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This old thing followed me home yesterday. It is a TECHNO-ISEL Mac200 controller/router that is about 10 years old. I found it on craigslist and got it for a song. In it's previous life it was used to make signs and kids letter blocks. I have everything fired up and running, but cant connect it to the printer port without a gender changer. Hopefully that will happen in the next couple of days. It is all servo motors and ballscrew drive and the spindle is a porter cable 3 1/2hp router.

I was in the middle of renovating my little CNC mill, and somehow couldnt make the time to put it all together. I think that I will now keep the smaller mill for inlay work and use this beast for the bigger stuff like necks and electric guitar bodies. Hope it all works out as planned !







by the way, I am all ears if somebody has a suggestion for hooking this up to the dust collection system.

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Reguards,

Ken H

Nice find!

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Jeremy Vonk

Cool ! Very nice indeed. That should work well for you!

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"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

Hey Ken, let me know if I can help you out with the CAD CAM stuff....have fun!

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http://www.PeakeGuitars.com

I really want to thank Don Williams for inspiring me to push my boundries in the CNC world. I have watched his progress with his home built mill and I am in awe at what he has been able to accomplish in a short time. He has been extremely gracious to help answer a few questions I had and to offer assistance too. I want to thank Parser for his help in getting me started with neck CAD work. I have been able to take the drawings he did for me and expand those drawings into a world of other types of necks for a lot of applications.

There is a bit of an update for you on my new mill... The controller for this model of router was built in the last days of the DOS operating system and operated differently than today's controllers do. The way it worked was that an object was created in a very old version of AutoCAD, and then "printed" to the controller. This controller stored that object and would cut the project on it's own based on the drawings it got from AutoCAD. It will not respond to any of the messages sent by any of the windows type of control programs. I have had to buy a new Gecko drive for the machine, which had to be modified to run the brake on the Z drive. It should be lightning fast compared to the mini mill Ihad been using. The Gecko drive is being built extra heavy duty to be able to handle constant use of the mill and I have invested in some of the leading programs for developing new items and replicating some of the old standards in the luthier trade.

The good news is that I bought the machine dirt cheap and the motors and brakes and ball screws were in good shape. Even with buying a new controller, I will still have less than $5k invested in the machine. It has over 12" of "Z" and the gantry is capable of cutting 30" x 48". The heavier machine, ball screw drive, bigger motors and the 3 1/2 HP spindle should handle just about anything I should ever want to route out.

I have been working with BobCAD and have quite a few projects that I will be testing the machine with. I have over 200 neck blanks (mostly cherry) that I will turn into necks and a bunch of other woods that will go for various other projects such as electric guitar bodies. I have been investing in wood for over a year now to use in this venture and I should have some really unique stuff coming out of the mill soon. My goal is to find enough market for some of the products to be able to let my wife quit working at the teaching job and start working with me instead. It may be a pipe dream, but one I have to try.

As of right now, the mini-mill is disassembled, but can be easily be put back together. I may find a use for the smaller mill such as inlay work, or I may sell it.... not sure what it's fate will be right now. The new controller for my big mill should be back by the end of the week and I hope to spend the weekend reassembling it to start working with it.

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Reguards,

Ken H

One of my wishes came true. My wife worked at a Christian school and for some reason the enrollment is down this year (maybe ecnomics?) but they decided that they would combine some classes and wouldnt need her this year. For me, that is a dream come true. She worked with me all day in the shop today and helped me organize stuff and do some deep cleaning. We moved the CNC mill and created a work station for it too.

The motors and controller came in for it today and I got it all put back together. I am waiting for a config file in order to fire it up and run some test patterns with it before starting in on the heavy duty stuff. I think the first thing I will mill is a new body for my ugly Les Paul. Next will be a few cherry necks for some current builds and then a few bridges for current builds.

I have enough wood on hand to keep that mill running for years and I am still buying more.

I hope that the next post I make on this thread will be a video of it running and cutting something serious out of a block of wood.

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Reguards,

Ken H

That's pretty cool Ken. I'll look forward to seeing your video!

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Jim Watts
http://jameswattsguitars.com

Sounds good, I hope this works well for you and your wife. Let us know if you need a hand with jig design!

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http://www.PeakeGuitars.com

I got the new Gecko controller back for the motors and all is now well and working. It is kind of boring if you arent into CNC, but here are a couple of vids of my mill doing a test run of cutting a bridge out of Osage Orange. I am using double sided tape to hold down the Osage blank and I also have a strip of waste wood that keeps it from twisting (not really needed, but it was already on the bed of the machine).



and then the final cuts of the same bridge



I am now doing test runs of other things besides bridges to see if it pays off for me. Lots of wood to cut up

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Reguards,

Ken H

Man those routers are loud, I near jumped when the video started!

Looks like you've got everything set up and you're on your way, Ken. Did you end up getting one of those collet adapters from PreciseBits?

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Bob Garrish
Former Canonized Purveyor of Fine CNC Luthier Services

I havent bought it yet, but I need to. It is on my list of things to do

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Reguards,

Ken H