Looking to add a mini-mill to my shop. Preferably under a grand. Being able to retrofit CNC later would be a plus. Looked at these: http://www.amazon.com/Proxxon-37110...+mini+mill http://www.amazon.com/Grizzly-G8689...+mini+mill Open to other suggestions, preferably from people who use mills, or work in a machine shop.
http://littlemachineshop.com/products/product_category.php?category=1387807683 see here http://littlemachineshop.com/instructions/CNCHiTorqueMiniMill.pdf for cnc conversion I have a taig but if I had it to do over again I would be sorely tempted wiht one of the above. Another grand to grand and a half (maybe less) for a CNC conversion, but if you want to do anything even remotely competent, make sure you get a real collet based system not a glorified drill chuck. Give me a call and we can chat
What are your thoughts on the Seig X3? A little bigger than a mini-mill, but in the realm of what I'm willing to pay. I found the one you linked to during a slow moment this afternoon, and I liked what I saw.
I love my Taig mill. You can order it CNC ready and just add NEMA 23 motors. I get my Taig products from cartertools.com, he gives you a little discount over the factory and has been very good to work with. When my dad was looking for a CNC mill I looked over the import models thinking that he could get set up a little cheaper than the Taig ($1034 + shipping). But after looking at the work that had to be done to the imports to convert the lead screws and set up the mounts the cost was almost as much as the Taig which was ready to run. What ever you do, price all the components, including tooling and software before you buy. Other places I recommend: For stepper motor systems http://www.xylotex.com/. Good stuff plus an inexpensive repair policy for when you make electrical mistakes. For servo motor systems - my current set up - http://www.kelinginc.net/. More expensive than steppers but much faster speeds. Good prices on Gecko drivers which are the gold standard for the hobby level.
Oh, don't get me wrong, I love my cnc taig, but it has some limitations in work envelope and rigidity that I would gladly pay elbow grease and trouble to be rid of (you will find many more things than just boat parts you want to make). If you do homebrew, I have built with both the xylotex controller and the G540. I would never in a million years buy another xylotex controller, after working with the 540, not even if the xylotex controller were free. another good one is http://www.soigeneris.com/gecko_g540-details.aspx for buying parts, motors, etc. I built an automated tool for work based on the g540 and their steppers, which worked well.
I have a G8689...I converted it to cnc. Then i enlarged it to 6" x 30". Now it just suffers with a lack of spindle power, which means i still have to make way too many passes to cut something in a reasonable timeframe. Same problems as the taig with work envelope and rigidity and lack of power. If you go with that kind of mill and retrofit it later I would suggest youstart with one with a solid non tilting column and brushless drive motor like the one from micromark or littlemachineshop. I would recommend starting with something a lot larger like a bf45, even at quadruple the price. There is no good substitute for rigidity when milling, and mass is one critical element missing with the smaller mills. Also wedge shaped Gibbs are much preferred, the flat plate on the cheaper mills is touchy to adjust, and can really cause a lot of problems. Ron Hunt
Basically the same thing, there are minor differences between different brands but I think they all come out of the same factory in china. A website you might want to check out is cnccookbook.com, it has a lot of good information. Also check out b9creator.com, it has a stereo lithography machine for a good price. That would be even more useful than a mill. Ron Hunt
Tempting, according to the specs, fully cured objects from the B9creator are only a little less hard than G10 board, highly acceptable. I wonder what the durability will be like?
Hmmm... with a Shore-D of 70 (fully post-cured), which is around Rockwell hardness of 85-ish... I wonder if these machines could rapidly make hull parts, like ribs, that would stand up in battle?
No discussion of milling is complete without a link to lcamtuf.coredump.cx/gcnc/ -- the "Guerrilla guide to CNC machining, mold making, and resin casting".
I dunno if it would stand up, but you could always use it to make masters for molds, then cast stuff in termite resin. It seems to be a lot less labor intensive than making stuff by hand or programming gcode. I plan to add the capability to my mill in the future, all I need to buy as far as hardware is a lcd projector. The bottleneck after that is done is producing good accurate cad files. Takes me about a day and a half to produce a cad file for a turret to the level of detail that machine can do. So far all I have done is cad Nagato, Bismarck, Scharnhorst and Agano turrets. I was also looking at it for making cast aluminum cannons, using lost wax methods. Ron Hunt
I'd recommend a sherline min-mill. They are the cadillac's of the mini-mills. They are more expensive and will push your $1000 limit (and send you over for all but the plain version), but are very nice and easy to upgrade to CNC later. I should point out that I don't personally have a sherline mini-mill. I bought a sherline mini-lathe and then bought a vertical milling column so I can use it both as a lathe and as a mill (conversion from lathe to mill takes only 60 seconds). I can buy a plain mill base later when I have more room, mount my vertical milling column on it, and have a complete mini-mill and a lathe. My second choice (and the cheaper one) would be a taig. I've seen a few of these in operation now, and they work quite well, but require more assembly (which is why they are so inexpensive). I would avoid the mini-mills from harbor freight and others that are made in china. The chinese ones look nice but are not as well made. I know several people that curse their chineese made mini-mills and lathes and have told me "never again"!
Edit: I like the Sherlines, but the thin steel column gives me questions about deflection of said column under load... any thoughts?
If you mean the vertical milling column, it is quite sturdy and not given to reflection. That said, these are mini-mills not full size mills, and can be pushed beyond their limits if one is not careful. However, I doubt any milling we would do for this hobby would be enough to cause serious deflection in a mini-mill. Now, if you are adding the vertical milling column to the lathe (as I am) in order to use it as a mill, you do need to stiffen up the table by bolting on the crossslide accessory plate (P/N 3017). This is because milling imparts more force on the table than lathe operations do. The sherline mini-mills come with the thicker table, but the lathes don't.
Having reviewed the options, I'm going a totally different direction... I ordered the parts to construct Dave Gingery's Lil Bertha electric furnace, suitable for melting and casting alumimun, brass, and bronze. I will get a mill the truly old-school way, by casting parts and building one. Probably falls short technologically of modern buy-able mills, but I think this route suits me. And I'll be able to cast anything I please as a bonus. I knew I got electricity in the shop for a reason. For those who've been in my shop, the melting and casting activities will take place in the concrete-floored shed-like building next to the shop. The design for the mill (and metal lathe, and shaper, and several other machine shop tools) are from Gingery's series on building your own machine shop from scrap. Linky: http://gingerybookstore.com/MetalWorkingShopFromScrapSeries.html Someone advised me to do the shaper before the lathe or the mill, because it would allow coolness like keystone ways to be made. We'll see, I need to get the furnace assembled first. Sadly for fans of their great catalogs, Lindsay Books' proprietor has retired and is no longer selling books. Happily, he arranged for most of his books to be printed and sold via: http://www.youroldtimebookstore.com/Default.asp For nerds who are also steampunks, the Steam series is most educational. If I manage to have a kid, I will put him/her to sleep at night reading this to them Thanks to everyone for their time and input.
I hope you have a lot more spare time than I do! Interesting set of books. Thanks for sharing these. I'd never heard of them. I'll have to pick up a few of these...
