I bought a 4' x 4' CNC Plasma/Router from Practical CNC in fall of 2006 The company is now "gone" and assumed another name. Those of you who this will benefit will know the name of the company I speak of. I am not sure of the legality of saying there name here so I won't, better to be safe then in litigation. Needless to say There tech support is no longer free and shotty at best. My decision for a complete seperation from Practical CNC system was based on this fact.  I called the "New" company and talked to the same people From Practical CNC (wierd) they told me that because I did not buy my table from them there tech support was no longer available without paying for it. Strange thing is I was talking to the same guy I bought my table from. Anyway out with the bad and in with the good.

I decided to do some thing that I am now very happy I did. I made a Call to Tom Caudle at www.CandCNC.com and we came up with a plan to retrofit my Practical machine to a hybred CandCNC machine utilizing steppers and servos. They sort of had a package to do what I wanted but we came up with a little different plan. I decided to buy 2 servos and 2 steppers.

This is a good place to add that when I was setting up my table I bugged the crap out of Tom with phone calls and he was almost always available to answer questions. He also has a yahoo group support that he is very prompt with advice and answers.

This is the motor contol and power source for the table. set up very nice inside with LED trouble shooting lights and GECKO motor controllers. The best thing about it is it is very difficult to screw up, it is set with overload protection and is very difficult to fry even if you reverse voltage on something (yes, I did that) the only think I would change on this is to have a window to see the internal LEDs.

Only one of the  servos is pictured in this photo the other will be used in a rotary axis I plan on building this summer.

The plan is to use the Steppers on the X and Y axis and the Servo on the Z axis. because of the lack of gearing on the z axis the servo was the best to deliver the desired speed. All motors used have a NEMA 34 frame

I should mentions here that I scrapped every piece of tech that came with the Practical CNC table. OK, I actually sold it.

All the Hardware and Software were replaced with with ESP-650 Motion controller MP-3000 DTCH from CandCNC for Hardware and Mach 3 and Sheetcam for software. The motors were a direct bolt on the machine. With one minor modification to the rear z axis motor mounting bolts.

The MP 3000 is set up for other stuff to mount into it like a hand pendent. once I get every thing going good I plan on buying the hand pendent.

The only modification I had to make to the machine was the bolt on the aluminum plate right next to the motor is inset the length of the bolt head to allow for the motor to fit. notice the bolt head on the right is sticking up that is what the other side looked like.

The pick above shows the coupler for the Z axis drive on the practical machine the ratio is 5:1 5 rotations of the shaft for every 1 ich of travel. when calculating out the steps in mach if using a 10x drivers like the geckos it is 10,000 steps per inch in Mach 3 when using the servo motor. it will be different if using a stepper motor.

The servo motor was a direct bolt on to the Z axis. they both have 1/2 inch shafts and use the exsisting coupler.

Here is a shot of the Y axis drive belt. I saved the driver pully from the old motor because the shaft size was the same. Between the belt drive reduction and the rack and pinion drive the ratio is 2.625:1 so if using steppers the setting in Mach 3 will be 1911 steps per inch if using 10x drivers like geckos. ( 1911 is alittle off the actual math but that's what I came up with after fine tuning) It is also worth noting here that the X and Y axis have identical drive ratios.

X axis drive is ratio 2.625:1

This is the break out board that is used for homing and limit switches. it can also be hooked up to control the router. The best thing about this system is all of the ways it can be configured to meet your specific needs. I Set mine up to be seen from my normal operations position. There are LEDs that light up so you can see what is on and off. As of yet I have not set up any hard limit switches but plan to shortly.

The DTCH breakout board is mounted directly to the plasma cutter, unlike the old system that never worked, the CandCNC actually works and shows you how to by-pass the expensive plug in sold by hypertherm and directly link to the Hyperther E-board. Both breakout boared were installed in custom cases that I made so I could see the LEDs (personal preference) the do make electronic boxs that are available from Radio Shack that would work very nice.

I guess I lied about modifications. I did drill and tap some holes to mount the X axis limit switche. It can be mounted just about anywhere you like I did mine the easiest most reliable I could think of.

This is the Y axis limit switch, I used the advantage of the 80/20 aluminum frame so it could be adjusted.

That is about the jist of it. I do not want to get into the set up of Mach 3 and sheet cam because it is just to much. I can tell you that my learning curve to start cutting was about 3 weeks I have cut out some very nice stuff since installing the new system which can be seen in the gallery.