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Drill Press Info
Here is what I did - I added some of my own circutry and modified the software a bit for my own hardware, but it really is pretty easy to do.
First, take an old pc, but preferably one with decent quality RAM/motherboard, that has a printer port. Install linux and the EMC (embedded machine control) software. EMC and linux used to be tough to install, but nowadays, you can download a CDROM image called the BDI disk for it (BDI = Brain Dead Install). Wire up stepper or step/dir servo drives to the printer port, along with Estop and home/limit switches.
For motors/drives, I used ebay DC servos with encoders, and the geckodrive servo drives. (www.geckodrive.com) - Mariss, the owner/inventor of the geckodrives is coming out with a new piece of drive hardware that will connect via USB and do the step generation for up to 6 axis and connect to the drives, eliminating the parallel port need. Support for linux should be available with the G2002 (new hardware) is out, but in the interim, you can just use the printer port and let EMC generate the pulses. I really can't say enough good things about the geckodrives. Easy to use, work great, fault tolerant, and for the most part, idiot tolerant. Somehow I blew one up, and Mariss generally fixes one for free. I sent mine in, with a note, and he sent it back fixed. There are cheaper ones, but none that are as professionally designed and built. He sells them direct; He has his own smt production equipment and makes them right there.
I overbought on the servos so that I can use them with a bigger mill someday, and have the whole works wired up in a 19" rack enclosure. Boot the PC, load your .g code files over the network or from a floppy (from your cad/cam software, or written in a text editor), and hit go. It also works great for manual work, using a joystick, since you can watch the display for your measurements. My system even turns on the flood coolant, and starts and stops the spindle when the operation is complete. I don't have a tool changer, so I generally break my work into phases by tool, or just use a generic enough end mill to get the job done.
EMC is free, but there are turn key pay solutions. I prefer linux and EMC myself - For example, My fleabay encoders had very high resolution, so high that I needed an insane step rate to get decent feed speeds. (The gecko can work around this, but my early version of the drive didn't have that feature). Since I had the source code, I simply added a 10x pulse multiplier in the "output" routine, and for my work, at my rates, it works fine. (Technically I'm screwing up the velocity of the endmill slightly, but the machine does fine work). EMC takes a bit more reading to get running than the out of the box ones, but it is more flexible, and in fact, a lot of commercial software borrows heavily from the EMC code. EMC will handle rotary axis, 6 dof machines, etc. Way beyond me though. EMC is actually written by NIST, so it's your tax dollars, but it's free to you and to american industry. 
Feel free to contact me off list for any other details.
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Huckmeat... that was real easy alright. I could have done that in my sleep. NOT!
Back to the original question..... I just gave away my bench top press. After I got a floor model and the poor little thing had nothing to do but collect dust.
I never drilled a hole (in metal) bigger than 1/2 until I started fooling around with tractors... now there is no bit too big or drill press that has too much power.
Get the biggest floor model you can afford, you won't be sorry.
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Although I follow what Huckmeat suggests I am sure it would take me a bit to rig it up. I find that PLC programing and literature is written by computer programers that flunked English 101 7 or 8 times. Naturally the Japanese/english translations are worse.
I am enclined to encourage Huckmeat to part with his mini CNC for a larger one. I'll start the bidding at 100$. Either that or he may have me on his door step for a week while I figure out what he did.
Very interesting Huck. Thanks.
Peters
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Eric: I live closer to Colorado than you do. I could beat you there, easy.
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Any of you who are interested, just give me a holler. I can take lots of pictures, give you wiring diagrams, and walk you through building your own. After doing it once, and realizing how it is done, it's not to bad at all. Trivial compared to figuring out which hydraulics I need to add to my new tractor.
Seriously, I find that there is a middle ground in doing the CNC retrofits. There are people who buy turn-key packages (mill, electronics, software, CAD) and then there are people who are interested in building every part from scratch. I started out the scratch route, and realized that while I enjoyed building circuits, soldering, etc, I was really wanting to start making metal chips. I ended up floating in between - Buying motor drives, soldering my own cables and connectors, and installing the EMC software myself. When I did it, EMC was kinda a tough install, but now, download or mail order the BDI disk, put it in the CD rom, let it boot and install, and you are done.
I'm starting my big construction project right now, but in 7-9 months, I'll be re-assembling my mini mill in my new shop I'll photograph everything and post it up to follow.
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Fascinating discussion! About 20 years ago I played soccer with a Scot who was a machinist and took the training for early computer controlled tools. The 'pint after a game' jawing with him was a lot more interesting than typical state of the Scottish Football League subjects. I had no idea that this sort of technology had become realistic for home shops--should have figured so I guess. Hard to keep track of how fast technology has changed. During the early 70's one of my school roommates worked at programming assembly line controllers.
He programmed in Assembler and spent all his time figuring how to eliminate instructions. Everything was done in core memory and most controllers had 15K or less memory. The programmers had to be good to figure out how to get a process into a small space. Today programmers have the luxury of just throwing more memory at a problem.
Maybe this discussion will get me to take a closer look at my father in law's old South Bend lathe. It's primitive by these standards but still probably fun to tinker with.
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If anyone is interested,
Here's the site for the free software, corrected to BDI.
Link:
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About 18 years ago, when I thought I wanted to become an engineer and was attending Michigan Tech, we had to design a part using autocad then program the machine to cut it out of foam......This highly techicnal school was still using punch cards for programing. You want to talk about fun!
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I remember punch cards. Used 'em at ASU (Arizona) in the 70's when programming the big univac in the basement. Nothing like 24 hour batch turnaround time to speed up the debug process!
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