Author Topic: CX601 Milling Machine  (Read 28483 times)

Offline Brian Rupnow

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CX601 Milling Machine
« on: June 27, 2015, 02:17:00 AM »
This thread is going to be a continuation of my trials and tribulations with a new
square column benchtop milling machine from BusyBee Tools in Canada. I had started to cover this mill in my oscillating I.C. engine thread, but I was getting so far off the original thread title that I have opened up a new thread to deal only with the mill. I have upgraded from a smaller version of the same mill, which served me faithfully for six years, but was beginning to show it's age. This new milling machine has more than double the motor power that my previous mill had, and has a Y axis travel of 8 1/2" and an X axis of a whopping great 23 1/2"---(Even though all the brochure and manuals with it claim a 16 1/2" X travel.) The first thing I discovered when I got it home, was that although my old mill moved .002" in X or Y for every graduation on the dials, this new mill moves 0.0025" for each graduation.---Try doing that in your head!!! I have been thinking of a DRO set up for a couple of years now, but didn't want to spend the money. This new mill with it's Bastard travel per graduation has made the purchase of a DRO kit a necessity. I purchased a 2 axis DRO set-up with glass scales from DROPROS in California, and will be installing it on the mill and documenting it here. The second thing I have discovered, is that the R8 shank on the chuck which comes with the mill has a very deep, unusual slot in it, and consequently the "alignment pin" which protrudes inside the spindle was sticking out so far that standard North American R8 shanks wouldn't fit into the spindle. After much hair tearing and screaming at various BusyBee administrative staff, I took matters into my own hands and removed the offending pin with my nasty little cold chisel and Dremel tool.---This was on the advice of some senior forum members who have much, much more machining background than I do. Stay tuned, and I will take you with me on the adventure of installing DRO's, relocating the hard to reach head height adjusting handwheel, and various other modifications in an effort to "Make a silk purse from a sow's ear!!" At this point in time, It has cost me roughly $3500 (Canadian)for the mill, the stand it sets on, a new boring head, and a couple of R8 endmill holders, and a heavy duty "machinery transportation cart" to move the machine around from my garage, thru my office, and into my machine shop. The two axis DRO kit has cost $1000 so far, but I have yet to hear from the taxation and customs people who will want their pound of flesh as well.
« Last Edit: June 27, 2015, 12:12:12 PM by Brian Rupnow »

Offline sshire

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Re: CX601 Milling Machine
« Reply #1 on: June 27, 2015, 12:21:26 PM »
Brian
That looks suspiciously like a Grizzly G0704 which was my first mill. I had very few problems with it. The parent mfg. is Weiss and it's their BF20 model which they make for many companies.

A few thoughts.
Keep extra motor brushes on hand.

The tapered base is a bit annoying when mounting the Y axis DRO scale.

Don't be tempted to put the X axis scale on the front as I did. Yes, it's easier but I really missed having the stops.

There are many, many mods online. Search "G0704"

Much good stuff here
http://www.g0704.com/index.html

A very useful mod is to connect the z elevation wheel to a much lower one with a few sprockets and bicycle chain.

Search for the "3 bolt mod" for the head. It stiffens things up a great deal.

Wait, I found that page here.
http://www.g0704.com/projects2.html

I also removed the R8 locating key. Made things much easier with no downside that I could see.

DRO install here
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-4DtQK5CSM" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-4DtQK5CSM</a>
« Last Edit: June 27, 2015, 12:34:23 PM by sshire »
Best,
Stan

Offline philjoe5

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Re: CX601 Milling Machine
« Reply #2 on: June 27, 2015, 01:35:24 PM »
Brian,
I had the same annoying problem with my X3 mill purchased 8 years ago.  The R8 pin can be filed down or removed without bad consequences.  That's a nice mill and I'll be interested in how it performs over time.

Stan,
Brian's mill weighs a hefty 529 pounds, the G0704 is about half that weight.  BTW the new G0704 with DRO purchased for our makerspace has three head locking nuts.  Grizzly part number G0759, is the same as the G0704 but with DRO installed.

Cheers,
Phil
If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man.  - Mark Twain

Offline sshire

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Re: CX601 Milling Machine
« Reply #3 on: June 27, 2015, 01:47:30 PM »
G0704 on steroids. Should be nice and solid. Still had that damned taper base
Best,
Stan

Offline Brian Rupnow

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Re: CX601 Milling Machine
« Reply #4 on: June 27, 2015, 04:18:25 PM »
I got up early this morning and modeled the base and column of the milling machine, and all the glass scales, reader heads, and brackets that came with the kit. They are shown here in their approximate positions. I have not modeled in any of the brackets which I will be fabricating.

Offline Brian Rupnow

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Re: CX601 Milling Machine
« Reply #5 on: June 27, 2015, 10:34:26 PM »
It has been a long and much interrupted day, but I have sussed out all the mounts which I will fabricate. --I have to say that the credit for these mounts goes to a fellow over on another forum who has the same mill as me, and mounted the same scales as I am mounting, in Calgary, Canada. He was kind enough to post very clear pictures of his work, and I have used his pictures as a concept for the design of mine.--Thank you, Calgary. The mounts are going to be milled from aluminum. I am about 80 percent of the way there in terms of modeling everything. I still have to see exactly how the scale covers are going to be hung.--X axis is no problem, but the Y axis cover could get exciting.----Brian




Offline Brian Rupnow

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Re: CX601 Milling Machine
« Reply #6 on: June 28, 2015, 04:09:46 PM »
This mornings challenge was to design the mounting brackets for the the guards which fit over the glass scales to keep the swarf and cutting oil away. The guard supplied for the X axis scale will have to be totally reconfigured.--In fact, it may be easier to brake up a new profile than to reconfigure the one that came in the kit. This guard will mount directly to the machined back side of the table. The guard for the Y axis will fit with no modifications at all, and the rear end will be supported by a "tab" coming off the rear glass scale mounting bar bracket. The front will be supported by a small bracket bolted to the top o the new large bracket which supports the front of the glass scale mounting bar.


Offline Brian Rupnow

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Re: CX601 Milling Machine
« Reply #7 on: June 28, 2015, 06:17:08 PM »
The following drawings are going to be meaningless to anyone other than myself. However, I have to make them for myself to work from, and it doesn't cost me anything to post them. As you can expect, fitting metric based scales to a metric based milling machine, using British imperial units ends up giving some very strange and unusual dimensions. This matters very little to me---I have been jumping back and forth between the two measuring systems ever since Canada "went metric" in 1974. Why is everything dimensioned to three decimal places when much of it doesn't need anywhere near this degree of accuracy?---That is a setting on my CAD system, and as long as I know what is critical and what is not, it is MUCH easier to just leave the default dimension to three decimal places for everything. Most of these brackets are going to be fitted to a cast, painted surface on the mill, with an "unknown" radius right in the middle of everything.--All I can do, crude as it may sound, is make cardboard templates from the mill, transfer the template to the semi-finished bracket, and "take my best shot" at filing and fitting.---This isn't really as difficult as it sounds.





Offline Brian Rupnow

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Re: CX601 Milling Machine
« Reply #8 on: June 28, 2015, 10:23:36 PM »
First DRO bracket and shame faced admission of Dumb-Assity!!! The first bracket is finished and the power of this new mill is just awesome!!!---The Dumb-Assity------Well----I don't have DRO's yet, so the drilling and counterboring of 6 holes required a great deal of calculating, counting, measuring, and twiddling dials----and Guess What! I have been trying to convince everyone for three weeks now that the table moved 0.150" for every full turn of the dial and .0025" for every graduation on the dial. I was only half right. It's true about the graduations on the dial being worth .0025" of table movement for each graduation.--I was stone-wrong about the amount of travel for one full turn of the dial. It isn't 0.150". It is 0.125". Of course, this still doesn't let me make the calculation for table travel in my head like the old mill with .002" movement per graduation did, but I feel really dumb about reporting the travel per full dial revolution wrongly. Sorry guys. Put it down to encroaching old age and too much new stuff at once.---Brian

Offline Brian Rupnow

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Re: CX601 Milling Machine
« Reply #9 on: June 30, 2015, 08:59:54 PM »
Another one bites the dust!! I have one more bracket to build that doesn't fit against the curved surface of the milling machine. It is probably the most complex shape, but doesn't have to be fitted by trial and error to the cast mill surface.--And yes, after milling two brackets, I am finding those .0025" graduations to be just as hard as I had expected to work with. Its easy to take out the 1/8" increments, because they are one full dial turn. Then you have to divide whatever is left by .0025 and count graduations---and many of the graduations you want to hit fall somewhere between the graduation marks.--I did have a stroke of good luck, in that while rooting though my box of aluminum cut-offs I found sufficient stock to make all of the brackets.
« Last Edit: July 01, 2015, 05:42:15 PM by Brian Rupnow »

Offline Brian Rupnow

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Re: CX601 Milling Machine
« Reply #10 on: July 01, 2015, 05:41:57 PM »
Third bracket finished.--Why that little area that looks like some material is missing between the two bolted together brackets?---That my friends is an "oops"!!  It is only about 3/32" deep on the one corner. I just don't understand why, when I make an "oops" it's always on the part that will show the most on an assembled machine.--Probably repayment of some horrible thing I did earlier on in life.--Will leave it there to remind me to be humble. I have to hang up my machinsts hat now and put on my carpenters hat---Have to fix a piece of furniture that got dropped on one corner during a move. I had my painters hat on early this morning. Wife has threatened dreadful consequences if I keep getting up at 5:00 a.M. and running machines that wake her up. Paint brushes are very quiet----

Offline Brian Rupnow

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Re: CX601 Milling Machine
« Reply #11 on: July 01, 2015, 11:04:08 PM »
And that, boys and girls, is all of the brackets made!!! I haven't cut the contour on the two brackets that attach to the mill base yet. I'll save that for another day. The bracket on the right bolts to the face of the mill base, right beside the Y axis dial. The left side bolts to the side of the mill base, right in that nasty radiused area. The piece attached to the DRO angle bracket bolts to the carriage which fits between the mill table and the base. (The angle is facing the wrong way round in the picture.) The outstanding leg of the angle bolts to the underside of the  Y axis read head. The bar setting between my brackets is supplied by the DRO guys, and you will notice it has jack-screws at each end to level it perfectly and to make it parallel with the Y axis travel. The guard bolts to the two 1/4"-20 tapped holes just above the bar.

Offline ths

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Re: CX601 Milling Machine
« Reply #12 on: July 02, 2015, 01:26:14 AM »
Nice going ,Brian, I guess you'll be using it soon? Hugh.

Offline Brian Rupnow

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Re: CX601 Milling Machine
« Reply #13 on: July 02, 2015, 01:47:32 AM »
Hugh--The scary part comes next---Drilling and tapping holes in my new mill. The folks who sell the DRO kit have an installation manual that goes on at great length about how important it is to have perfect, alignment, perfect parallelism between all components, no binding, etcetera. I am a bit freaked out by this, but will forge on bravely. There are about a zillion milling machines running around the world with "add on" DRO kits on them, so I should be able to make it work. As soon as I get the DRO kit up and running, I will do the modification to lower the head lifting handwheel. Then I have to disassemble everything and move it into my machine shop, then reassemble everything.--I can see all of this eating up a sizeable portion of July.---Brian

Offline gbritnell

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Re: CX601 Milling Machine
« Reply #14 on: July 02, 2015, 03:33:32 AM »
Hi Brian,
From your last posting I gather that you are going to install the DRO kit and then take the mill apart and move it. By take apart do you mean the table (X axis) and Y (the saddle)? If so I would certainly advised against it. Mount your brackets if you will but wait until everything is moved, assembled and adjusted before mounting and truing the scales. The reason I say this is because the scales come with lock clips to hold the reader head in the proper position. If you install them and then remove them the clips will have to be reinstalled and even at that I would be apprehensive that they might be misaligned. There might be times in the life of a machine when the scales would be removed but in your case I wouldn't do it unnecessarily.
gbritnell
« Last Edit: July 02, 2015, 01:26:53 PM by gbritnell »
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