All images are clickable for a "magnified" view
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This started life as a solid block of steel, 3" x 6" x 12". The recesses are for the leadscrew nut and an encoder for a DRO. Wanting to be kind to my poor endmills, I removed as much metal as I could by drilling, the obvious signs still being there. |
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Here's a pretty complete list of parts. You see the 6" x 18" table, which is from a Grizzly XY table. Also there are the thrust bearings/washers. The semicircular bit is the mount for the washers at the crank end. The brass nut is from my Shoptask 3in1 machine. That machine was upgraded to ballscrews, and so the leadscrews and nuts became surplus. The purple bit is a delrin washer. The nut is in a custom housing that fits very nicely into one of the recesses, where it is bolted and doweled into place. The unusual shape (machined on my shaper) is required because the Shoptask leadscrew is a considerably larger diameter than the Burke's original screw and because the total table height is a bit less than the stock table. Overall, it got crowded. In hindsight, I should have engineered this. Instead, I just started to carve away metal until I was done. |
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Here's the table mounted on the machine, in an alcove of my tiny shop. The shop itself is 7' x 10', with this little 44" x 36" recess. It's more than a little tight, but you make do with what space you have. The other thing you see is a Rusnok vertical milling head I purchased. It mounts to a 2" diameter shaft that inserts where the overarm lives. I've removed the original AC motor, as it's very heavy and therefore a real pain to install, and am here in the process of fitting a 1 HP DC motor about a 1/10 the weight. The thing missing from this picture is the motor for use in horizontal mode. I intend to install a DC motor there as well, using the same controller to power both. |
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A closeup of the table. Note the microswitches and wiring. The right end of the leadscrew will have another DC motor attached. Originally, I only intended to power the X axis of the table. Subsequent (limited) use of the machine with the Rusnok head has convinced me to CNC the whole thing. I am quite frankly astonished at the stiffness of this whole setup, compared to my somewhat larger Shoptask. The upper two unused tapped holes in the table are for gib locks. The lower two are to fasten a semicircular bit with a single scribe mark, to match the appearance of the original table. |
Alan