Frankie

I built the stand, Frankie (for Frankenstand 'cause it turned out quite a bit taller than I thought it would, although in use it is actually an ideal height) out of 2"x2" 1/4" wall square steel tubing. The legs are offset at approximately a 10 degree angle which required some interesting setup to make a compound cut in my bandsaw. It also required some interesting methods to get them square. I ended up using a machinist's square to make a right angle triangle with my welding table to measure the angles. The feet are 1"x2" steel bar cut into 2" squares. I'm going to add a chip tray and a flood coolant system eventually...

	Here's the little mill. Kinda hard to use on a dolly!	Leg ready to be tack-welded
	Tacked up and ready to go!
	Top is complete, legs are tacked on and ready to be welded.	Foot with adjuster

	Frankie is basically complete - welded and ready for testing!
	Completed, with Mill - I still need to add the chip tray and coolant, but that will come later.
Feels like forever, but I don't think it has been that long.. I finally got around to adding the chip tray and started on the coolant.
	I finally got around to painting Frankie.. I'm a pretty lousy painter but I think it came out pretty well. I also welded on some nuts so I can bolt the mill down.	Here's a drip tray I made up out of sheet metal.
	Mill in spaaaacccceeee!!	Ahh. That's better. The red 'udder' is a 3.5 gallon parts washer that I'm going to use for coolant.
	I think it came out very nice.
I've also started work on converting the mill to CNC.. I haven't gotten too far yet, although I have mounted the servo motor to the X-axis. I hope to have the Y-axis mounted pretty soon.
	I made a pretty simple frame out of 4 3/4" posts, drilled and tapped on one end and are turned down on the other end to fit in a locating hole.	The turned down end is a slight interference fit in the hole in the plate.
	All of the pieces were made on the mill.. Getting the posts to the correct height (they're all the same within a few tenths) was a little interesting. I was really pissed when I broke a tap in one and had to make another!	Once I had everything together and I checked that everything was square, I welded the non-tapped ends to the plates. It would have been nicer to use bolts but then I would have had to drill clearance holes in the mill and the motor to clear the bolts heads which wouldn't have been nice!
	I used a cheap Lovejoy coupler because I couldn't find anything better that could be used with the 17mm lead screw shaft. I shimmed the spider so there is zero backlash.	In retrospect, I probably should have welded both ends as I didn't need to be able to dissasemble the frame in order to attach/remove it from the mill/motor.
	Next is the Y-Axis and setting up my Geckos....