Index Ebay Stuff Cunning Plans Servo Drives Motion Controler nnnnnnnnnnn Toolchanger PC/Pendant Spindle Wiring

Under Construction

After 20 years of wanting a milling machine I bought one, I can't get my head around how people manage to do things without lathes and Mills. Within a few days of getting the mill the novelty started wearing off[not completly you understand] and I wanted to retrofit it. I may love my Ajax AJT4 but it's old and seen better days, I want accuracy, not to mention I figured a retrofit would cost more then buying a Bridgeport Interact. Once I started looking at CNC machines seriously soon realised I could be happy with an Interact, but it would be loads better to have a bed mill/VMC. I started looking on Ebay and nearly bought a Kitamura VMC, got cold feet at the last moment;-) Someone on UKCNC forum told me of an Interact for sale near him, it was clean and came with tooling. About then I saw a Matrsuura MC500V advertised it looked good and according to the manual, Matsuura kindly Mailed me copies, it would fit in my garage in place of my Ajax! I made an offer on it, inc delivery and it was accepted! However it had no tooling and a phone call to Barrets, who have lot's of tooling and it seemed they didn't have a single bit of BT35 tooling! So I passed on the mill. Then a slightly newer MC500[MC500V2] came up on ebay. This time the mill came with with tooling and the owners were able to delivery. So I wacked a bid on it, without seeing it in the flesh, and I won it. ***************** ONE HAPPY BUNNY *********************

That's the ebay picture of it, the dates wrong it was 2008[several people have commente don it]. Not sure if you really get any idea of how clean it was, I didn't really think anything about it till the driver, who delivered it, said he rarely moved secondhand machines even ones only a year or so old that looked as good. I am still wondering what everyone else knew that I don't, must be something, for no one else to bid!

The manual Matsuura sent me was for the V and this is the V2, the machine takes up a few feet more all the way around, than the V, as well as being 1.4 tons heavier! When it was delivered it was stuck on a row of scaffold tubes in front of my garage. One look and you realised it wasn't going in the garage. At this stage I tried to scrap it[seriously], but the nearest yard couldn't lift 3.7 tons on to their truck. So I started stripping it hoping that I could get my money back by selling the motors and stuff individually. When all the tin and electronics were off it, it was clearly much smaller and would probably fit in the garage OK. Once that was decided I had to move it, on my own! It's heavy;-)

I had accepted I might well have to refit whatever I bought. Having stuff repaired is much to expensive, so if anything goes wrong I have to fix it, so I could well have ended up having to fit aftermarket drives whatever I bought. Mach3 looks much more user friendly than the Yasnak MX2 controler, with it's cute punch tape drive.

See the old electronics page for the stuff that I am selling off it.

links to webhost, php apache, crimson editor granite smoothstepper.