I found this old, no-name CNC router on Craigslist in my area. I picked it up for $650 in an "As-is" not working condition. My plan was to put it up and install the Acorn fast and dirty (I'm currently doing a large VMC Oak retrofit so I figured this Acorn build would prep me for the Oak build as is it WAY more complex. Also, having a high RPM router is night for the projects my mill isn't good for).
When I picked it up and took it home, I started to open it up and see what I got. I was actually impressed with what I got for the price. It has nice cast aluminum table and gantry sides, beefy rails, ball screws, 24k RPM water-cooled spindle, and overall decent build construction. As far as electrical, it has open-loop steppers and drive, proximity sensors, and some old CNC controller that had to be hooked up to a computer via Serial port. I didn't even bother turning it on with the old hardware, so I went straight into added the Acorn.
I really wanted to play with my heatshrink label maker and wire ferrule kit before using them on the Oak retrofit so this was a good test run. While adding the Acorn I also swapped the stepper drives for some TB6600 drives I had laying around. After some wiring mishaps and 2 looooong nights, I got it all wired up and and powered.
I configured the CNC12 software for the router and struggled with the overall turns ratio. I started at 5 and when I commanded 1" of travel, I got 0.8". So I did the math and got 6.25 as my new ratio but that was way off. After lots of trial and error, I ended up a 5.095 on all axis and it it's pretty darn close, so I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong....
So I did my first test cut and it went great until it stalled the steppers during the cut. I noticed that my I couldn't get some speed out of the steppers without stalling them. I tried to rapid at 150-200ipm but it would stall. I was cutting some MDF wood with a 4 flute 1/8" cutting at 40ipm and I stalled it curring one of the finishing cuts. I will post some more pictures and videos later this week of the rest of the machine and more updates. First ti need to get some rest and clean up the mess I left, and tidy up the loose ends. Any and comments or suggestions are always welcome! Thanks!