems. After some searching on the Web I decided to replace the 220V DC spindle motor with a AC Servo motor.
Construction of an ATC for an OMNI CNC router
We acquired a OMNI 2200L CNC router in 2016 for the cutting of wood, plastics and carbon fiber. Although we used the Mach3 2010 screen-set and auto tool-change routines, there always have been a need to have a automatic tool changer on the router. Then a 2.2 kW, 4-pole, 24000 rpm ATC spindle was acquired from JCL in China. The work started to develop the electrical-, pneumatic- and software interface for the new spindle.
Converting a MiniTech 5-axis CNC mill from Mach 3 to linuxcnc
About 3 years ago the MiniTech mill was acquired second-hand, it had been in storage for some time. With effort Danie Jr managed to get it working with Mach3, therafter the aged electronincs were replaced, including a Mesa card, and the system converted to linuxcnc.
The 1st step was to construct a 5-axis router demonstrator, and the integration thereof with linuscnc.
Thereafter the aged electronics of the Minitech Micromill was replaced by modern electronics, kinematics required for the 5-axis machine were derived and implemented in linuxcnc. A component, requiring continuous 5-axis machining, were produced.
An instructable can also be found regarding the calibration of the above Minitech MicroMill:
https://www.instructables.com/5-axis-Minitech-Mill-Mach3-to-LinuxCNC-Conversion