Thread: Power Digital Lift For Hammer A3-31

Ever since I bought this machine about five years ago I have wanted to install a digital lift into it where I could enter a dimension and press G for GO. It would also serve to lower and raise the table to change the planing mode to thicknesser which some have used a drill for to drive the height changing mechanism. A complication to this is the in handle height gauge when installed, some have got over this but it never struck me as a really elegant solution and my OCD rebelled.

In the search for what I wanted I spoke to Mike (MandJ) while we were discussing this we ended up getting side tracked somehow and building his router table as a prototype for some of the ideas Mike had and the thicknesser got got pushed into the back ground for about two years. I am still building the router table but recently I asked Master Parks if he could install the stuff on the A3 as it looked like it was never going to happen. I bought him a 3D printer to play with so I reckon he owed me and just because the 3D printer was used to prototype stuff for me that had nothing to do with it.

So far we have roughed the job in, really rough I might add. The motor and drive are in place and the drivers, power supplies etc bolted to the machine externally, they will be moved to inside the machine using the same holes when finished and not be seen. We have got it to the point of powering up the touch screen controller which came out of my RT as the original controller but Mike has since made the Mk2 version using a 10" screen instead of the 7" shown here. he wrote all the code for this himself and it does not use a computer as all the previous attempts have done. Because it was destined for the RT it also has two axis on it but only one will be used here. The mounting box was very much a suck and see effort and is going to get the flick for a far more compact and neater looking mount when it is up and running.

A link to a video showing a previous version by someone in France



A link to Mike's RT, the digital version start a few pages in
Yet another Router table build.

Another link explaining Mike's RT in some detail
Automated Router table


DRO installed. The original height measuring bar has to remain to stabilise the table
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The touch screen powered up
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The power supply and stepper driver temporarily in place for testing the screen. These will be mounted out of sight internally.
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The stepper motor mounted under the table

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Showing the stepper motor and drive end
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We pulled the table out to make the mount and drive for the stepper
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More updates to come on the success or failure of this project over the next week or so.