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gonna try and do a retrofit

leonpiper69

Plastic
Joined
May 8, 2013
Location
Levittown PA
i know i have read its not cost effective but i more time than money (im a stay at home dad so when the baby is taking a nap i can tinker for an hour here and there in the garage).

i picked up a mint smithy 1720CNC for cheap. it is spotless. i ordered a set of stepper motors and motor controllers with power supplies and breakout etc.

next i need ballscrews (doing some research and think i found a good source) but i dont know yet what else im going to need.

i tried searching but havent found any retrofits. i want to see what other people have done and had success with especially as far as parts.


one big question..... my machine is a 3 in 1 and it has a power feed so i can thread. will i lose the threading capability by adding the cnc? im planning on using mach3 software, dont know if it will do threading.
 
retro fits are a bad idea but you already know that. Retrofitting a 3 in 1 is an even worse idea. Just for the record we are not allowed to talk about 3 in 1 machines so this will be locked but at least I got in before the door was shut.
 
Having time on your hands in no reason to pee money away. Please abort this project as the outcome will be a very expensive boat anchor!
 
Having done a retrofit on my RF45 using Mach3 and now running a Cincinatti Arrow 500 retrofit using LinuxCNC/EMC2 I would never go back to mach3 again...Good luck with your retrofit and yeah this place is not much for the whole retrofit thing. There is a smithy forum on the zone that might be helpful. Peace

Pete
 
More your choice of candidate machine. Good retrofits can be very useful things, but a retrofitted mill is not nor ever will be a VMC the 2 just are not comparable and that's why so many frown on the retrofits. If you want a VMC go buy one. If you want some automated functions very similar to the auto cycling hydraulic machines of old retrofits rock :-) By goging cnc you have a lot more control options for than any auto cycle machine could imagine. That said its still a useful bit of kit used correctly it can be a bloody profitable bit of kit too! Not something you can say about any 3:1 machine!
 
ok, guess i joined for nothing...........

No,,, no ,,, no.

You will find all kinds of nifty ideas for cutting parts here that you will find nowhere else.

This is not a good place for low buck retrofits but I would disagree that you are wasting your time pursuing it.
There are other places on the net to go where many posts are about doing what you are thinking about.

It is very hard to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, but it can be done and the process of trying will teach you a lot.
Starting on a bench machine is a great place to learn.

Given enough time and money I could turn your machine into a 1/4 micron micro-machining machine.
At a high level I'm thinking about a quote I once read in the motorcycle world, "With enough money you can turn a coffee table into a competitive road racer".
Bob
 








 
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