Surface Plate Table

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Hi All;Here are some pictures of a table I built for my 2'x3' surface plate.  I appreciate the feedback I got on my weld quality from this forum, it helped.  I'm now building an oak cabinet to go underneath that holds my metrology tools.Best Regards;Erik Attached Images
Reply:Damn nice lookin surface plate table.  Well designed, sturdy and mobile.  Whats not to like about it. What do you use the table for?  Milling, lathe or other precision locating?  Good job, welcome to the forum and keep postin up your projects!BobI'm spending my Kids inheritance, I dont like him that much anyway!!!!!!Enuff tools to do the job, enough sense to use em.Anybody got a spare set of kidneys?  Trade?
Reply:Nice sturdy table.My surface plate lives under my bench.Have to pull it out to use it.PITA.Is machine in background Okada vmc?Miller a/c-d/c Thunderbolt XLMillermatic 180 Purox O/ASmith Littletorch O/AHobart Champion Elite
Reply:The machine in the background is an Okada VM500 Mill/VMC.  Works great but I'm trying to make it drip feed and that's been tough, haven't figured it out yet.The surface plate is for measuring stuff I make with the milling machine.  It's so darn heavy (more than 400 pounds) that I needed a stand with wheels so I could move it around, I couldn't budge the previous stand (didn't have wheels) and so the plate was always in a corner and inconvenient to use.
Reply:Just curious is this in your house? I have a shop big enough for machines but worried about the electric.Also, very nice on the surface plate. Do you have any height guages or anything of that sort?
Reply:The shop is located in a building seperate from my house and has a seperate electric service. However, if there is just one person using the shop there's no reason you can't run anything you want on a residential or garage service. The reason you need heavy duty electric power is if several machines are going all at the same tme. Since it's just me I'm never running more than a single machine (and maybe the compressor) at any given time. My two biggest machines are a 7.5 HP air compressor and the milling machine.   Both run from 50 amp breakers but rarely use anything close to that much energy. The only challenging part of having big machines is generating three phase power. I have no access to three phase at my house so I need to make my own. Fortunately, making three phase power isn't very hard. I have a three phase Delta Unisaw and that has a digital phase converter. It's really neat since you can run the motor at any speed as well as have soft start and fast stop. The milling machine gets power from a 20 HP three phase generator that I built myself. I tuned the phases to be within less than 1% of each other and the power is nice and clean for the electronics.For metrology tools I have a few Cadillac (height) guages, a full set of pins, bunches of calipers up to about three feet long, various micrometers up to about a foot long, assorted dial guages and fixtures.
Reply:Are you using machine's coolant system for drip feed?I tried many times to throttle down coolant flow on vmc.Ball valve would clog and I'd have to open valve to clear blockage.Coolant would start gushing out,splashing all over.Tool/chips wouldfling coolant everywhere.I'll be curious to see what you come up with.Miller a/c-d/c Thunderbolt XLMillermatic 180 Purox O/ASmith Littletorch O/AHobart Champion Elite
Reply:Nice table.But way too clean of a shop! My shop is like wadeing through swamp full af alligators.My surface plate is back there,somewhere! I should be able to find it if I dig for a day or two.I am jealous of all the sparkling clean shops on this forum. I clean up with the big compressor and a three quater inch hose.What ever blows out the door...Well I didn't need it that bad!tractor,loader.dozer,backhoe,and all the tools to keep em movin
Reply:I don't have any problems with the coolant system. I have both Spray and Flood systems and they both work.By, "Drip Feed" I mean feeding a long program directly into the mill from a computer.  That vintage CNC control (Fanuc 6MB) has a very small built in memory (around 5kb) so it's limited in what it can do from a program size perspective.  There is a way to run the machine directly from a computer but you can't do it through the RS232 port.  You need to fake out the paper tape port and make the mill think your computer is actually a paper tape machine. I haven't figured out how to do that yet.
Reply:Greco makes good BTRs that do exactly what you're talking about. I bought a bunch of them for some extremely ancient GE 1050 controls and various other Cincinnati (Acramatic 700 and 900 ) controls and they worked a treat. Not sure if they're in your budget range, though.http://www.grecosystems.com/products/mtic.htmI'm not associated with them in any way, except as a customer.
Reply:Oops! I thought "dripfeed" was about coolant.Now I get it.Okada that I ran had limited memory.Long programs had to be broken up then sentover(RS232)and run in stages.Miller a/c-d/c Thunderbolt XLMillermatic 180 Purox O/ASmith Littletorch O/AHobart Champion Elite