Mill power feed project...

[John Hill]

...it looks a bit rough but it does work!



Now I need to make a PWM controller for it and tidy things up a bit..



http://flic.kr/p/bb5py2


The motor is from a computer mag tape drive (about 35 years old), I made the worm and wheel and the rest is 9mm aluminium plate, also from the old tape drive. The motor is rated at 48v, it will drive the table down to 5v but is shown here at 13v smooth DC from an old bench power supply.

I feel the wheel will not last long and I am sure it would be OK being able to run a little faster so I will probably be making another, but smaller, worm and wheel sometime.

Sorry about the poor quality video.

 

[miner49r]

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. The beautiful part is not having to crank the handle by hand. Have you tried running it at 48v yet?
Alan

 

[John Hill]

Hi Alan, it runs quite a bit faster on 48V but not fast enough for what one would like for positioning etc. I am now working on a dog clutch to make engaging the drive more convenient and less wearing to the worm wheel. Other developments in planning include a smaller work wheel for higher speeds and computer sourced PWM and hopefully some way of the computer reading the DRO signals then I need to learn about CNC et al!

I fully expect there will be some limitations to CNC operation as I do not intend (at least not at this time) converting to ball screws.