7 Attachment(s)
Home-made CNC lathe using servos
This is a thread about CNC Lathe I recently built. This is my first CNC machine, and obviously, I’m not a CNC guru. Being an engineer, I prefer more practical ways of making things rather than R&D approach with investing plenty of time, money and energy. This is also why I use simple and robust ideas instead of diving deep into unique ones and solving the problems just created.
https://youtu.be/73clOyYkPpQ
I started with Atlas lathe bed I bought on ebay. This bed has pretty wide (1-1/2”) flat ways, so one can easily put the linear bearing rails on it.
Attachment 376716
I use THK HRW-21 slides. The rail is 37mm wide, so it uses the whole width of the bed ways. The slide block is 21mm tall (with a rail) – this is a low-profile series. I think it’s important to use low-profile one here because the overall heights of the “sandwich” limits the maximum swing over carriage. The same HRW-21 slides are used for X coordinate as well.
I put ~1/2” aluminum plate in between of Z and X rails. I milled the surfaces and made the threaded holes to mount the slides on the plate. The X-screw supports are also mounted on the plate. The milling was done on my manual EMCO machine.
Attachment 376717
There are some essential parts I bought in LMS online store. These are: the headstock casting, the spindle with 4” flange, and the milling table.
Attachment 376718
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I didn’t buy the headstock assembly because it goes with 3” spindle, ball bearings and other stuff I didn’t need (gears, etc.). I installed roller bearings. The riser blocks were made to rise the headstock by 1-1/2”.
1605 ballscrews were installed on both coordinates. The bed has about 42mm spacing between the ways. So 40mm wide ballnut fits perfectly.
Attachment 376721
Attachment 376722
To be continued with Drives and Tooling.