I don't usually have problems turning 2 and 3 inch square stock to round except when I hit a knot. That's when I lose steps; it's catastrophic if I lose steps when threading.
I bought a 4 axis kit some years ago for a homemade CNC machine. I repurposed that kit on the Legacy. I bought a kit from the following company very close to this one: https://www.automationtechnologiesinc.com/products-page/g540-stepper-motor-kits/g540-4-axis-kit-115v230vac/ It's listed now at $617, and I probably paid 500 something for it those years ago. this company also offers another kit with 570 oz steppers https://www.automationtechnologiesinc.com/products-page/g540-stepper-motor-kits/4-axis-stepper-motor-cnc-router/ What would I do different? 1. I'd start with a geared stepper rather than making a gear reduction with pulleys and timing belts. 2. I really like having some of the axes directly connected to the stepper motor because it's so simple and less can go wrong. 3. I'd add limit switches to avoid crashes on both extents of x y and z axes. Right now I have only an x min endstop to avoid crashing into the 3 jaw chuck. 4. I'd prefer the shortest machine possible for working my dowels, which has always been 4 feet. I'm not crazy enough to cut irreplacable rails, so I'd try and lock the height and level of the legacy to make it more ridgid because I always tend to be a little tapered on one end of a dowel. 5. I still like using mach3, although its strengths lie in straight lines and not in circles and ellipses. I've not used it at all for relief carving; everything is turning spindles and threading, which it does well. If I were to start over, I'd probably look at how to interface with Vectric and more modern controllers so I don't have to rely on parallel port connections on ancient computers. I keep 2 spare computers laying around just in case, which is silly. I promise that I will take some pics this week. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Legacy Ornamental Mills" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to legacy-ornamental-mills+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/legacy-ornamental-mills/fc6bc776-5529-4f34-817c-eb5a93e61776o%40googlegroups.com.
