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Posted by RB on July 15, 2008, 5:01 pm
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Well, that EMCO 8.6 I was asking about left my possession Sunday. Local
machinist wanted spares for his, and mine had some headstock issues, so
it went to a better home.
Now I'm looking at a EMCO COmpact5 CNC mill/lathe. It's not the F1, but
I have not determined what generation it is.
What I'd want it for is to learn basic CNC programming, and to make
things like firing pins for pistols. It looks like a fun toy.
It seems to be complete, powers up, DRO shows on the screen and the
numbers move when you bump the servos via the manual controls.
Has a chuck, maybe some collets, includes the milling head. Also a
steady rest. The machine was in use by a recently deceased benchrest
rifle builder. He also has a much larger CNC machine that looked to be
his workhorse. This little one is pretty clean. Asking price is $700
I've searched the web and found surprisingly little about these
machines. I did find this http://www.emco.co.uk/home&hobby.htm
which is most useful.
Does anyone here own and use one?
Suggestion of things to look for / at to evaluate it?
Things to watch out for?
Overall usability for the intended purpose?
Does the price seem right based on what I've mentioned?
Thanks in advance for any help.
Rex
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Posted by DoN. Nichols on July 16, 2008, 10:54 pm
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I answered the e-mail copy of this much earlier since I got both e-mail
and usenet copies. I've since exchanged another cycle of e-mails. But
I will post here what my reply to this one was at least. I got a
warning at the end that it was also posted, so I saved a copy to read
into the newsreader when replying.
> DoN. Nichols wrote:
[ ... ]
> > What kind of toolpost does it have?
> We have yet to find the toolpost. Garage is packed full and pretty mixed
> up. I am going back armed with better information (Thanks to you) and
> we will try to gather up all the tooling.
I'll be trimming out a lot of the quoted text to keep this from
growing above the 30K limit for incoming e-mail (designed to keep
viruses out of a couple of small mailing lists which I host).
O.K. The cross-slide should have a steel plate held on by four
screws in the corners, and have two fairly large threaded holes
(alternate positions for the toolpost -- one for small diameters, and
one for larger ones -- the cross slide does not have enough range to
cover both at one setting. The turret bolts down to the cross slide in
place of the steel plate, and has a motor sticking out through a cutaway
in the chip shield. There are two chip shields -- one for the turret
cross slide, and one for the QC toolpost. The turret has a vaguely
triangular shaped plate facing the chuck with three radial slots and
three holes. It has to be connected to the back of the panel after
feeding through a notch in the front of the chip pan. I wound up
mounting a connector to the front of the chip pan to make it easier to
convert between turret and QC toolpost, since each has its own strong
points. The turret is better for a lot of tool changes per part, but it
can't handle large diameter workpieces so the programs can select "tool
0" to cause the machine to pause while you change tools on the
quick-change toolpost. Note that one of the nuisances of the turret is
that it has no absolute addressing. The commands only involve "move
forward 'N' stations, so you have to remember which station it is on at
the moment to figure out how to move it to the one which you want. And,
you have to remember to end your program by returning it to a known
starting point, or the next run will be using wildly inappropriate
tools. :-)
[ ... ]
> > Another clue is the spindle motor switch. On the earlier
> > system, the switch was simply a rocker switch with ON and OFF. On the
> > newer one it is either a rocker switch with ON/OFF/CNC so the program
> > can start and stop the spindle. Some of the later ones have a
> > different style of switch, but since I don't have one of those, I
> > forget what it looked like -- rotary switch, perhaps?
> I believe it has the on-off-cnc switch. That and other clues lead me to
> believe it is a 2nd gen machine.
Second -- or perhaps third.
> >> Things to watch out for?
[ ... ]
> > Most of them have a tape drive for storing programs which uses
> > tiny tapes which are quite hard to find.
> Is that the same micro-tapes that answering machines and note recorders
> used to use?
Well ... it is one of two different styles of such micro-tapes,
the one less readily found.
O.K. I have two styles.
Philips LDB4401 certified digital Mini-Cassette (8920 440 10101
Realistic Mini 30 Cassette (Cat No 44-633) Radio Shack. (Probably long
out of production.)
They can be identified by a hole through each of the back corners, into
which snaps a plug to enable writing. (That was one of the first things
which I made on the lathe. :-) The hole is counterbored from both sides.
And the plug has a recess in its head to keep from pushing the pin down
too hard and far.
Multiple programs can be saved on a single cassette, but
deleting a single program is difficult. And -- it is *slow*.
> > I have a replacement drive
> > which will use 3.5" floppies -- but which will require me to make a new
> > mounting bezel for it. (Then again -- floppies are now getting hard to
> > find, too. :-)
> heh. I just threw away two new boxes of 1.4s.
:-)
I've never used the floppy drive in my Sun Blade 1000. I
usually copy things from other systems via the net -- or sometimes via
CD-ROM. Floppies just aren't big enough any more. :-)
[ ... ]
> > I would consider it to be a good price if you have the
> > quick-change toolpost (with at least four holders -- one for the parting
> > blade and three for other square-shanked tools -- with one with a V
> > bottom for round shanked tools as well), or the turret toolpost.
> I have not found the toolpost, but I'd bet it's a QC based on what I
> have seen of the shop. This guy was not bashful about good tooling.
Well ... the QC toolpost was the low-budget version of the
machine. The turret was the more expensive version. You really *can't*
use a CNC machine without either a turret or a quick-change toolpost,
because something like a lantern style toolpost would not repeat when
you changed the tools in the middle of a program. For a simple example,
you use one tool to turn a shaft down to the proper diameter, the next
tool to thread it, and finally a parting tool to cut it off from the
main bar of stock. Each tool has to be in the right position for the
program (or the program has to be edited to correct the tool position,
which is a problem since you can't stop the program in the middle of a
run, edit it, and continue from where you were -- it always goes back to
the start.
There is a microscope with cross-hairs which is on a base which
fits the ways and is used to define the position of each tool tip
relative to the others. The tool change command has:
1) how far to move the turret ahead to the next tool (or 0 for a
quick-change toolpost),
2) The X-offset from the first tool's position.
3) The Z-offset from the first tool's position.
so the commands move the tools to the right place relative to the
workpiece. Without this, you may thread in air above the workpiece
instead of actually threading the diameter just cut.
> > A bonus is The collet adaptor for the spindle. This would make
> > your firing pins easer to make than doing it with a chuck.
> There are collets, look like 3At so may not be for this machine.
Wrong for this machine. The spindle is a Morse Taper 2, and the
collet adaptor bolts to the nose of the spindle in place of the chucks.
It accepts ER style collets. The adaptor without the nosepiece looks
sort of like a steel wine glass with a hole through the stem. :-) Looks
like the ER-25 series is what it uses.
Now -- it is possible to make an adaptor to use the D series of
collets with a drawbar. (The D series are the next size up from the WW
series of watchmaker's collets.) And those would probably be more rigid
than the ER-25 ones in the "wineglass" adaptor.
Hmm ... do you have the manual for the lathe? If it is the
latest, then you will probably have this already (or should be able to
find it in the shop), but just in case:
http://www.d-and-d.com/EMCO/MANUAL/index.html
it is large, and slow because it is scanned to PDF format at a fairly
high resolution -- but print it once and then you can go through it
quickly.
I just went though it and discover that it does not have what I
was remembering -- drawings of the accessories. Among other things,
there is a weird looking thing which has a bunch of grooves which is
used as a reference for setting the tools, and a metal plate which is
used with it as a reference for setting the toolpost location.
Those must have been in the technical reference manual, which I
never got around to scanning.
> > Prices seem to normally be above this. based on observed eBay
> > auctions.
> the only two I could find were bare, worn machines for $435 and $550
Hmmm ... let me look on eBay to see if any photos will be
helpful.
1) 270255813367 Milling head. You say that you have this.
It uses the same collets as the lathe spindle in
the proper adaptor.
I have the column and head with a separate
manual milling base, but the bolt-on adaptor
does not fit the lathe's mounting point, so I
can't use it as a CNC mill.
2) 270256127147 Aha -- the tool setting parts which I was
mentioning above. This tells you what to look
for in the shop. You should have these. (or
eBay this set if you can't find them.)
3) 270256128354 Steady rest. Check for one of these. It will
be useful in turning long slender workpieces.
The price on this auction is (so far) not bad.
4) 270256158230 Hmm ... the milling table. I don't have this,
though it looks very much like the milling table
for the ancient Unimat SL-1000 which I have
(same maker, anyway.)
5) 310053252950 Lathe parts manual. Might be worth while
having.
6) 330202900069 Complete lathe -- look at the price. :-)
The fourth photo shows the turret, so you know
what to look for. It might have the red paint
shown, or the yellow/orange paint. (Hmm ...
what color is your machine? Red is later,
orange is earlier.
7) 280246555008 A set of proper collets.
8) 280246556226 *Not* the standard quick-change for the Compact
5, and only has one station. Not a good choice.
And that's it for the moment. What were the auction numbers for
the two which you found? They may still have useful images, even if
they are closed already.
> > BTW What does the chuck look like? The newer ones look like the
> > 3-jaw chucks for larger lathes, while the older one is operated
> > with what looks like a Jacobs chuck key, geared to turn a plate
> > just behind the jaws. There are also a 4-jaw chuck, and a 4-jaw
> > universal chuck (nice when dealing with thin-walled parts where
> > a 3-jaw chuck would be more likely to distort the workpiece).
> So far we have found two chucks - 3-jaw, 6-jaw - in the correct size
> range, but neither fits the spindle. He called to say he found the
> correct chuck, but I have not seen it.
The correct chuck will have a recess on the back of 40mm
diameter (1.575"), and three counterbored holes for a 3-jaw, or four
counterbored holes for a 4-jaw.
> Anything you can add, please do. You may as well reply here and add to
> the knowledgebase, but you can email me directly if you prefer.
Well ... since you apparently both posted and e-mailed, I see
the e-mail first, and a reply there will get to you much sooner than one
in the newsgroup. Hmm ... maybe I'll save a copy to send out to the
list as well.
Enjoy,
DoN.
--
(too) near Washington D.C. | http://www.d-and-d.com/dnichols/DoN.html
--- Black Holes are where God is dividing by zero ---
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Posted by RB on July 17, 2008, 11:42 am
Please log in for more thread options I picked up the machine last night, along with all the accessories I
could find. It appears to be a 3rd gen machine, with milling attachment,
turret toolpost. It came with Milling table and vise, indexer, 3-jaw
chuck, and two collets. No sign of a collet closer.
It came with a user/student manual.
Overall in nice shape, apparently used and properly cared for.
Many thanks to Don Nichols for helping me know what to look for, and in
identifying the accessories. He took a lot of time emailing me about the
nuances of this system.
In the process of gathering this stuff, I talked to the seller, who was
liquidating the estate of his brother, Shelley Davidson. If you have an
interesting benchrest shooting you will know the name. Here's a good
article about him and what he used his machine tools for:
http://www.6mmbr.com/gunweek077.html
Neat guy, and a respected craftsman. I regret I did not know him.
RB wrote:
> Well, that EMCO 8.6 I was asking about left my possession Sunday. Local
> machinist wanted spares for his, and mine had some headstock issues, so
> it went to a better home.
>
> Now I'm looking at a EMCO COmpact5 CNC mill/lathe. It's not the F1, but
> I have not determined what generation it is.
>
> What I'd want it for is to learn basic CNC programming, and to make
> things like firing pins for pistols. It looks like a fun toy.
>
> It seems to be complete, powers up, DRO shows on the screen and the
> numbers move when you bump the servos via the manual controls.
> Has a chuck, maybe some collets, includes the milling head. Also a
> steady rest. The machine was in use by a recently deceased benchrest
> rifle builder. He also has a much larger CNC machine that looked to be
> his workhorse. This little one is pretty clean. Asking price is $700
>
> I've searched the web and found surprisingly little about these
> machines. I did find this http://www.emco.co.uk/home&hobby.htm
> which is most useful.
>
> Does anyone here own and use one?
>
> Suggestion of things to look for / at to evaluate it?
>
> Things to watch out for?
>
> Overall usability for the intended purpose?
>
> Does the price seem right based on what I've mentioned?
>
> Thanks in advance for any help.
>
> Rex
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Posted by DoN. Nichols on July 17, 2008, 9:45 pm
Please log in for more thread options > I picked up the machine last night, along with all the accessories I
> could find. It appears to be a 3rd gen machine, with milling attachment,
> turret toolpost. It came with Milling table and vise, indexer, 3-jaw
> chuck, and two collets. No sign of a collet closer.
> It came with a user/student manual.
>
> Overall in nice shape, apparently used and properly cared for.
Good deal at that price with all of that.
> Many thanks to Don Nichols for helping me know what to look for, and in
> identifying the accessories. He took a lot of time emailing me about the
> nuances of this system.
I've owned and used one for quite a while, collecting
accessories over time, so I've learned what to look for.
> In the process of gathering this stuff, I talked to the seller, who was
> liquidating the estate of his brother, Shelley Davidson. If you have an
> interesting benchrest shooting you will know the name. Here's a good
> article about him and what he used his machine tools for:
>
> http://www.6mmbr.com/gunweek077.html
Interesting indeed.
Enjoy,
DoN.
--
(too) near Washington D.C. | http://www.d-and-d.com/dnichols/DoN.html
--- Black Holes are where God is dividing by zero ---
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