Small CNC Mill Advise needed

Sell the one thats not working or post it here and you might get some more coin to work with. What do you have thats not working? I'm looking for a small on for my home shop.

Hatchmar,

The work you want to run dictates what machine you could/should buy. Connectors can mean a lot of things

Material, type and size?

The answers to these questions will set the parameters for your search and our recommendations.

For an industrial table top machine milling machine without tool changer your $5,000 may be enough to buy a used machine.

For a hobbyist table top milling machine then you may be able to purchase new for your $5,000 but again it depends upon what you need.

Tom

snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com wrote:

============ What are the details of the one thats not working? Name? Problems? Or do you just want a new one?

If you look at history you'll find that no state has been so plagued by its rulers as when power has fallen into the hands of some dabbler in philosophy or literary addict.

Desiderius Erasmus (c. 1466-1536), Dutch humanist. Praise of Folly, ch. 24 (1509).

No offense, but most the regulars here have little knowledge or experience in "benchtop cnc"

Suggest maybe try < rec.crafts.metalworking > if you haven't done so already

Then what exactly is it makes you think you can perhaps get any of them to "work" ???

Take a look outside--for a longer term forecast, suggest consult your favorite weather channel...

Seriously, probly cheaper to just have someone else do the r&d for you....after that ( and if you like ), go ahead and outsource the actual production to the lowest bidder, be it in China or wherever....or do in-house...the volume /quality req's will dictate.

Best situation is to try and do nothing...except perhaps a bit of the paperwork, etc....most of which should lie in the awarding contracts and writing / cashing of checks.

It comes down to accuracy and rigidness of the machine! Most of these bench top CNC mills for 2-3 thousands or less don't have ball lead screws. We have a MaxCNC and the XYZ lead screws are only

Here is a decent one, with ball lead screws and 17" travel on X axis.

Andrew Werby

Hi again, thank you for your responses, the majority of the material I am using is half-hard brass (360) but i'd say about 1/3 if what i machine is different types of plastics... peek, teflon, delrin, and some other wierd things i cant pronounce. the range of sizes is from

One of our CNC set-up guys brought in a Roland PNC-3000 CAMM-3. He says that if he/we can figure out how to set the dip switches and just basically how to use it, he will sell it to the company. we cant seem to find any information on this thing. he even said he called the company and the persone he talked to didnt have any information.

HotRod wrote:

what i have been using for the prototypes is our miyano le-22 milling/turning ctrs. and a miyano TSV vert. mill. The problem is that we are doing so much r&d with so many new products that I have been constantly using these machines. this takes away from our normal production boxing hours. all i am trying to do is get 2 machines that are dedicated to new business we need a mill first, then when the time is right, ill ask for a small lathe.

Andrew Werby wrote:

============== This is a typical "suit" problem where the person that does't know anything about the problem or its parameters insists on making the decision because they wear a suit to work and you don't.

It is an argument that you can't win because even if you manage to get the manual tool change machine, ever time there is a problem with it [and there is always problems] it will be your fault for not getting the tool changer like they wanted you to.

However the additional cost for a machine with a tool changer may cause the "bean-counters" to intervene, especially if you can put a bug in an ear somewhere (that won't get traced back to you).

Be reminded the base machine as purchased will only be about 1/2 the total cost. Machine tools are sold "stripped," and you will need several thousands of dollars of tools/tooling up front to do productive work in a commercial environment. Home shop / hobby machinists skirt this problem by making do with less cost efficient and more time consuming techniques trading time for money, which will not be acceptible in a commercial (even protoype) environment, while they gradually accumulate tools/tooling.

What may be of considerable benefit is a "quick change" rather than automatic change tooling system that will preserve your tool lengths. Tormac makes a good system for table top systems. see:

Enco has a sale on a 2 axis Rong Fu which may be of interest. Note this is a two axis only machine and the spindle was not listed (R8 required for Tormac above). see page 3 of

Note that for these units you must supply the windows computer.

You will also need some computer software such as a cad program.

This does not need to be the real deal autocad ($$$$$), one of the clones such as InteliCAD will be adequate. see

Good luck, and try to ease into things.

Unka George (George McDuffee)

...and at the end of the fight is a tombstone white with the name of the late deceased, and the epitaph drear: ?A Fool lies here, who tried to hustle the East.?

Rudyard Kipling The Naulahka, ch. 5, heading (1892).