To CNC? Or not to CNC?

[Dick Linn]

Dave, where and when is this auction? I've just acquired a crummy $200 hobby mill/drill from a Homier sale to learn on and would eventually like to get a real vertical mill. I have seen some manual Webb vertical mills and Hardinge horizontal mills with vertical head attachments for in the neighborhood of $2,000 - $2,400., which works out to somewhere around a dollar a pound. Best of all, they are right here in Richmond, which saves a bit of trucking.

[eric195]

team 195 has a small CNC machine but only a few kids know how to use it because most of us are in a class called PLTW and we learn the CNC machine as Juniors. I as a freshman cant wait for Junior year. next year we will have a lot of kids that can use the CNC because our team consists of a lot of sophmores and they will no it next year.
we also have like 4 mills

[BoyWithCape195]

Originally Posted by eric195

team 195 has a small CNC machine but only a few kids know how to use it because most of us are in a class called PLTW and we learn the CNC machine as Juniors. I as a freshman cant wait for Junior year. next year we will have a lot of kids that can use the CNC because our team consists of a lot of sophmores and they will no it next year.
we also have like 4 mills

First, they are not asking teams if they have a CNC and know how to use it. Please post comments RELATED to other posts, not stupid stuff that comes out of your little mind. Please post things related to the question ASKED. As many people have said to you in the last 24 hours. THINK BEFORE YOU POST

[kid robusto]

eric195 please stop mouthing off. But anyways, I would seriously recommend finding a local shop that has a nice Bridgeport (or similar) and try it out. It does take more time to do, but will mostly likly save your whole team much time in trying to make stuff.

and as eric195 said, we do have 2 Mini Cnc's and 4 milling machines. these are all veryoild, and heavly abused. most of the decks are ~.05 off, and all the endmill the school has are broken. Even with with these Supermax's(that the brand,i laugh everytime i say it) we were able to make most of our robots parts. Tooks a fair amount of time,but alot less than trying to set up the CNC correctly.

[Stephen.Yanczura]

Originally Posted by kid robusto

eric195 please stop mouthing off. But anyways, I would seriously recommend finding a local shop that has a nice Bridgeport (or similar) and try it out. It does take more time to do, but will mostly likly save your whole team much time in trying to make stuff.

and as eric195 said, we do have 2 Mini Cnc's and 4 milling machines. these are all veryoild, and heavly abused. most of the decks are ~.05 off, and all the endmill the school has are broken. Even with with these Supermax's(that the brand,i laugh everytime i say it) we were able to make most of our robots parts. Tooks a fair amount of time,but alot less than trying to set up the CNC correctly.

I think (READ:"hope") the decks are not 50 thou off or we have some serious problems. I think at most the machines are off by +/-.002"ish and that could just be because none of us are machinists.

[coreyjon]

For the money, it would be better to invest in a used vetical mill, and a metal lathe. As the student Lead Machinist, 99% of my time spent machining parts was spent on these two machines. The use of a cnc mill wasn't really required, although it did speed up the time it would have taken to manually mill out a anti-back drive gear for the winch. Check out ebay. You'd be surprised what you can find on there.

[coreyjon]

Also, check out:

http://www.use-enco.com

They have brand new mills for under 5k, also new lathes under 4k.

The new lathe that we just got is:

http://www.useenco.com/CGI/INSRIT?PM...&PARTPG=INLMK3

They have a wide array of tooling, indicators, and other useful tools for a good price, if you want new.

Also, check out:

http://www.blueridgemachinery.com

They have a lot of different machines, Check out smithy in particular, while I would recommend a separate mill, and a separate lathe, they have 3-in-one machines that are a combination mill-drill-lathe. For the money, these things are great, they don’t take up much space, and they work well. Also, for the team on a budget, you save a lot of money but only buying one machine compared with 3. And the prices will shock you. (Like 240 3 phase).