From: Pork Products <porkprod@yahoo.com>

Hi John,

No need for apologies of any kind. I am grateful for
your letter and your in depth personal experience is
well displayed in your letter.

Your reasoning and complete explanations for your statements are very
helpful indeed.

I think that I am stuck with my mill/drill for now and
that upgrading it to CNC would be the best choice. I
can upgrade for about $3000. If I sold my machine and
bought an old CNC I think I would be spending
$7000-10,000 because I would be getting a much larger
milling machine and there would be large shipping
costs. That is a lot more money.

I have lots of space but unfortunately a small
doorway. So getting a bigger machine in would be very
difficult to impossible.

The whole ballscrew issue had not been mentioned as a
potential problem by anyone else. What you said about
the ellipse makes sense to me. The end mill moves the
work and table because of the play in the gear drives
and the stepper motor never even knows that this
occurs. I must say that I am not please to have this
sticky point brought to my attention but better now
than having a surprise later:)

It seems that many other people manage without
installing ballscrews. I will ask Ah-ha more about
this.

Based on your advice and one other persons I have
decided that timing belts are a good solution to keep
the motors out of the way and increase motion control
accuracy.

<<<<When I set a job up I designate a reference point.
Usually the corner of the part. I then zero on that
point >>>>

What you do makes sense to me. I wonder, though, how
you "zero on that point". Specifically, what tools and
procedure do you use to accomplish this task?

I was able to download the demo for the Ah-ha software
from their website. It looks good so far.

I will now begin reading the attachment you sent.

Thank you again,

Peter
Victoria, BC, Canada