Emco F1 CNC mill

[Nick WelburnParticipant @nickwelburn]

One has landed in my garage… big pile of spare steppers and boards.
If anyone is interested in the work of a total novice entering tbe CNC arena I’ll post up here.

So far we are on a stand an unplugged. More news next week as we get underway. 

[EmgeeParticipant @emgee]

Hi Nick

It may be best to switch the position of the mill and control panel around, it will ensure the stepper plugs reach the controller sockets without strain and don’t forget to connect the earth conductor to the controller earth terminal.

Also if the chip door is opened now the control will be less accessable as it will be behind the guard.
I have been running the same mill for many years now and can assure you they can turn out some good parts.
I use MFI for editing and writing programs to send to the machine from a computer by RS232 connection.

There is a dedicated Emco F1 cnc milling group at iO groups with lots of info and help if needed.
https://emcof1cncmill.groups.io/g/main

Emgee

[Nick WelburnParticipant @nickwelburn]

Cheers Emgee!

Good shout on the cables. It’s not clear to me how much I need the control panel as I have a PC with it running Debian and I guess Linux cnc.

I think i need to sort shelving for the PC and control panel.

The mill table is pretty crusty, I’m thinking about WD40 and wire wool to clean back to start with?

The table also seems to have a bunch of limit / centre switches fitted but no connections. They feel like they could be useful… do you know if they’d be factory?

[John HaineParticipant @johnhaine32865]

Welcome to CNC milling!  It’s a slippery slope…

If your PC has Linux CNC the learning curve could be long depending on how familiar you are with Linux.  You would obviously need stepper drivers and a breakout board to run the steppers.

I’m not sure how old these mills are but I suspect a similar vintage to the Denford Novamill.  If so, the drivers were very crude by modern standards, probably using the L297/298 chipset which only supports single stepping.  Even if you could get access to the drivers in the control panel don’t expect startling performance.

Modern microstep drivers are relatively cheap and would probably work well – I had no problem with the original motors with new drivers on my Novamill.

If you go the PC route you may find that the only thing usable from the control panel would be the power supply.

[Nick WelburnParticipant @nickwelburn]

Hi John,

I understand from the previous owner that the Mill will take instruction from an output from DesKam and that will produce G code to run the mill.

I just need to draw, fixture and plot the transitions for the tool paths. I think!

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

Mike Tull (Vixen) over on MEM forum has at least one of these and an Emco Compact 5 CNC lathe and does some great work with them it’s worth having a look through his posts. He has upgraded them from their original Ex HM Prison spec to something more upto date and uses Linux. Just about everything he does is now on the CNCs.

[Nick WelburnParticipant @nickwelburn]

Now that is very interesting, I got them and I was told that it used to be owned by a Mike who made some very fine model engines

[mike TParticipant @miket56243]

Hello Nick,

The photo of your F1 CNC mill looks rather familiar. I may have once owned it and converted it to run under LinuxCNC control. I did use DesKAM at the time. I also fitted, then later disconnected the limit switches.

Mike T

[Nick WelburnParticipant @nickwelburn]

🙂 so I’ve had a rearrangement and a bit of support from a previous owner. I’ve got all the axis moving, I’ve got the spindle running.

Next job! Draw something for the Minnie and make some swarf/scrap. The table is so slow and smooth compared to the mini mill I have so I’m quite excited at the potential this machine has for me.

It’s not massive by any means but I reckon I can make some good stuff on it with a bit of practice

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