pic: New toy, help.

[IndySam]

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[Steven Donow]

The big red button surely must be what turns it on, right?

[Akash Rastogi]

Sweet! 11 is getting one this summer as well!

Have fun with it

[jwallace15]

I want one! Lucky

Good luck with it!

[Chris is me]

Nice. We have a TM-1 (didn't have enough for the TM-1P) and we've been able to do so much more in house. It's quite nice.

[IndySam]

Who's gonna come over and teach us how to use it?

[A_Reed]

G-Code isn't that difficult to learn. Have fun with this thing, looking forward to see what impact it has on your robots.

[techhelpbb]

Originally Posted by A_Reed

Have fun with this thing, looking forward to see what impact it has on your robots.

A huge impact! So do not drop it on the robots
Operational costs go through the roof when the machines hit the deck.

[RogerR]

Originally Posted by IndySam

Who's gonna come over and teach us how to use it?

Isn't that what you guys pay Jim Hanson the big bucks for?

[jeremy callahan]

Originally Posted by jwallace15

I want one! Lucky

Good luck with it!

hey wally trade in 3 out of your 4 cnc/mills and get one lol I'm sure Spiece wont mind lol!!!

[jwallace15]

Originally Posted by jeremy callahan

hey wally trade in 3 out of your 4 cnc/mills and get one lol I'm sure Spiece wont mind lol!!!

What are you talking about? We have 3 mills, one of which is our only CNC. You may have mistaken that for our 4 lathes, but none are CNC.

[daniel_dsouza]

Have fun with all the aluminum shavings these things produce. I've seen barrels of shavings at ASU.

[sanddrag]

I hate to say it but in my opinion, there is a big issue with your purchase of this mill. It seems they got the delivery address wrong.

Anyhow, we have about a year and 1500 parts on our Mini Mill. Let me know if there's any questions you have on tooling or procedures or programming or anything you need help with. I've pretty much got my setup all figured out.

One thing I'll say upfront is I recommend Trim brand coolant. I've had Trim C350 in the machine since new and I've been happy with it. I run a cheapo fountain pump in it to circulate it all the time.

Also, for endmills, Lakeshore Carbide has some nice 3-flute ones and for holders, Maritool is where I'd go.

[Cory]

Haas has the best control documentation of anyone in the business. Read the entire manual-it's actually super useful as it contains tons of example programs for many g-codes, work coordinate systems, etc.

I would get comfortable with writing some basic programs by hand to lay out hole patterns, drill/tap holes, and maybe some simple milling toolpaths like a circle, square, etc just so you can recognize and understand how all the G/M codes are being used by your CAM program. I took two courses on purely hand programming before learning CAM software. Even though I never code by hand other than quickly facing a part or drilling a hole, it's invaluable to know exactly what your CAM software is doing. I think it's much harder to start working with CAM and trying to go backwards and decipher what the program is doing as you go.

[Skinkworks]

Congratulations! I agree with Cory, Haas documentation is unparalleled. However, G-Code is pretty tedious to write for complex parts. Make sure you have a nice CAD-CAM workflow, it will save you lots of time and frustration.