Enco 9X42 Mill Retro

I bought an Enco 9X42 3hp mill earlier this year. It was in the process of being coverted to CNC with a CNCmasters retrofit kit. The ball screws/nuts were partially installed by the original owner in 2001. He sold it, to the guy that I bought it from. It has almost zero hours on it, but was in "pieces", when I got it. I did get the original installation instructions, but they are "difficult" to understand. Partly because I didn't take the original parts off and start the installation, and also because of they are poorly written and in broken english.

I've been working on it off and on for several months now, mostly off. I've been trying to figure out how to "attach" the table to the X axis, today was about the 3rd or maybe 4th attempt to "figure out" the instructions. It finally dawned on me that the ballscrew had been installed improperly. The end plate on the right side of the table should have been inserted onto the ballscrew before it was installed in the "nut". However, it was already staked together, and I didn't want to take everything back apart if not necessary. According to the instructions the "collar" on the ballscrew would be on the outside of the end plate, the bearing next, then the "cupped" washer, then tensioned with the nut. That would move the table to the left. To secure movement to the right, you then installed the bearing retainerj, and the stepper motor braket, then "tensioned" everything with the 3 allen head screws. Only two problems, 1 the hole in the center of the bearing retainer was larger than the nut, it was supposed to push against. 2 the "collar" on the ball screw was on the inside of the end plate, not the outside edge. I didn't want to tear everything back down.

I finally decided to leave it as it was, collar inside the end plate. However, it was catching when I tightend down the nut. I installed a slightly larger washer and stopped the binding. Next when I tried to tighten down the nut it would loosen up a few thousands when I would traverse the table left/right. OK for a manual machine, but not good for CNC. I finally decided to try some blue thread lock, it seems to have worked, but I haven't put an indicator on the table to see if there is any "play" in the left/right motion. This has been the main sticking point in the project so far, trying figure out the X axis, every time I would tighten down the nut, if too tight it would bind, if a little bit loose it would loosen up more.

It's not as designed, but I'm pretty sure it will work.

The original CNCmasters kit would have required a new computer, and I'm not to sure about how "accurate" it would have been. Software issues, missed steps, etc.

I was on another forum months ago, just before I bought the mill, and read some post there about LinuxCNC and BigJohnT encouraged me to take a look at it. Told me a "novice" machinist, non programmer could learn it. It was just a matter of "eating the pie, one bite at a time".

I'm also trying to figure out how to wire my 5i25/7i76 and 201's (robbed from the cncmasters kit along with the main transformer/power supply) Hope to start posting some pics so others can follow along.

any thoughts, opinions on the work around so far???

thanks,
Ken