Hello all,
This evening @VintageSteel and myself managed to finally mount the new spindle in the mini CNC.
Although drilling 4 holes may seem a trivial task, we encountered a few issues that made the job tricky and rather long.
We started with the split sleeve that came with the new spindle, and first thing first we had to measure and transfer the holes from the old mout to the new one.
In order to do this accurately I made a one-time-use transfer punch on the lathe (sorry I don’t have any pictures).
Once the position of the holes was established, we had to come up with an appropriate set up on the mill…
We drilled the through hole 6.5mm first, from the bottom for most accuracy. The additional aluminium clamped on the side is there to allow the holes to be partially outside the material.
Once that was done, we flipped the piece, and drilled 10 mm clearance holes for the head of the cap screws, stopping about 1mm above the surface.
Dave then skillfully ground an old 10mm drill to a flat point, to drill the bottom of the clearance flat.
And after a bit of deburring and cleaning… Finally the new spindle fits!
All is needed now is to find two additional T nuts, and 4 screws a bit shorter than those in the picture.
Now is back to the @CNCtechs to make sure the new spindle is held solid, and is trammed square and perpendicular to the bed.
This was a really cool project, we hope that helped in getting the machine back online soon.
Happy CNCeing!
- there’s an assortment of t-nuts and M6 bolts left from the fixture plate on the sieg, we’ll likely have something that fits the mini as well