Hi Guys I thought I would show off my efforts for your comments (cringe). Over the past few years I have been designing and building a variation on the Metalmaster. It is made from solid cast iron blocks and standard mild steel sections to avoid making castings. The essential difference to the Metalmaster is that the bed remains stationary and supported at each end and the head and tailstock can be raised or lowered relative to the bed. A secondary vertical column is incorporated in the integral tailstock to avoid an unsupported overarm and tailstock. The machine uses stepper motors to drive each axis. A separate stepper motor is dedicated to driving the headstock (Stepperhead) The axes can be operated either manually, power driven by the stepper motors or CNC operated via the lap top computer. I entered this machine in the Model Engineers Exhibition in 2008 at Ascot UK where it was awarded a Gold Medal and The Bowyer-Lowe Trophy. I have written an article which will be printed in the Model Engineers Workshop soon.I have also added some dodgy videos on utube and some pics on Flickr
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Regards Alan