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-   -   CNC Mill or Router? (http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?t=139556)

Seth Mallory 22-11-2015 22:31

Re: CNC Mill or Router?
 
Check Craigslist as there some mills and a digital read out not to far from you. Also check the Central Valley.

AdamHeard 22-11-2015 23:13

Re: CNC Mill or Router?
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by RoboChair (Post 1507300)
I too agree with Adam here, if you would like help finding good deals on machine please PM me and I can go over details with you.

I'm almost infamous around central California for buying lots of machines on the super cheap.

EDIT: you are not far from our shop in Davis, I would be more than willing to meet sometime over the next week or two to go over the many options you have before you and the methods 1678 has used to build up our shop in the last few years.

Take Devin up on his offer and meet local. This is too hard of a thing to communicate nicely over chief with so many variables involved. Talk with him about the knowledge you have, your design style, current equipment, etc and he'll definitely give you good advice.

Can confirm he gets good deals, I hear he bought 3 shopping carts of bowling balls for only $10!

RoboChair 23-11-2015 00:00

Re: CNC Mill or Router?
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by AdamHeard (Post 1507318)
Take Devin up on his offer and meet local. This is too hard of a thing to communicate nicely over chief with so many variables involved. Talk with him about the knowledge you have, your design style, current equipment, etc and he'll definitely give you good advice.

Can confirm he gets good deals, I hear he bought 3 shopping carts of bowling balls for only $10!

3 shopping carts of bowling balls for $10.01 each, picking them up Wednesday morning.

Chak 23-11-2015 00:12

Re: CNC Mill or Router?
 
I keep hearing on CD that for manual mills, a Bridgeport/clone is THE gold standard. So is there something similar for lathes, CNC lathes, CNC mills, and CNC routers?

Quote:

Originally Posted by RoboChair (Post 1507325)
3 shopping carts of bowling balls for $10.01 each, picking them up Wednesday morning.

What's the story here?:]

RoboChair 23-11-2015 00:38

Re: CNC Mill or Router?
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by Chak (Post 1507327)
I keep hearing on CD that for manual mills, a Bridgeport/clone is THE gold standard. So is there something similar for lathes, CNC lathes, CNC mills, and CNC routers?


What's the story here?:]

As for Lathes, no unfortunately there is no real "standard" as there is no comparable ubiquity to the Bridgeport model knee mill which has survived nearly 75 YEARS UNCHANGED(the first true "Bridgeport" coming off the line in the 30's). There is something to be said about an industrial product surviving the test of time and the march of progress for 3/4 of a century, they make them still today with only minor changes to their design. Look for, Hardinge, Monarch, Clausing, Mori and their clones or competitors for your lathes. CNC is an even harder one to nail down, just pick a machine or brand with a reputation is my broadest advice.

I watch a lot of auction sites for machines and what not. Bowling alley was going out of business and 46+ bowling balls for $36 after fees is a steal. Was thinking we could get a robot billiards league going or something, I have some other plans for some as well. Who knows, maybe it will be useful on a robot mechanism?

Cory 23-11-2015 02:18

Re: CNC Mill or Router?
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by RoboChair (Post 1507329)
Look for, Hardinge, Monarch, Clausing, Mori and their clones or competitors for your lathes. CNC is an even harder one to nail down, just pick a machine or brand with a reputation is my broadest advice.

While I generally agree with this sentiment, for the purposes of the OP it seems like there is not enough familiarity with machine tools to make an informed decision on any kind of used machinery purchases. Particularly with lathes, where you can't just (fairly) safely pick any non beat to hell Bridgeport or similar clone.

It will pay to find a way to bring mentors into your team that have experience with machine tools. Perhaps you have sponsors that are machine shops/employ machinists and you could get them to help you evaluate a prospective machine. At a minimum definitely take Devin up on his suggestion to help guide you in the right direction.

Used machinery can be super hit or miss. There's a lot of old lathes out there that were made to a much higher standard of quality than new lathes are (that is not the case with mills), but there's also a lot that are going to be worn out pieces of junk, or require a good amount of tinkering by your team to tune them up and keep them in good working order.

Lireal 23-11-2015 22:00

Re: CNC Mill or Router?
 
Thank you all so much for all of the input that you have given. I spoke with the rest of the team members today and we decided that we are definitely going purchase a manual mill with a dro. We have a sponsor that lets us use their laser cuter, so we were originally leaning in this direction anyways.

We do not really see a need for a lathe at this point. To my knowledge, we have never designed a part on a robot that justified the use of a lathe, and we would rather spend the money to buy another control system.

David Brinza 24-11-2015 03:52

Re: CNC Mill or Router?
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by Ryan Dognaux (Post 1507295)
We purchased the 1000mm variant of the X-Carve about a week ago. It claims to have 31" x 31" of cutting space which would be fantastic for many FRC applications.

We've just started assembling it fully knowing we will need to upgrade some items. From the research I've done, it can handle aluminum if you purchase the correct end mills and use something like Inventor HSM to create efficient cutting paths. We're planning on publishing a white paper documenting our assembly process and any modifications needed to make it work well. Cost is around $1500 for the kit to assemble from Inventables - https://www.inventables.com/technologies/x-carve So far the assembly instructions include videos and pictures and has been relatively painless.

We're really interested in how this works out. We'd to mill/route lexan and aluminum plate (maybe up to 1/4" thick).

Sperkowsky 24-11-2015 07:31

Re: CNC Mill or Router?
 
We have a Dayton 2lKP9 we got over 6 years ago and never used. It got wired up in the wrong room. We are getting it moved into our lab soon! Is there anything we should buy to prep for it? Is it a decent mill?

Ryan Dognaux 24-11-2015 11:06

Re: CNC Mill or Router?
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by David Brinza (Post 1507567)
We're really interested in how this works out. We'd to mill/route lexan and aluminum plate (maybe up to 1/4" thick).

Lots of people using these to cut 1/4" aluminum plate, plastics, MDF, etc.

Here's a fun post showing a guy refining his process to make anodized paintball gun triggers - https://discuss.inventables.com/t/al...-anodized/9924

asid61 24-11-2015 13:58

Re: CNC Mill or Router?
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by Sperkowsky (Post 1507576)
We have a Dayton 2lKP9 we got over 6 years ago and never used. It got wired up in the wrong room. We are getting it moved into our lab soon! Is there anything we should buy to prep for it? Is it a decent mill?

It is a pretty bad mill, mainly due to the round column and lack of a raisable knee. I have one in my garage. Every time you switch from milling to drilling, you need to raise the entire head, which throws off all of your zeroes and the like. Plus, to square it with the table you need to use thin shims, which is painful.
If it is still near-new, I would sell it and look for a Bridgeport. If that's not possible, you could definitely work with it- it just takes longer than the Bridgeport.

RoboChair 24-11-2015 14:50

Re: CNC Mill or Router?
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by asid61 (Post 1507630)
It is a pretty bad mill, mainly due to the round column and lack of a raisable knee. I have one in my garage. Every time you switch from milling to drilling, you need to raise the entire head, which throws off all of your zeroes and the like. Plus, to square it with the table you need to use thin shims, which is painful.
If it is still near-new, I would sell it and look for a Bridgeport. If that's not possible, you could definitely work with it- it just takes longer than the Bridgeport.

I would agree with this over all, you can buy that thing at Walmart... That really says everything about it right there. But some mill is better than no mill every day of the week.

Sperkowsky 24-11-2015 16:32

Quote:

Originally Posted by asid61 (Post 1507630)
It is a pretty bad mill, mainly due to the round column and lack of a raisable knee. I have one in my garage. Every time you switch from milling to drilling, you need to raise the entire head, which throws off all of your zeroes and the like. Plus, to square it with the table you need to use thin shims, which is painful.
If it is still near-new, I would sell it and look for a Bridgeport. If that's not possible, you could definitely work with it- it just takes longer than the Bridgeport.

Well we can't sell it but, it is better then nothing and at this point it's like getting a mill for free. It's basically brand new just missing a few parts. We also have a electronic feed (I think think that's what it's called) for it.

Since its a piece of crap what should be expect to use it for?

asid61 24-11-2015 19:34

Re: CNC Mill or Router?
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by Sperkowsky (Post 1507673)
Well we can't sell it but, it is better then nothing and at this point it's like getting a mill for free. It's basically brand new just missing a few parts. We also have a electronic feed (I think think that's what it's called) for it.

Since its a piece of crap what should be expect to use it for?

Well you can still use it for stuff like plates and blocks, like a normal mill, only you should pay extra attention to the squareness of the spindle and you'll have to re-edgefind when you go from drilling to milling.

RoboChair 25-11-2015 03:00

Re: CNC Mill or Router?
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by Sperkowsky (Post 1507673)
Well we can't sell it but, it is better then nothing and at this point it's like getting a mill for free. It's basically brand new just missing a few parts. We also have a electronic feed (I think think that's what it's called) for it.

Since its a piece of crap what should be expect to use it for?

I wouldn't necessarily say it's crap, just underwhelming. You can do all the same stuff, but should expect to take slower and shallower cuts while putting more effort into making your parts precise.


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