Old bed mill, 1985 matsuura

[LoveLearn]

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

[graffian]

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.