Bridgeport Manual to CNC conversion...

[Davek0974]

Back to my dual-spindle attachment, yes its been done before, found two people that have done a great job and turned out some amazing stuff on them.

I was looking at a single thick clamp ,made from maybe 25-30mm alu, but this idea seems far better....



It uses a two-layer clamp, bridged in the middle firmly and then clamped on the quill plus clamped to a fixture held in a collet in the spindle. This seems like it would be very stable plus use up less of my valuable Z axis travel.

Material is probably only 15-20mm thick so i would lose no more than 20mm of travel in Z, leaving me a healthy 100mm to play with. The wide spaced clamps should also grip the high speed spindle better too.

Not sure why he has made the bottom clamp like it is at the spindle nose, I would go with a solid area and a 20mm shaft fitted for a 20mm R8 collet - the attachment would then be slid upwards into the collet and onto the quill.