I was wondering if anyone had used the Openbuilds electronic components to convert an existing manual mill over to a CNC mill that could use the openbuilds interface? I have a Craftsman Mill/Drill that is begging to be replaced but I figured why replace it if I can convert it?
I do have a manual mill conversion build thread here: Grizzly G0758 Benchtop Mill Conversion - may have some commentary or considerations that might help. If you don't want the more advanced features that I was/am interested in- encoder support, auto toolchanging, etc- then grbl will totally work as a basic 3-axis mill control, and the base Openbuilds CNC Electronics Bundle (above) with NEMA23s should work fine for most benchtop machines (I oversized my motors for reasons I think I addressed in the thread). My build's still in progress- wasn't gonna put the glass scales back on because technically they shouldn't be required, but now in the process of actually doing so because of some positional inconsistencies- and it'll get an update hopefully before too much longer because I've finally torn myself away from what feels like 6+ months of Fusion 360 with no machines I'm happy to actually perform the work on.
Thank you both for the input! I've already got the mill broken down and am doing some homework on ball screws. Looking forward to getting this going.
