The Eagle Has Landed

The machine arrived at the Manchester Airport UPS Freight terminal in the wee hours of the morning, and I arranged to have it held so we could pick it up.  Dave graciously offered his expert “moving-heavy-stuff” services as well as his truck.  We drove up and picked up the machine without a hitch – they loaded it right onto the truck with a forklift.  Got it back to my place and we were able to back Dave’s truck right down to the basement door, take the top of the crate off, and ease it down the ramps on a hand truck.

Once inside, we did a bit of difficult lifting to heft the 350+ pounds of machine up onto its temporary resting spot on my main workbench, until I can build a proper table for it.  Then began the gooey process of cleaning off the rust preventative shipping grease using lots of rags, a gallon jug of WD-40, and some old credit cards for scraping.  Celebratory beer also consumed while listening to the whir of the machine running for the spindle break-in process.

We cleaned the machine up a bit and I checked the runout on the junky cheap chuck they included with the machine.  Unfortunately I couldn’t make any chips tonight because i’m still waiting for most of my tools and fixtures to be delivered.   Maybe by this weekend!  In the mean time, I have plenty of work to do designing and building benches and such to get the metalworking area set up for Tangent Audio Labs World Headquarters.  Also plenty of research work to continue for the CNC conversion.

Many thanks to Dave for the help!

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This Post Has 2 Comments

  1. I hope you’re extra picky when choosing the conversion kit– high-quality ballscrews are VITAL in a number of areas.

  2. Yeah, I’m leaning towards the high end kit from CNCFusion. They’re not absolute top of the line (because those approach Pure Unaffordium), but they’re very good quality and certainly more than adequate for the sorts of tolerances I’m looking to get out of the machine.

    I’m still debating full DIY vs the kit, but given that I’m coming up the learning curve, the kit path might be a lot less frustrating and will definitely give me success sooner. I have some modifications in mind since I don’t like one or two things about the kit, but I can get the machine running first and use the machine to modify itself.

    Where have you run into ballscrew stuff? I didn’t know you were interested in CNC at all.

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