Gerber system 48

[martin54]

Thanks Stuart, I was originally going to try & repair the machine but failed miserably when it came to getting my hands on schematics so took Jazz's advice & removed all the old electronics, the porter cable router didn't work either & as it was an obsolete model anyway I decided to fit a chinese 2.2kw water cooled spindle.
I had started to build a machine before the gerber came along & had already purchased all the electronics so these just got used. The motors I had were nema 23's plus they were a tad to long. At the moment the original motors are still fitted until I can get round to making an adapter & altering the machine frame so the new motors fit.
The drivers (AM882's) are wasted at the moment as the original motors are 36v max but when the new motors are fitted I can fit the 70v power supply. Long term I am not sure what I will do with it, the Z azis isn't great with unsupported rails & thin leadscrew so that is something that might get looked at. The rest depends on how it copes generally. Having problems setting up the spindle at the moment, once that is done I can try a few test cuts.

What have you done to your machine & how do you find it generally Stuart? What sort of work are you doing with it.

[stuboy]

I make all our prototype speaker cabinets with it, MDF 12 to 25mm and Ply Wood. I also made a special attachment to enable us to dial gauge and mill the flats on the frame that the bed sits on, the Kress cut steal no problem with a carbide cutter and lots of water with quite a fine cut depth obviously! (The exciting video of it is on Kress 1050 Mill cutting steel on a wood router.avi - YouTube, note the special jig i made in the video too ) After doing that i then milled the bed back to flat with the same fitting, its accurate to about 0.15mm now, it was over 2.5mm out when we got it. I changed the X, Y motors to Astrosyn MY257's, David @ Astrosyn was extremely helpful finding me nearly exact equivalent, they are just twice as powerful and take half the current of the old ones, it was a pleasure to do business with them .
I re bearinged the gear assemblies and ultrasoniced the linear's, managed to find a nice chap in the states that can get replacements for the 1/2" linear's too. I'm missing my bellows and still looking to source something there (at a reasonable price) but no luck yet. Looking at a post today where a chap has used a 50mm slide bearing housing to hold a Chinese spindle as its exactly 80mm, that's genius, and Zapp the supplier is just up the road from where i did my apprenticeship many moons ago so will pop in and see them when I'm next down in Poole. My most recent addition is a dust hood made from industrial door strip 2mm polythene, I think a mark 2 of it will be required!
I want to make a vaccum bed of some sort for it soon too.