Making a CNC Milling Machine – Increasing the travel
Making a CNC Milling Machine – Increasing the travel
Part 3
I have been working on making a CNC milling machine from a Grizzly G0704 manual milling machine. Welcome back to my blog. I have looked at several modifications to the Grizzly G0704 and one that seem really useful is increasing the travel on the Y and Z axis. Increasing the travel will require some pretty serious modifications to the existing castings and will definitely void your warranty.
Increasing the travel of the Y axis will require that I mill open the center of the base so that the ball screw nut can travel farther. I also am adding a spacer behind the column. By making these modifications I will end up with a Y axis travel of 12″ instead of the stock 9″.
Column Spacer T6061 aluminum.
Remove material from the base for ball screw nut clearance.
On the Z axis I should be able to increase the travel by using a longer Ballscrew and flipping the head mounting plate 180 degrees. this will make the mounting point several inches above it’s current location. This modification will also require me to mill a longer opening in the mill column to allow for the extra travel.
Most of these modifications can be made on my Harbor Freight mini-mill. However, using the Mini-mill will be a slow process and require a lot of for-thought to set up each part for machining. Since I have access to larger machinery, I decided to speed the process up by using the machining center for most of the large pieces.
Roughing pass on the head spacer
If all goes well I will vastly increase the travel of the Y and Z axis with these modifications. This is not untested territory, Two machinist I know from Texas have already done similar modifications and were kind enough to share information with me. Thanks Joe and Gary.
G0704 Stock cutting dimensions
- Swing travel “Z” (vertical): 15″
- Table travel “X”(longitudinal): 18-7/8”
- Table travel “Y”(cross): 6-7/8”
G0704 Extended cutting dimensions
- Swing travel “Z” (vertical): 18″
- Table travel “X”(longitudinal): 18-7/8”
- Table travel “Y”(cross): 12”
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