Nice to hear from you again Dale.
I bought a small router from one of the Chinese vendors on Ebay. There are dozens of them, and if you look closely you can tell the ones that are made with heavier frames and look more rugged. I cant give you a pointer because I got mine a couple years ago, but I was able to hook Mach to it without trouble. In fact it came with a copy of Mach3 on CD, as do many of them.
I found it to be a decent little machine, not quite as stiff as a Bridgeport, but reasonable.
ron ginger
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On 4/13/2021 7:13 PM, Dale Grice wrote:
I am curious if anyone knows of a good XY table that I can connect my Mach 4 and CNC box to.
The situation is, I've always wanted to get in to CNC. I got into the retrofit of a little machine shop mini lathe with CNC and Mach 4 in order to learn. I used the tech shops design by Ron Ginger and another gentleman's who's name I not recall.
I also have a 13x40 geared head lathe and a Bridgeport Mill. And no more room in my small little hobby shop.
I have some projects that require large numbers of like pieces and in a lot of cases the cnc'd mini late doesn't have the power or I do not have the tooling for it.
There are many times I thought having a small XY table mounted on my 13x40 lathe powered by my CNC box and Mach 4 would be quite beneficial. It is also something I could transfer over to the bridgeport.
At this point I just can't see doing a full CNC install on either the 13x40 lathe or the Bridgeport Mill.
I have considered an electronic lead screw on the lathe but I suspect that needs ball screws and it would not transfer over to the Bridgeport. And at this point I'd like to keep the lathe capable of doing one of projects. That is what I do most of it appears.
Sorry for the long-winded message.
Dale Grice
Ron Ginger