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Re: Mill or Lathe...
I would figure out what you can get done around you, via other teams or otherwise, before making a decision. Maybe your sister team or friend down the street has a lathe which will make the decision easy.
Given one or the other, I would rather have a lathe. I've had stuff made on a lathe a lot more than on a mill. When you consider how many standoffs, spacers, shafts, and other turned parts you have on your robot, it's pretty clear the lathe gets a ton of use. How else do you put in your snap rings anyway?
Stuff like lightening patterns that you'd mill can be done (albeit less efficiently) with a drill press and round holes. I don't think I milled anything in 2009 (we had our ball tower routed with a laser cut guide, though, which would have been much harder and more time consuming with a drill press). This year, Shaker had its chassis CNC milled, but if we didn't have access to mills we could have gotten away with C-Channel or something.
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Last edited by Chris is me : 13-06-2010 at 17:45.
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