Thanks for having me!

**JRock** · Jan 20, 2018, 09:09 AM

Awesome! Thanks for having me. I have seen some really cool posts on here and learned a few tricks already.
Working on a large (for me, but small for most) 3' x 3' CNC mill to cut steel. Basing on a existing wood cutting frame.
Don't have much cash, but I'm pretty resourceful.
Down the rabbit hole now looking for Milling head options and trying to understand tooling.
Recently got a 13" South Bend Machinist Lathe (that's where all my cash went

) and need to figure out tooling for that as well.
Figure I can do some of the milling on that for the CNC build, but I have to design and build tooling for milling on the lathe as well....
Made a tool holder for that out of a found railroad spike

Guess I'm down a couple of rabbit holes, because most of this stuff is pretty foreign to me.
I have an idea for the milling head, of using an induction motor and belt drive (or gear drive) and rig up some sort of BT40 spindle holder.
Problem with that is all the motors I've acquired are heavy and run at 1750 or 3500. Seems to be an alright speed for milling steel? and I can gear/pulley that up to about double before I start to run in to problems with size issues. A VFD would be nice, but that won't increase the motor speed (and they're not free).
These Induction motors are HEAVY though, and will flex the gantry... may be a DC treadmill motor instead? Maybe just a Spindle With a Gear Box?
Anyway, that's where my head is, and in the meantime, I have to make all the little tools, to make the parts for the big tools

Thanks for having me!