Old bed mill, 1985 matsuura

Bought it on Ebay last year. I was looking at interacts, seem fine machines. The ones I was looking at[looow price ones] all seemed to have the 151 controler, I almost bought a really nice one with a load of tooling but the fact it didn't do three axis simultanous motion and not being that keen on a knee put me off. Found a 1979 matsuura for sale, must admit 1979 sounded a bit ridicoulous, not that I had any prior knowledge of 70s/80s computers. Then I spotted a 1985 machine on ebay.
http://integerspin.co.uk/ebay-images/matsuura01.jpg
It will never be that pretty again. But it will take up less room.

I actually bid almost a thousand more than I got it for, so I was pretty pleased. When I was offered the one I mentioned above I got the floor plans and stuff from Matsuura. It would fit quite resonably in my garage, when the ajax was flogged. I was under no illusion that the original control would go at some point as I had seen posts on cnczone saying what it cost to have these things mended.

When the machine was dropped off, it turned out to be a newer model and at least a foot larger all round, maybe 3 foot deeper, I am seriously considering putting a cat flap in the wall for the y axis servo motor to stick through[the yaxis motor sticks out over 2 feet]. The weight is also 1.4 tons more! So I bit the bullet and stripped all the tin and electrics off it straight away. I still have a drive stacked with green bits of sheet metal 6 months on[can it really be 6 months!]

First job was to re-attach the pendant. it used to be on an arm fixed to the bigger of the electrical enclosures. I knocked up an articulating arm to botl the pendant to. Made a motherboard tray to mount the motherboard in the pendant. Put a flat screen in the pendant and used some of the original switches. I will have manual controls for some stuff that was controled manually before, lubrication pump overide, coolant pump spindle and slew and jog. I also put usb sockets on the front panel. Only drive is a hard drive, usb memory sticks can be used to stick drawings on it. I need to sort out silk screening the panel, or buy a nice new sharpie;)
http://integerspin.co.uk/ebay-images..._pendant01.jpg

I am really slow, mounting the computer took me about two months!

Over christmas I mounted a new[another ebay bargain] rittal enclosure.
This took an awfull long time as I put a 4 inch square box around the machine for the wires to run in and used the original caterpillar conduit stuff. The two pieces of flexiconduitstuff are different sizes[4x2 and 6x3] after mounting them and fabricating end boxes tobolt them in I decided the pieces should be switched, I had to start again.

The axis haven't moved since I have had it. stripped the lube lines to the Z axis and moved it last week. Amazing how nicely it moves with a cordless drill battery. I started to strip the Xaxis lube system, got the manifold off, the one that lives near the Xservo motor under the table. I stripped the showa PSS1 valves out of it and when I was reassembling them noticed one is a PSS2, oh no !. I am no stranger to stripping parts and taking care with assemblies to make sure parts aren't mixed;-)

I haven't bought drives yet, I will be getting the granite drives, I was going to get a cnc brain but think I will wait untill a few more are being used[reliably used].

Yet another build log to look forward to: cool:.

Any chance you could do me a pic of the bracket I’m guessing you made that supports the keys/mouse tray, please bud. I also had the same kind of idea for my little setup, just curious as to how yours work and so on :).

EDIT: Nice job on that pendant by the way :beer:

http://integerspin.co.uk/ebay-images...ndantassy2.jpg
The sketch wasn't followed faithfully, but the principle is the same. There are cotter pins each side holding the tray to the bracket, not shown in the sketch. The tray slides out and then the front of the tray drops down, the tray hitting the cross piece between the brackets is how I limited the angle of the tray. Very simple but seems to work OK.

I was looking for a server keyboard with a touch pad, I use a laptop nearly all the time so I am used to touchpads. All I could get[cheap] was the compact cherry keyboard in the pic above. Some place were flogging off their stock of Cherry keyboards on ebay, the white ones were £2, be rude not to buy one at that price;-). An infra red mouse seems to work fine on the shelf.

Thats just what i was looking for thank you mate, i didnt even think about taking the bracket under the shelf like that to hide it away after good idea !

Ill have to look up cotter pin as i'v never seen them befor, what about one of these:

Link: Click Here

sorry dont mean to take your build log off track.

I mean't clevis pin.

ok iv still not looked it up yet ! clevis it is then.

We've all heard or read "beauty is in the eye of the beholder," which helps explain why I think your machine is beautiful. It appears to be very rigid. Lack of rigidity is the most vexing defect in most CNC cutting machines. I'd love to see an update including photos about this project. In your first photo, shelving units on both sides were so close to the machine's center that X-axis bed travel before hitting shelving appears to be uselessly small. My machine's X-axis travel is 43.5-inches so with its bed centered along its travel, it needs 22 inches minimum free space on both sides. Add that to its 9.5 foot length and the resulting minimum 13-foot 2-inch side-to-side span requirement eliminates closet placement. Then if you'd like to have the option of adding a robot pick & place loader and loader on one side so you can let it produce "widgets" while you're gone, the combination gets a little larger.

That's REALLY a great looking CNC conversion candidate to my eyes. I hope you'll continue this conversation. My 2002 3-axis factory-made CNC machine is rather similar to which I'm considering attaching two additional CNC axes so it can perform 5-axis operations. Perhaps we can share some thoughts and insights about each others CNC-related projects, plans and dreams.
John

I haven't touched it for , must be almost 3 years! hope to get back to it this year.
The picture was taken in the stores of the company I bought it from. I have
it stuffed in the corner of a double garage!
The travel is pretty small, about 20" on the X axis. I just flogged the transformer
from it, it's japanese and everything is 200V three phase, I think I am now in
profit on it. It looks nothing like it did as all the sheet metal has been removed.