Centroid Community CNC Support Forum

I think the PM 940V and Arizona CNC will work together well. The next thing is the controller. Any recommendations on that? I'd like to purchase a "box" with everything in it. Who is good at building controller boxes for mills?

Thanks all for the comments on this thread.

In my experience, it is better to make each tool a separate job rather than try and keep the tool changes in the same job. While it does work, if anything goes wrong, or is messed up, then the job is more difficult to restart. I find this method to be the most sound and foolproof, although as a cons...

I am currently working on a retrofit for my 1987 cnc knee mill. Back in the day these were the top of the line industrial machines, so they tend to have nice features, like ground ballscrews, 30 or 40 taper spindles, power drawbar and weight 3k-5k lbs. In my opinion these older cnc knee/bed mills t...

@automatedingenuities - I'm going to look deeper into the ArizonaCNC system and the PM 940. That looks to be good for me. I'm an engineer, not a machinist so no manual handles will be just fine. The pendant is a great addition. I went for 10+ years without one on my CNC and the day I got it, I thoug...

@automatedingenuities - I'm looking for less of a challenge and more of a bolt together. I see on the PM website that a third party offers a complete kit including clearpath drives for the PM940. Cost wise, the PM940 and the kit together are in the sweet spot of my budget. I appreciate sending me do...

@automatedingenuities - Thanks for the information on that. Have you converted a PM940 to CNC? I have the same restriction on power. Single phase 220. I'm not looking to become a milling shop. I build custom auto parts and accessories for exotic cars (and other things) so my volume is low and my mar...

@cnckeith - Great post! Just what I'm looking for. Thanks.

So if you were looking for a mill to convert to CNC, what models would be good candidates?

Kinda depends on what you want to do with the machine. What kind of tolerances do you need to hold? Will it be running all the time, or just light hobby use? Precision Mathews has a few models and is a popular hobby level machine. A bit more than hobby use, a lot less than commercial. Don't need ex...

Is it standard procedure to just keep emptying the load path of old jobs? I've taken to calling everything the same thing to keep that directory from being flooded with junk files. I transport gcode to the machine using an SD card.

Is there a better way?