Mike Gilsdorf has lent the lab a mini mill, a perfect companion to Jeremy's mini lathe in the light fabrication area. According to Mike:

It's a 3 axis Emco PC Mill 55. Made in Austria. Somewhere near Salzberg if I'm not mistaken. Right now the only modifications are to the electronics hardware. It didn't come with the stock controller, so it was a natural candidate for conversion to LinuxCNC. We used Mesa Electronics 5i25 FPGA, and 7i76 break out card.

It has a 3500 RPM spindle, with 30 Taper tooling. Right now we only have an ER25 collet tool holder. We'll be looking to expand the selection of tooling / vises next.

It has roughly 7.5" x travel, 4.25" y travel, and 7.5" z travel. Rapids at 120 ipm with ease.

It uses three phase stepper motors which are kind of odd-ball. We were able to make use of the stock motor driver card thanks to some reverse engineering by Mark Sullivan.

Mike Sandford supplied an Atom PC for a Linux host, and helped a lot with the initial build / configuration.

Chris Kelley did a phenomenal job wiring up the electronics enclosure, and was instrumental troubleshooting several things.

The mini mill is available for use by qualified, checked-out members proficient at using the tool.

And as if that weren't cool enough, the lab has acquired a new Makerbot Replicator 2. When the Schoolbot Delta 3D printer comes back from its show at the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft, along with the Mendel Frank Davies built and donated, we'll have a trio of 3D printers, and when the Form 1 comes in, a quartet.