CNC mills may seem more intimidating than 3D printers, but the two will co-exist for a long time. The accuracy possible and the materials that can be machined by a CNC mill are currently inaccessible to all but the highest end 3D printers. Instead of purchasing a bulky industrial CNC mill, many hobbyist choose to purchase and retrofit a manual mill with a CNC kit. This is a great learning experience and huge confidence booster.

In this video, we test the Precision Matthews PM25MV mill with the CNC conversion kit from ArizonaVideo99. The stepper motors are Leadshine closed loop 283 oz.in., smaller than what are commonly used, but with plenty of power. The mill acceleration is 30in/s^2. LinuxCNC is the controller and the Pico Systems Universal Stepper Controller is the pulse generator. We test the backlash and feedrates, and to demonstrate available power, track the following error from the servo loop while loading the head with additional weight. The PM25MV is similar to the Grizzly G0704 and the Titan TM25V mills, so this video may have wider interest.