Boxford CNC

Lathe or mill ?

-- Regards,

John Stevenson Nottingham, England.

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Ideally a lathe

Charles

They are geared towards education but with a brain transplant whatever they were designed to do is now immaterial.

I have seen them from £350 up to over a grand. Bear in mind a decent cutoff point ought the be around the £500 mark as beyond that factoring in new motors, tired and old spec, drives, same, plus the transplant all you are buying is some Iron and a couple of ballscrew's. You can buy an ML7 for £350 / £400 and use that as a starter point.

-- Regards,

John Stevenson Nottingham, England.

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whatever

couple

The Boxford's I have seen have all really been rather too light weight to do much with. That's why I wasn't too sad to let my Denford ORAC go before the aborted move - just too small to do much with in the real world - though perhaps ok for a model engineer.

Colchester CNC lathes seem to go cheap as chips at machinery auctions and could be a better starting point.

AWEM

Think of the space old fella,think of the space. We don't all have spouses that let the workshops encroach on the garden as much as yours.

Charles

I have two of the TCL125's I am converting these for production work, mainly in Acetal. For this kind of work they are great.

I also use a couple of Emco C5 cnc's. These are also ok, but very overrated, especially the prices they seem to fetch on ebay. My later one will go on ebay sometime, as it's earnt it's keep manytimes over. One of the Boxford will replace that one.

You do as John says, have to factor in a conversion. the original elctronics are terrible. Unipoler stepper drives with current limiting resistors that have a habic of getting so hot they desolder themselves !

The DC spindle drive is fragile too. Much better to use a VFD and 1/2

- 3/4 hp AC motor.

With modern drives and Mach3 software they do become transformed. Mine have DC servo's now and are very fast. But thy need to be I'm doing work that should really be run on swiss auto's.

Wayne....

auctions

So REALLY it's a replacement spouse that you need rather than a CNC lathe

AWEM

How dare you suggest such a thing. It's my wedding anniversary this very day!

Charles

Very appropriate then - how long did you buy the licence for - presumably it will eventually expire

AWEM

Don't they expect a big surprise on that day? ;-))

Nick

So is it alright to suggest it on another day ?

-- Regards,

John Stevenson Nottingham, England.

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The big suprise came 19 years ago.

Charles