Half baked CNC mill

Hi Folks
I have one of these.
http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=...QEwAw&dur=1757

I want to get into CNC and havent really room for another machine. Nor do I really want to modify it too much as it seems they have a "purist following " of guys who feel that any change to the original is sacrilege. I dont subscribe to that school of thought but there may come a day when I might want to sell it to one of them.

In addition the mods required to fit ball screws and keep it neat are probably beyond me
So I have another plan.

I decided I could get one of these ( dirt cheap )
http://www.axminster.co.uk/axminster...ble-prod21825/
Dirt cheap for obvious reasons , but if I plant it on the table of my FP1 and add CNC drives to the two axes then we have a neat solution.
Its cheap enough that you have no qualms about filleting it to add some equally cheap chinese ball screws
http://cgi.ebay.com/2-ballscrews-RM1...item3a56e09f37

"Simples " as the meercats say

Except it isnt quite! Why did I ever expect that?

So far I have stripped the table , thrown away virtually most of the bits, and begun fitting a ballscrew to the base.
The first problem is that nothing seems square to anything else on their machining of these castings. An evening on the marking off table brings me to that conclusion, So split a few differences, find a reasonable datum and effectively start again from scratch. As the dovetails seem to be the most significant bit I have to send a couple of evenings machining the edges and faces of the castings true to the dovetails. Not too difficult once you have decided on the process.
Now having a couple of faces which are actually square to the axis, I now have somewhere to mount the bearings for the ballscrews .

Now we start into chapter two of the saga :rofl:

Forgot that I had started this .
Have now advanced this project a little .
Will come back with some pictures of the progress to date

Now that’s perseverance !

I looked at those cheap Axminster xy tables but in the detailed description it said they were not precision tables so gave them a miss for my drill press upgrade.

Sounds like you got them serviceable at least.

Does ToT have one of those mills? Looks similar ?

Not sure who ToT is but this one is a Deckel FP1 probably early fifties vintage and pics attached . If he has one then would love to hear from him.


Very compact for its capacity as a toolroom mill but nor well suited to CNC conversion , but it was there .
Good in the hobby workshop due to its size , versatile with 360 deg head , and horizontal spindle , power on X (table traverse) , and Z table rise and fall but sadly no power on Y traverse , About 75 mm of quill movement . Mine came with High speed head attachment (6000 rpm) , dividing head , and slotting head very much as shown here. http://www.lathes.co.uk/deckel/page2.html

All the power traverses are driven through the gearboxes and via the crosshead, so dont really lend themselves to adding steppers and ball screws.
These machines are sought after so I didnt want to alter it by adding anything which would fundamentally alter the machine .

I therefore decided that with the universal table at its lowest level, ( and firmly locked ) I could plant a compound table on top of it and with X and Y stepper motors on that I could give myself the two axis functions (X, Y)

All very experimental at first so I was careful with the spending. This was my choice https://www.axminstertools.com/axmin...d-table-400385 not because I thought it was good (it was rough) but because I saw one on ebay at the time for £40.
The leadscrews and nuts were rubbish, and so were the handwheels , but as I intended to replace them with the chinese ball screws this didnt matter.
These were the sort of things I went for https://www.ebay.com/itm/25056566456...item3a56e09f37 and as above price was the major consideration.
Had to shorten ballscews, reverse ball nuts, and butcher the table itself to provide decent square landings for the mountings , but this was pretty basic stuff and the final result when I drove the table in X and Y directions using a cordless drill was quite satisfying.
So more later on the conversion of the CT1 table. I actually believe this is a good way for a novice builder to go as mistakes will not be seriously costly, the table has quite long traverses, and if you have a mill with the space to accommodate one then you can retain the manual adjustment functions of the old machine too.

(For info there is also a metric version of this table for a little more money https://www.axminstertools.com/aenxm...d-table-105710 but as it seems to be the same table with metric screws which you will throw away, So no reason to spend the extra £60)