X3 - CNC FURTHER OPTIONS

摘要

Dick Stephen has written extensively in this magazine of his experiences with CNC conversions, and most recently on converting an X3 mill to CNC. Dick kept me updated with his progress as he performed his conversion, knowing that I planned to do a similar conversion in due course, so I not only had the benefit of seeing his articles before attempting my own conversion, but also the benefit of having talked through some of the techniques with him at various times. The overall approach I took was broadly the same as Dick has described - replacing the leadscrews on all axes with 2mm pitch THK ballscrews, using size 23 stepper motors, and so on; however, my conversion differs in a number of details from Dick's. As some of these detailed differences may be of interest to other would-be CNC-ers, I decided to put together a small article to describe them.