Craigslist find

Raymond · December 18, 2017, 2:58am

Was searching CL while traveling for work and found this little jewel for $455, with the PC.

Now to figure out getting it home via FedEx packing & shipping and make a cable to hook the 2 together.

00w0w_hZGsxjAKEea_600x450

@nicksilva - I believe that’s a Sherline in there.

nicksilva · December 18, 2017, 5:17am

nice. I never find good deals.

TLAR · December 18, 2017, 12:29pm

Where is it located?

Raymond · December 18, 2017, 12:48pm

Indianapolis. I flew up here last night for work.

TLAR · December 18, 2017, 1:55pm

Cool,
If it was in the Washington DC metro area I could probably help.

richmeyer · December 18, 2017, 3:27pm

Yes, that’s a Sherline CNC Mill. That is an all steel enclosure and it is very heavy. Too heavy for a single person to lift. Similar to the enclosure that the Sherline CNC Lathe was in that I donated to the Machine Shop. I gave that enclosure to another DMS member for his project. But, I still have all the electronics just in case you need some spare parts. Also have some articles on how to upgrade the computer interface to use current CNC software like Mach3 or Mach4. Great find!

Raymond · December 20, 2017, 1:39am

So… I go to FedEx Office and they look and look and look at it. Then they weigh it and look at it and decide it’s too big to ship. They set me up a business account so I can ship it freight then take the computer and box it up for shipping with them. $33 plus a bit for packing. Not too bad.

Then they said get some bubble wrap, straps, and a pallet to ship the CNC mill via FedEx Freight. I was told to go behind Wal-Mart and just grab one. <EEEK!> Happily, I picked up a shipping blanket and ratchet straps at Home Depot and I asked the guys moving pallets around if they had one I could get from them - and they did.

YAY! I didn’t have to steal one!

I took it to FedEx Freight, or really, I tried to. Google took me to the wrong entrance. I found the right one with the help of some FedEx employees taking a smoke break. I had to check in with the gate guard then drive down an extremely long building to dock 120. Once there I talked to 5 different people to get the form needed, fill it out, then hurry and move the rental car so a truck could back in to unload.

Luckily another driver helped me unload the 138lb mill and place it on the pallet. (Who knew a pallet would fit flat in the back of a Ford Explorer?) I wrapped it, strapped it to the pallet, and waited another 15 minutes for someone to come out with a forklift and away it went! Now to wait and see how long it takes to arrive.

I have to say, that freight terminal was amazing! Multiple football fields would fit inside it. I was in the middle and I couldn’t see the ends. Forklifts were running everywhere and pallets were being moved around in an artful manner. It was impressive.

TLAR · December 20, 2017, 1:48am

Raymond,

FedEx freight is what delivered the 1400kgs of tool boxes from gainesville florida in a few short days…barring the rain we have right now causing a blizzard where your pallet is or along the route - you’ll have it this year!

TLAR · December 20, 2017, 3:54am

Raymond,

I have to say - I think you are quite resourceful & creative in finding that mill, and getting it shipped home!
Most would never even “try” - those folks are usually envious after the fact.

If you need help off loading at home - just let me know.

Raymond · December 20, 2017, 4:11am

Thanks Tom!

I appreciate the kind words.

Raymond · December 20, 2017, 4:46am

You aren’t kidding! I checked the tracking for shits and grins tonight and it says they expect to deliver it on Thursday!

Raymond · December 22, 2017, 10:20pm

And Thursday came and went… and FedEx didn’t get it on the truck for today so rather than wait until they open next Wednesday, we picked it up today. WHEW.

It’s in the shop now.

Raymond · December 24, 2017, 4:22am

Well… the good news is the PC is up and running and is a P200 with 64MB of RAM, 2.4GB HD, and is running Win98.

I had to edit the .ini files to get rid of the Novell ZenWorks launcher shell and bring back all of the Control Panel entries. After that was uninstalling the Novell network client and setting the network settings back to Windows Login instead of a domain one. Once that was done I started looking at all the software in the menus and on the hard drive - Office 2K, CAMCAD for Windows, Circuit Maker 2000, TraxMaker, LEGO ROBOLAB, MS Office 2000, and more.

It also has this card installed:
http://www.cyberresearch.com/store/download.aspx?prodid=2139

The bad news? There is no control software for the mill.

Looks like I get to do the Mach 3 conversion on it and use a spare laptop here with XP and a hardware parallel port to control it.

Raymond · January 11, 2018, 4:56am

Picked up a parallel port breakout board from Amazon, converted the mill to work with Mach3, and have it almost working. It seems the Z axis only goes up. I swapped the cables between the PP BoB and the mill’s controller and the problem follows the cables and not the controller. Now I have to check the parallel port cable, the short PP adapter cable, the breakout board, and the cables from the breakout board to the controller to find the missing DIR signal for the Z axis.

After I get that axis fixed, I’ll have to bribe one or more Mach3 knowledgeable members of @Team_Machine_Shop to come over and help me tweak the settings in Mach3 to work properly.

Raymond · January 11, 2018, 5:00am

Closeup of the breakout board:

The ribbon cable is a F-F DB-25 crimped cable I made using my Panavise Arbor Press. I wanted to bolt the breakout board directly to the slot in the side of the mill, but the power cable was in the way.

The controller board seems to be older than the other models that were shown on the web in the tutorials on converting the mill, but have the same pinout for the 3 rows of 32 pins. Instead of using a Eurocard connector I used .100 crimp headers I bought from Tanner Electronics that slipped right over the pins. It saved me a lot of soldering and heat shrink work.

I’m using an old Dell laptop with Windows XP to run it. I keep a couple of these old laptops around as spares for my EPROM programmer so I had it already on the shelf ready to go.

nicksilva · January 11, 2018, 8:39am

we’re gonna have to do something like that to get our cnc mini lathe going.
Rich Meyers is probably the guy to talk to.

jphelps · January 11, 2018, 6:25pm

Hoping we can discuss the CNC lathe tonight in our meeting.

Photomancer · January 11, 2018, 6:48pm

All you’ll have to do is bring it up!

Raymond · January 11, 2018, 11:44pm

Got the Z axis issue fixed!

Silly me fat fingered the config file setting for that pin.

I also got the axis movements calibrated for distance and set the BoB to tie the outputs high to fix the limit switches not being read. Now to get Mach3 to actually stop when the switches are activated.

Raymond · January 12, 2018, 4:26am

Ok,

Try 2. First time I had the z axis backwards and the 1/8" router bit in it. Now it has a tiny mill bit (I didn’t measure) and is running again doing the roadrunner test file.