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Taig
mill: 
I've
always been interested in CNC machining particularly
as an artistic tool. The design possibilities are endless
dictated only by your imagination (and of course ... programming
skills).
CNC mills are not cheap. Taig, however,
makes a great little CNC mill which, although dimunative
in size, is sturdy, accurate and relatively inexpensive.
I was able to buy a secondhand one which saved me even more
(used ones don't come up for sale that often). I knew
for a lot of the things I wanted a mill for, the Taig
would not be large enough so I also have a Grizzly
gearhead mill/drill G1126. But for the CNC work I was
planning, the Taig fit the bill well.
I
wanted a variable speed spindle
and just happened to have another treadmill motor like
the one I used on my lathe. I needed to design a special
mount
for it however and came up with a design that centered
the motor on the Z-axis (most Taig mills have their motor
mounted
off center to one side). My thinking was to have a more
even distribution of the weight of the motor + mount's and
to produce a "stand-alone" Taig headstock spindle/variable
speed motor unit which could be employed
for
other
tasks (ex: a tool sharpening rig, a mini-thickness sander
for making strips of wood to use in building up model
ship hulls).
I
also have plans for being able to swap the variable speed
spindle motor with
a NEMA 34 stepper when desired in order to mount the
headstock directly to the mill table. This gives me the ability
to
mount a tailstock at the other end, a high speed engraver
on Z and do some interesting stuff (more on that later).
I can leave the variable speed motor on the mount
with the set-up described above (headstock and tailstock
on mill
table), put a tool post on Z and have CNC lathe capabilities
on the mill too. For all this to work well I needed a "power
unit" which could mount on the Taig headstock. There
is a link to pictures of it below.
The
great thing about owning the Taig lathe and mill is that
almost all the parts and accessories are interchangable.
This allows for a lot of creative set-ups.
I
am in the process of stripping the controller and NEMA 23
motors which came with the Taig mill off in order to transfer
them to the CNC conversion of my Taig lathe I'm working on.
The mill is getting NEMA
34 motors and I am building a 4-axis controller (step & direction)
using Pacific Scientific 6410's.
 Misc.
pictures of my Taig mill
Pictures
of my Taig mill treadmill motor mount design
Pictures
of my Taig mill Dewalt DW660 laminate trimmer mount
Simple
CNC plotter pencil made from a Staedtler mechanical pencil
Accessories
and improvements
Some
mill projects.
Last
changed
October 1, 2003
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