Half baked CNC mill

[John11668]

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)