Grizzly G0704 FULL CNC CONVERSION!

this is my milling machine it's like a beefcake drill press that cuts metal and three axes front back left right and up and down you do so by turning those hand wheels you see by the table on the top now I'd like to add some motors to it these motors will replace the hand wheels and allow me to do stuff more automatically I'll control the motors with drivers those take impulses from a breakout board which is sent data from a computer combine this together we get the machine we'll be converting is called a g0 7:04 as sold by grizzly it's imported by other companies under other names and it's a popular candidate for CNC conversions because it's got a large work area and a square vertical column I've had this milling machine for just over a year and been using it in manual mode to be perfectly honest an essential upgrade for it is to make some leveling feet I'm using some three inch cold rolled steel here with half by thirteen all-thread the off thread will go through some holes I drilled on four by four studs I can bolt the studs to the stands and then adjust the height of the feet with nuts this little chore is pretty necessary I should have done it a long time ago it also lifts the mill to a usable height for a tall guy like me now let's talk about the rest of the project so what do we need to turn a manual machine into something computer-controlled well on the electronic side we're going to need motors drivers that run those and a breakout board that intercepts computer signals I got a kit that contained all of those from eBay it's Chinese it's a company called Long's these are NEMA 34 motors they have 1,600 ounce inch holding power stepper motors move just one step at a time and these move 1.8 degrees per step that's how you can get a lot of precision control and a lot of strength out of them [Music] the next part we're going to need are called ball screws yes you can laugh ball screws replace the Acme screws inside the machine that control the motion of the table and the head ball screws are a ball bearing race in the shape of the helix they allow for incredibly smooth operation in almost zero backlash which is the lost motion when changing directions you can convert a machine using its existing acne screws but this is a huge upgrade I got these ball screws from automation technologies they are specifically made to fit this machine using hosses conversion plans which I am these are double nut ball screws which take an extra step to minimize backlash by incorporating a second nut attached to the first there are also bearings and motor couplers will need those are outlined in the plan set if you buy that from Haas and that brings us to a huge part of this project and that's making the mounts to get all this stuff in and on the machine I purchased a set of plans from Haas aka Haas machine on YouTube and his website g0 7:04 calm the designs for all these mounts are his product so I won't share any numbers or measurements his designs do call for smaller motors on the X&Y axis and I had to modify the designs to fit my larger motors I also modeled up all the parts in fusion 360 because well why not machining the mounts for the motors the ball screws and the bearings is pretty straightforward and it's great practice of a lot of standard operations on the manual milling machine the stock is squared up to dimension and then accurate holes need to be laid out and drilled the size boring operations are done on larger holes that was my first experience using a boring head and it took me to school a little bit but I eventually got it pretty well figured out while most of the parts were made out of aluminum I made two standoffs for the motors out of 4140 steel and that's mostly just because that's what I had on hand making all these mounts took no small amount of time so I understand why people who sell these conversion kits ready to go charge so much money and like I said I'm using Hoss machines plans which are fine they work really well it wouldn't be difficult to design all these parts yourself if you were really motivated there's also our friend Aaron down in Australia of the YouTube channel DCT teacher 1 and he's designed a set of conversion parts for this machine that he's shared for free so go check out his channel it's pretty interesting he's also done this whole conversion with all that fabric Kabul and done with let's take the Machine apart now having recently rebuilt a South Bend lathe from the 40s I can tell you breaking down another machine isn't super appetizing luckily this isn't a wildly difficult procedure taking the head off and more specifically putting it back on later is about the most unpleasant part of the entire job and really it's not that bad [Music] starting from the top down parts are pulled off the machine so that the ball screws in there mounts may be installed z-axis which is up and down is first followed by the x axis which is left and right these side plates hold the table onto its lead screw and each side has a set of thrust bearing under the hand wheels they were a little stiff to remove but not too bad unscrewing the entire lead screw for the table probably isn't the most efficient way to get it off the y axis which controls forward and backwards movement is the last to come off the machine [Music] with a Barenaked milling machine this step is done and we can now move on to getting the new bits and pieces installed unlike the lathe rebuild I didn't know my parts out as well oh well a proper mess such as this means well everything is ready to be assembled the y-axis block needs to be modified to make clearance for the x-axis ball nut it would be very handy to do this job in a milling machine but well mine had a bad case of being in pieces so I used the best friend of metal worker ever had [Music] the dimensions of this cavity are also laid out in the plans I purchased it can be made a number of different ways such as with a drill press or a dremel tool precision really isn't necessary it's just making space for the new part to fit in this block has a little recess cast into it and I haven't seen that in pictures of other 704 Mills now that recess actually made this whole job a lot easier once the grinding is done on the cast iron that tremendous mess needed to be cleaned up so I used mineral spirits and a brush to make sure that the part was clean the second permanent modification to the machine was to drill and tap the two holes that hold the x-axis motor mount in place these are lined up from the mount itself a transfer punch is used to place center points at each hole [Music] the y-axis ballscrew will be the first to go into the machine to fit it in place we'll need to remove the ball nut which is precarious because that well could allow for the bearings to fall out so to do this I turned a piece of aluminum down to fit inside the nut and hold the bearings in place after making this I discovered later that there is actually a file in the plans I purchased to 3d print this exact tool that ended up coming in handy later in the process [Music] tension was high as I went to remove the nut from the ball screw and panic did sit in a little bit when I lost control of the two pieces of the nut luckily the ship was righted and the whole assembly got put into place [Music] the bearings are set into the y-axis bearing block these are angular contact bearings are designed for this sort of motion and load they're lubricated with this special and expensive grease it's what the plans called for seems to be recommended pretty strongly in the DIY cnc community beyond that I'm not sure what makes it so special or expensive the bearing block is then put in place it mounts in the existing holes that the hand wheels bearing block used they get tightened down to the lead screw and then the motor mount itself can be installed it's right here where I came upon an issue the ball nut was actually backwards and it's in danger of being threaded off the screw in the full range of y-axis travel the y-axis had to be disassembled again with lessons learned from last time I take the 2 ball nuts together so I wouldn't have an issue with them coming apart I 3d printed the ball nut tool that I'd found in the set of plans I had and then use it to help me reorient the nut and get everything correctly in place now the way that the tool is designed it puts the nut back on the screw and the same orientation as when it came off that means I needed two of them to change direction this also means that the nut came this way from the supplier which is something to look out for if you're doing this project the nut being oriented correctly gave me the full range of motion in the y-axis and I could proceed to mounting the motor the x-axis motor mount is put in place I decided to use grade 8 bolts to hold it on the end plate because I'm paranoid I also machined a pocket you can see along the top of the motor mount to give me clearance for grade a bolt heads for holding on the motor standoffs the bearings are sat in the original thrust bearing pockets and expensive grease is once again applied and the ball nut and table assembly are all put into place [Music] lastly the z-axis gets the exact same treatment bearings fancy grease ball screw and the mount I'm ashamed and getting that mount screwed onto the ball nut itself was a little bit challenging I could have used about four or five more hands but we got there the saddle for the mill head is slid into place and screwed to the bearing block I machined with this done the mill head itself can be reattached now I edited out a lot of this process but this took me a solid 15 minutes of fiddling to get those three bolts lined up to the holes in the head [Music] with the head finally reattached the machine itself is done [Music] you we now turn to the need for a case to hold all the electronic components that are going to be driving this machine I designed a box to hold everything in a manner that made sense to me making it pretty basically with a small panel of quarter-inch plywood I know my woodworker Bros will point out that this is better done on a table saw but I don't have one anymore so I just use this little bandsaw I have the box is mostly for containment and doesn't really need strength I'm using glues and staples from an air stapler to stitch it all together please don't judge me woodworkers after a few coats of nasa paint I prepared the plexiglass lid with a relatively ridiculous setup I could heat bend the plexi over the top of the box to match its contours I was actually surprised how long it took for this thin plexi to get soft and Bend I was using a heat gun that had plenty of umph to it and all in all it still took over 20 minutes of direct heat before we got to the final shape [Music] a piece of piano hinges cut the link and then epoxy Don the box is drilled for the motor couplers these are called airline connections there are four pole connection that screws in there pretty handy the plexiglass lid is then screwed into place this hole is being drilled for a USB connection I'm using a USB smooth stepper board as a bridge between the host computer and the parallel connection on the breakout board [Music] the kit came with three power supplies one for each motor I'm not sure if it's necessary but I utilized all three of these and mounted the drivers vertically above each of them to take advantage of their built-in cooling fans the breakout board and the USB smooth stepper were also mounted in place in the box everything being mounted in place in the box meant for the long process of wiring [Music] [Applause] manufacturer of all these electronics actually have a pretty decent wiring diagram which helped a lot because I really don't know what I'm doing when it comes to this sort of thing the drivers and breakout board need 5 volts DC for various things so I hooked up a USB charger to a bus bar and connected that to all the individual components I started in the connections for the motor connectors and realized I should probably have taken them out to solder a minute we've been a lot easier but lesson learned and I got those heat shrink in as well I wired the motors up to a four conductor cable as well as the corresponding plug it is a little bit on the thin side so I may upgrade it in the near future [Music] fans of HR Giger will really like this cable wrap to keep everything in place with everything hooked up let's turn on the juice and see what happens the controller software I'm using is called Mach 3 and it's pretty common for DIY CNC I'm still trying to optimize all my settings with the motors and such but I've already come a long way I'm not married to the software I may consider another controller option in the future I was able to get some pretty cool movement out of it right off the bat I had to go back to that elbow now suffice its say one of the most important parts of this entire projects making sure that the machine is accurate and that is actually timing the software with its pulses per how far the Machine actually moves and this is kind of fussy it did take a little while and a little bit of fiddling after getting that dialed in however I could move on and remove all the control apparatus for the quill of the machine and gave it a custom faceplate I have 3d printed [Music] now to give this thing a test I worked up some basic G code in fusion 360 just a facing operation and then a helical interpolation just cutting a circle [Music] tragedy struck when I realized I didn't bolt my head down well enough after getting reset we were back at the races and everything seemed to go pretty smoothly as far as the facing operation [Music] the circular cuts started off fine enough except well took too big of a bite broke the tool for funsies have tried the exact same program with a larger tool 3/4 inch instead of a 1/4 inch it cuts like crazy it's pretty cool I would call this well more or less successful the CNC conversions at this point is satisfactory but not entirely complete I still want to make sure the motors and the controls are dialed in to their best potential I also have a number of plans in the immediate future for things like well like limit switches a coolant system a belt drive for the spindle a spindle motor upgrade a fourth axis and a y-axis expansion and any other kind of upgrades I can think of now a subject that comes up with this sort of conversion is that can you still do manual operations well the motors I got our dual shaft my 3d print of this little handle and with power disconnected to the motors yeah this is such a fun project to do I've been wanting to do it for so long I'm excited for how this expands my capabilities in the shop and the projects that I can do with this machine from here on out if this excites you as well hit that subscribe button also check me out on Instagram my regular followers will recognize a lot of this as I've been posting updates on this project for the last two months if you'd like to see my videos a day early as well as get monthly shop update vlogs and a sticker check me out on patreon for as little as $1 a month anyway thanks for watching

Channel: Practical Renaissance

Views: 578,761

Keywords: machining, machinist, machinery, machine, conversion, CNC, G0704, Manual Machining, milling machine, CNC Machine, CNC Mill, DIY, Do It Yourself, DIY CNC, Computer Numerical Control, CAD, CAM, 3d Model, 3d Printing, Workshop, Tools, manufacturing, automation, robotics, NEMA 34, ballscrew, long's motor, Grizzly

Id: lymAJGN75Mw

Length: 22min 35sec (1355 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 14 2017