Re: Re: Engraving and engine turning

Larry Van Duyn wrote:

> On another subject, there has been a lot of discussion on ball screws ,etc for the mill table. What are all you folks
> doing about the Z axis mechanism for your mills ???????

I have a Bridgeport, and the depth stop mechanism attaches to the quill through a quite large bolt right
through the front of the spindle housing. (This bolt also prevents the quill from twisting.) Since the depth
stop mechanism is superflous for CNC, and mine didn't work anyway, it was a pretty obvious choice to
attach a ball nut to this point to drive the quill up and down with minimum backlash.

See my photos, etc. at http://ascc.artsci.wustl.edu/~jmelson/CNCconv.html
look at the 8th picture for the quill (Z-axis) drive. There are other pictures of my CNC
conversion there.

Jon