This is my second MASSO conversion - the previous one was several years ago, a Millright Mega V CNC Router. I've also done a Denford CNC Lathe using Centroid Acorn (primarily because I like the conversational programming in Centroid, and will probably never use CAD/CAM for lathe projects, and because I was able to set it up as a semi-manual machine with dual MPGs). In any case, I decided to use MASSO for this project because it supports 5 axes, it's more compact than Centroid, and because the cost wound up being about the same.
The machine itself is a very small 4-axis Mill with dual spindles (one vertical and one horizontal). These are very high speed - up to 50k RPM. The original machine was built for carving jeweler's wax, which would then be cast in metal using the lost wax technique. My goal is to use it for Delrin and Aluminum.
This is what the original machine looked like:
The 4th (rotary) Axis has a proprietary quick-change system for a variety of workholding fixtures, which you see hanging on the left side of the enclosure. These are jewelry specific, so not really of use to me. One is a Sherline 3-jaw chuck, but honestly I'd rather just have a proper chuck in there, so i ended up removing all of that. I might be interested in selling the workholding stuff and its quick-change mount, which should fit on any rotary axis with a simple adapter plate. But I'm still thinking about that.
I bought this from someone in New York, about 4 hours drive from where I am in Boston. Drove down there early one morning, loaded it into my car, and drove it back in time to have someone in the office help me unload. Long day.
The original system has a dual coolant pump, meant to keep the wax from melting. Coolant falls onto the metal plate on the top of the X axis, and down some troughs into a collection tank, where it's recirculated. The whole machine was covered in an earwax-like sticky coolant/wax mess and took about two weeks to clean. Still finding parts coated in this stuff!
It took me a couple weeks to strip it down and look at how it was built. Turns out it's a German-made Isel mill under the hood. The X/Y/Z axes are on custom aluminum extrusions with round linear rails. All of the platforms are ball bearing, and chunky, and seem to move very smoothly. The motors were open-loop steppers with big chunky ballscrews. The spindles are Nakanishi, with a matching VFD. After thinking about it a bit, and seeing how rigid this is I decided to ditch the open-loop steppers for closed loop, but to keep the spindle(s) for now to see how they work. Changing them out for a single, more traditional spindle shouldn't be too hard, but it's very possible that this machine will work for me with the existing ones, which seem to be very high quality.
I still don't know the maximum travel distances I'll get but it looks like it'll be in the 6x6x6 inch range, which is fine for the parts I plan to make on it.
The original control hardware was encased inside an aluminum box, which has connectors on both sides. These allowed you to completely disconnect the control module and remove it for testing on a bench. I tried to make that work with the MASSO and closed loop drivers, but I just couldn't make it all fit.
Behind that box though, is an aluminum T-slot panel so I thnk I can fit it all in there.
(continued, hit my photo limit!...)
The machine itself is a very small 4-axis Mill with dual spindles (one vertical and one horizontal). These are very high speed - up to 50k RPM. The original machine was built for carving jeweler's wax, which would then be cast in metal using the lost wax technique. My goal is to use it for Delrin and Aluminum.
This is what the original machine looked like:
The 4th (rotary) Axis has a proprietary quick-change system for a variety of workholding fixtures, which you see hanging on the left side of the enclosure. These are jewelry specific, so not really of use to me. One is a Sherline 3-jaw chuck, but honestly I'd rather just have a proper chuck in there, so i ended up removing all of that. I might be interested in selling the workholding stuff and its quick-change mount, which should fit on any rotary axis with a simple adapter plate. But I'm still thinking about that.
I bought this from someone in New York, about 4 hours drive from where I am in Boston. Drove down there early one morning, loaded it into my car, and drove it back in time to have someone in the office help me unload. Long day.
The original system has a dual coolant pump, meant to keep the wax from melting. Coolant falls onto the metal plate on the top of the X axis, and down some troughs into a collection tank, where it's recirculated. The whole machine was covered in an earwax-like sticky coolant/wax mess and took about two weeks to clean. Still finding parts coated in this stuff!
It took me a couple weeks to strip it down and look at how it was built. Turns out it's a German-made Isel mill under the hood. The X/Y/Z axes are on custom aluminum extrusions with round linear rails. All of the platforms are ball bearing, and chunky, and seem to move very smoothly. The motors were open-loop steppers with big chunky ballscrews. The spindles are Nakanishi, with a matching VFD. After thinking about it a bit, and seeing how rigid this is I decided to ditch the open-loop steppers for closed loop, but to keep the spindle(s) for now to see how they work. Changing them out for a single, more traditional spindle shouldn't be too hard, but it's very possible that this machine will work for me with the existing ones, which seem to be very high quality.
I still don't know the maximum travel distances I'll get but it looks like it'll be in the 6x6x6 inch range, which is fine for the parts I plan to make on it.
The original control hardware was encased inside an aluminum box, which has connectors on both sides. These allowed you to completely disconnect the control module and remove it for testing on a bench. I tried to make that work with the MASSO and closed loop drivers, but I just couldn't make it all fit.
Behind that box though, is an aluminum T-slot panel so I thnk I can fit it all in there.
(continued, hit my photo limit!...)
