Welcome to my CNC conversion page

3 November 2009 Around the first of November I "inherited" a longbed Sherline lathe in excellent condition from a very fine Jewish chieftoolmaker. About the same time, someone led me to a video on Youtube, where I stumbled upon a Brazilian machinist named Luis Ally, better known as "Tryally", who demonstrates his use of the Sherline lathe and mill in a cnc environment. Sr. Ally finds the cost of importing tools from the US very expensive, so makes many of his own tools.

Sr. Ally is very kind about showiing us how he makes things, and giving us good instructions. His videos opened my eyes to the number of things which simple can't be done on a manual lathe or mill, but are a piece of cake on a cnc machine.

Next week I hope to have my lathe and mill both operating under cnc control, and the long, cold, dark winter will hopefully be a lot more productive this years.

One thing I've learned in watching videos of cnc work, they produce lots and lots of "swarf", the shaved metal which is cut away in most maching operations. At first I was machining mostly cast iron. The "swarf" was easy to control, as it was mostly a dust, and could easily be collected in real time with a magnet located near the work. And, there wasn't much of it.

Enter aluminum, and the swarf problem gets a lot worse. First, the operations go much faster, so there is a lot more swarf. Also, instead of being dust, it's long curly sharp tenacles, which stick to carpet, clothing, etc.

As my garage cannot be heated, I work in my living room, now, but will eventually move to the spare bedroom. An enclosure is needed. Also, the cnc machine has a bigger footprint, due to the stepper motors and mounts hanging off. At the same time, a longer Y axis bed was ordered, which again made the foorprint bigger.

A shop nearby produces custom counter tops, and they have a huge stack of "sink holes" which they've cut out of the counter tops. I measured carefully and they cut me a sink hole to 18" x 28". Wish now that I'd added an extra inch in each direction. Then called my local glass shop, who had done me great service in my landlording days. They cut me four pieces of plexiglass, 18" tall in the back, 12" tall in the front. Hope that this is tall enough.

Mill enclosure, nearly finished
Above, the enclosure is nearly finished. Need to devise an easy to use mounting for the front plexiglass door or panel. The mill column was removed to drill mounting holes for the stepper motor adapter. It awaits reinstallation and tramming.

The mirror on the back panel is clearly visible. Will be helpful when milling on the back side of parts which are too big to fit between the column and the spindle. Now that the longer mill base is installed, a spindle spacer block is probably in order.