Thanks
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The old girl is now sporting a QC30 spindle with BT30 drawbar :)
Better tool position and one step nearer to an ATC.
Attachment 23806
Sadly my old mate John S is no longer with us but this was the place he got one from. Not sure they still have same model.
https://www.aliexpress.com/store/gro...212162836.html
I've got one of these and it's been controlling my Shizuoka 3 axis machine for the last 6 months or so. It seems to do most stuff you'd want but the Chinglish is too strong to understand in many places - it's just machine translated. It's not a bad solution but there are some areas I've just given up on. There are only so many hundred hours you can spend trying to figure stuff out.
I'm going to remove it from my main CNC machine and use it instead on my Bridgeport conversion. For the main machine I've just bought a Centroid Acorn. Didn't think I'd go this way but I really don't fancy the investment of time required to implement Linuxcnc but the Newker controller isn't working out for me.
I found 2 companies that seem to sell the exact same product. As ever, it's not clear who designed it and who manufactures it but they are different entities.
Newker is the brand I bought. The 4 axis mid range product is the 990MDb (M means milling, T means turning). I bought mine in China when I was there and brought it back myself. I paid about £350. That's not bad value....
Newkye is the other place. The manuals are identical and so are the products, so not much to choose between them.
There are some videos of the machine and controller in use on my YT channel.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCo5..._as=subscriber
Murray
If you fancy a stab at the Baidu Chinglish Challenge, follow the link to the manual.
Latest on this? I'm now looking for a 'CNC' Bridgeport type machine. Whilst I have Thor, Id like something more suitable for cutting harder metals.
Latest is that she is still munching metal :)
If asked, would i recommend anyone to convert?? The answer is no, the cost benefit is not there, I have spent probably around £8-9k on this now and at the end of the day its still a Bridgeport.
If you have the space, I would go for a VMC any time, even an old one. I do not have room or power for anything bigger so that was my reasoning to convert the Bridgy, but its not ideal - i can put the head out of tram easily, you still have to take "Bridgeport" style cuts so no hogging hard steel with big tools, you have to convert the knee to regain decent Z travel, it needs a servo drive spindle but that needs a lot of kW, and so on.
But it is capable of doing stunning things when compared to a manual machine :)
Would you say that the Universal 2S mill (or similar) has the same limitations?