CNC Sherline Mill Project

This page is dedicated to my attempt to convert my Sherline Mill to CNC.

I purchased a Sherline 5400 Mill ages ago. When I got it, I had intended to use it for G Scale live steam projects and the like. I have used it when necessary to make a few items, but it has spent much of it's time doing nothing. About a year before we moved to Colorado, I got interested in CNC and decided to convert the mill in hopes that I would get more use out of it. I purchased some stepper motors on E-bay, the motor mounts from Sherline and bought a Zylotex 3-axis controller. I mounted the motors, then promptly shelved the project as we started to pack up to move to Colorado. Well, I finally finished setting things up. The Xylotex board is controlled via EMC 2 using an old Dell laptop running the real-time kernel version of Ubuntu.

My first attempt at cutting something ... the "hello world" of CNC. EMC 2 has a default set of G-code it comes up with that I used to carve a piece of MDF.

I have a copy of ViaCAD 3D v6 for the Mac that I use for drawing. EMC 2 runs the G-code. The only piece I am missing at the moment is the DXF to G-code converter. I have been too busy to spend much time on this. But, I hope to get the rest of the bits I need and be able to actually cut metal some time this summer.