{"id":58,"date":"2013-12-02T20:11:00","date_gmt":"2013-12-02T20:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.hslracing.com\/workshop\/2013\/12\/02\/prologue\/"},"modified":"2021-05-24T11:41:59","modified_gmt":"2021-05-24T10:41:59","slug":"prologue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.hslracing.com\/workshop\/2013\/12\/prologue.html","title":{"rendered":"Prologue"},"content":{"rendered":"

For some time now I have wanted a Milling machine.<\/p>\n

I have had the debate with myself many times about “small and new” vs “bigger and older”, and whilst I would love to own a Bridgeport<\/a> turret mill, I simply don’t have the space or the ability to collect it\/move it about, plus I have to justify the potential use vs cost to my better half (and to myself if I am brutally honest).<\/p>\n

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I am not saying I won’t end up spending just as much on the smaller mill as on the larger one, however I can use what I learn on the smaller one and maybe work up to justifying a larger mill at some point in the future.<\/p>\n

I have contemplated various other machines available via ebay<\/a>\u00a0but I think I have settled on a Sieg SX2P<\/a> from Arc Euro Trade<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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There are numerous Mini Mills out in the world, most are made by Sieg<\/a>\u00a0in China, and are then sold with different paint jobs, names and model numbers by the various different suppliers (Little Machine Shop<\/a>, Grizzly<\/a>, Machine Mart<\/a>, Axminster<\/a>, Sealey<\/a>, etc, etc).<\/p>\n

I really like the\u00a0SX2P<\/a>\u00a0because it has the solid column, and belt drive motor that many people mention as shortfalls of the original X2 mini mill<\/a>, plus it has the extended Y travel and larger table of the Super X1 Mill<\/a>\u00a0that is exclusive to\u00a0Arc Euro Trade<\/a>\u00a0(although the table is available as an upgrade from the likes of LMS<\/a>, as is the extended Y Axis travel base<\/a>).<\/p>\n

In all, several upgrades that I would no doubt be wanting to perform already included in the base price.<\/p>\n

The only downside is that there is not much room under the table to allow for changes in the lead screw and nut for CNC conversion.<\/p>\n

I found a version of a CNC converted\u00a0X2<\/a>\u00a0on Sketchup Warehouse<\/a>\u00a0that uses a CNC Fusion<\/a> conversion and proceeded to modify all the parts to be those for an\u00a0SX2P<\/a>, and then started generating parts to upgrade the functionality based on ideas from Hossmachine<\/a>\u00a0and Donald Bird<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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The above image shows a partially completed CNC conversion, the spindle for a 4th axis based on a replacement spindle for a C3 Lathe<\/a>, some bearings\u00a0and M27x1.5 lock nuts, Donald Bird’s designs for an\u00a0articulating spacer<\/a>, CNC conversion<\/a> and a power drawbar<\/a>\u00a0but using a commercially available 50mm bore 25mm stroke double action air actuator from\u00a0ebay<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I removed the control box from the side of the spindle as I will be controlling the spindle directly from Mach3 using Donald Bird’s closed loop control<\/a>. I have reworked the board design in Eagle<\/a>\u00a0using a\u00a0ground plane<\/a>, and have come up with what is mainly a single sided board 1.4 inches square (35.5mm square).<\/p>\n

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This could be bought in a quantity of 10 from\u00a0Itead Studio<\/a>\u00a0for $9.90, milled on the CNC machine itself with a suitable engraving head, using isolation routing with gcode generated by\u00a0PCB GCode<\/a>, or made up on the same proto board as Donald used, which can be had from\u00a0Amazon<\/a>\u00a0for $6.20 for a pack of 5, and are also available on\u00a0ebay<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Once I am ready to make this I will post an article on my electronics blog<\/a> showing which method I chose.<\/p>\n

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For some time now I have wanted a Milling machine. I have had the debate with myself many times about “small and new” vs “bigger and older”, and whilst I would love to own a Bridgeport turret mill, I simply don’t have the space or the ability to collect it\/move it about, plus I have…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-58","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorised"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.hslracing.com\/workshop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.hslracing.com\/workshop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.hslracing.com\/workshop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.hslracing.com\/workshop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.hslracing.com\/workshop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.hslracing.com\/workshop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":247,"href":"https:\/\/blog.hslracing.com\/workshop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58\/revisions\/247"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.hslracing.com\/workshop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.hslracing.com\/workshop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.hslracing.com\/workshop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}