Scrap Recovery - Matrix Instruments

Scrap Recovery - Matrix Instruments

X-Ray Film Imager turned CNC Parts

This is a Matrix Instruments X-Ray Film Imager.

It stands approx 6ft 3 inches tall, and weighs several hundred pounds. To date it is one of my best scrap hauls ever.

It was just random luck that I was within ear shot when talk about the disposal of this unit that had been decommissioned years ago took place. I was initially interested in the physical rack to house more network gear for work.

Not even looking inside, I had it put into storage in an empty telecomm room. After a week I had a chance to see what would be involved in gutting the unit.

I was going to get a co-op student to gut the unit and clean-up the cabinet, but once I looked inside I knew that I wasn't about to pass-up the chance to fully explore how the pro's do CNC in a real world type application.

After getting the damn cabinet home, as I'd never find the time through the day to dis-assemble this un-interrupted, I spent a bit of time just trying to figure out what exactly it did.

A high Resolution true Flat CRT is mounted on the Z-Axis with an imaging lens. The X & Y axis (located up high, with CRT hanging down) are super sturdy and move with little effort.

Here is the assembly removed and sitting upside down from it's original position.

The entire assembly is made of 1/2" and 3/8ths" plate Alum, giving it excellent rigidity, The Steppers are 60 Oz-inch holding torque units when run at the rated 5V/1Amp rating. I assume if I make the same controller as the previous mill (12V/750mAmp) I should be able get 108 oz-in Torque.

If I strip nothing else out of the cabinet, it has been worth the effort required to get it home and the time invested.

Here is a better image to illustrate the sturdy construction and the potential that this unit has.

Unfortunately I'm not in the mode of building another mill this instant, so I had to do a major overhaul of "theworkshop.ca" to squirrel this gear away.

I had planned to start on another CNC Mill once the new year hit, with such a head start, and a reasonable section of time available to consider how to orient this rig, the bar has been raised on the expected finished unit.

This image is of the dis-mounted CRT Imager assembly.

It isn't easy to make out, but there are actually 2 steppers and leads screws that ran the CRT and the Imaging Lens independently for size and focus of the image

This is not likely to be used with the X-Y Assy in it's original configuration, as it will make a great X axis for a fixed gantry mill like the original.

As it sits now there is approx 12" of travel, but can be extended to a full 20" once the secondary drive and plate are removed.

It's taken about 10 hours to gut this down almost halfway.

I'm tempted to simply pitch the rest into the landfill as don't have a lot of time free and I'd like to get the empty cabinet back to work as soon as possible.

This unit itself weighed almost 100lbs, and was a real bugger to remove from the rack

The unit is a film handler, a cartridge is loaded in with an unexposed film in it, the handler extracts the film, positions it for the CRT Imager, it gets imaged and re-inserted into the cartridge.

The film is then processed in another piece of equipment called a film processor... but that's another story.

These are about half the treats I recovered from the film handler and the unit in general.

All circuit boards use sockets for IC's of which there is an excellent selection of generic TTL type 7400 series, lots of power transistors specifically 30 plus TIP126 Darlington pair output transistors and numerous linear op-amps and generic IC's (I counted at least 6 555 timers).

Also in the pile are 4 heavy slide rails with ball-bearing races that extend a full 24". The rollers from the film handler appear to be solid alum.

This is simply bonus at this point, but quite valuable nonetheless, an 18" X 18" X 1.25" thick cast Alum table that the Film would rest on.

A small blower would hold the film flat, and a stepper with a differential would run the 2 opposing lead screws in sync drawing the 3/4" Alum bars together to square-up the film on the table.

This precision casting will no doubt be the base for the up-coming mill.

Here it is finally gutted and wiped down, ready to be put back into service to lead a renewed life of purpose.

A rack of this quality is typically in excess of $1,000 Canadian, so I have no regrets, I saved a bit of coin for my employer, and was able to recover a substantial haul of top quality components that would be without question in the landfill, had I not intervened.

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