CNC Router/Mill

[Cory]

Originally Posted by artdutra04

And one more thing. Go up in your attic, basement, or garage and dig out all those 3.5" floppy discs, like all those free ones that came with AOL 3.0. Many CNC machines still use floppy discs to load NC programs (these are the programs of G-code that tell the machine how to make your part) onto the machines; the only ones I've seen that have support for USB Flash drives are the larger models, like the Haas VM-3 or VF-4.

When purchasing tooling, just remember that the TM-1 only has a ten-tool changer. Ordering 24 tool holders seems like a bit much.

All new Haas machines now come with USB.

24 pullstuds can be very useful, even if you dont have 24 holders. Eventually they will wear out or break. Our machine has a 20 tool changer, and I have the entire carousel full, plus tools outside of the machine that I swap in for certain operations, so there is a use for having more than the maximum capacity of you toolchanger.

[Qbranch]

Originally Posted by artdutra04

One of the dozen Haas CNC machines on my campus is a Haas TM-1, and it's definitely a good machine for doing all different kinds of work.

I saw one of these running at IMTS in 2006, where they recut the same part over and over (mill air) for demonstration purposes... well, unless they changed something, the TM-1 I saw had run the same part over probably about 60 times by the time I got there and it was STILL cutting dust off the part. It just seems like the repeatability must not be very good if after that many re-runs it was still cutting dust off the part.

BUT! If it works for you, awesome.

Just to throw another name out there... my faaavorite mill I use at work is a Hurco w/rigid tapping (awesome): http://www.hurco.com/Hurco/English/P...ers/VM+Series/

They're very space efficient and have great feature lists for the money, though they're more production oriented than a TM series from Haas.

-q