Chief Delphi - CNC Tooling

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mr. Lim (Post 1296365)

FRC Teams,

If you had a Haas TM-1P in your FRC workshop, what kind of tooling or accessories would you consider must haves?

This is kind of hard to answer until you've actually started making stuff, or you know how much you have to spend-everyone's needs are different.

Certainly you'd want two vises. Kurt D688 is the go to here, with similar quality offerings available from Chick. You can find cheaper stuff, but the quality is hit or miss. That'll run you ~$1200.

You'll need tool holders. I would get 1/4" 3/8" and 1/2" set screw end mill holders, maybe 3 ER-32 and 4-6 ER-16 collet chucks, a keyless drill chuck, and a shell mill arbor. You can add more sizes as you need them. You'll definitely want more ER-16's than 32's as you will probably need more drills/taps than end mills, and almost every drill/tap you'd use is going to be under 3/8". Having a couple 32's is nice for bigger tools (up to 7/8"), but you can hold any end mills in the set screw holders as well. This should run you $1100-1300

A full set of collets (you'll also need to buy duplicates for some sizes so you can chuck drills and their corresponding taps that use the same collet) for whatever style you purchase. $300-500 depending on if you stick to one or two types.

Don't forget pull studs for the toolholders. They don't come with them. Haas sells them and 3rd party vendors sell them. Get the right kind and torque them properly. It makes a difference.

A quality #1-60, A-Z, 1/16-1/2 by 64th's 118* or 135* (more expensive) HSS bright finish drill index. No Chinese bits. Only ones worth buying are made here in America or in Brazil (by PTD). I prefer having jobbers (long) and screw machine (short) length indexes, but having just one would do. This could be $200 or twice that, depending on whether you get both lengths. Also buy like 10 of each drill for whatever clearance and tap drills you would need for your common bolt sizes.

A spot drill. Technically you want this to have a tip angle greater than that of the drill that will follow it, but I use 90* because the mental math to figure out the depth to drill to is infinitely easier.

Various assortments of end mills. This is really where you'll need to see what your specific needs are. I've recommended specific cutting tools previously in this thread and others for a variety of budgets.

A face mill that can cut aluminum/steel (might need different inserts for each). $100-200.

Two sets of reasonably high quality 1/8" thick parallels. $300 or so.

One or two sets of 1/32" thick parallels (important for parts where you have through features within 1/8" of the edge). Nice sets are going to set you back $200 ea. This was one area where I was willing to buy Chinese to save a lot of money on something we don't use often.

Soft jaws. "MonsterJaws" on Ebay sells fully machined 6"x3"x1.5" jaws for all 6" vises. 10 pairs for like $200 or so. Basically cheaper than machining them yourself.

A plain back 3 jaw chuck that you can either bolt to a plate and grab in a vise, or bolt to the table. Very useful for holding round parts. If you have a lathe you could get an adapter plate for your lathe chuck, so that you can hold it flat. Couple hundred bucks.

Coolant, as mentioned previously. Make sure it's a synthetic water soluble oil. Using something else can void your warranty. Probably going to be in the range of $130/5 gal.

indicators/edge finders/etc that you'd need for a manual mill.