Teams with CNC machinery (industrial scale; not desktop mills or cnc routers). What do you have? What’s the story behind your team acquiring that machinery?
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I choose to ignore the CNC router not counting because they are an industrial machine(depending on the model). 1678 has the following machines and access to more via my work.
Velox 50x50 CNC router
Omio X8 CNC router
Bridgeport EZ-Trak CNC knee mill
At work
1994 Haas VF-0 VMC
2015 Haas Mini Mill VMC
Industrial CNC CNC router
JCUT something Laser Cutter bed is about 3’x5’ 150 watts
Hypertherm 5x10 plasma cutter
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We work out of one of our mentor’s machine shop so we have access to several CNC machines there such as CNC Mills, CNC Lathes, and a CNC Plasma Cutter (not as accurate as waterjet but we can do it in house so it is helpful)
We have a 4x4’ CNC router, a CNC mill, CNC lathe, and a few knee mills and lathes. We just got the CNC router this summer from CNCRouterParts and so far we have been very happy with it. It’s helped immensely in speeding up our prototyping, and it will help internalize some of the production we would otherwise outsource once we start actually building the robot.
in CNC equipment we have a Tormach 770 mill and a Shopbot 48" x 96" router.
I am not sure how the team got the Shopbot. The Tormach was from a grant.
Our school and team have the good fortune of having a sponsor (Plexus Corp.) who supports our team financially and with mentors who have broad technical expertise. Because of their generosity and the other community partnerships we have established, we have the following equipment in our school:
CAMaster Stinger II CNC Router
PlasmaCAM CNC Plasma cutter
Haas VM CNC Mill
Haas CNC Lathe
Expert Mill Mini CNC
All of these pieces of equipment provide great opportunities for our students to experience real-world manufacturing in their own school.
We got a Haas MDC-500 donated to the team from a sponsor who was retiring the machine off their factory floor.
We have two Hass TM-1’s in our shop and use them for almost everything.
An additional question for those with machines: Have you found any companies that are enthusiastic about supporting your program with donated or discounted tools, toolholding, workholding, etc.?
Team 171 works out of the University of Wisconsin-Platteville so we have access to a plethora of machinery. The main shop we work form has a Bridgeport GX480, Tormach PCNC 770, a Tormach Lathe(forgot the model), a Bridgeport Conversational Mill and a Laser Cutter. There were instances where we would go to other parts of the campus where there were four additional Tormach Mills, two Tormach Lathes and a Laser Cutter.
Recently we have been working on a project to convert a bench-top mill to CNC.
(3) 2001 Haas Mini Mill
(2) 2001 Haas SL-10
2003 Haas TM-1P
2005 Haas MDC-1
2013 Haas VM-2
2013 Haas ST-30SSY
2015 Haas ST-10
2018 Haas Super Mini Mill
WPI has an excellent machine shop and manufacturing engineering department.
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Our OmioCNC x8 has treated us well so far. There’s not much documentation, but it’s easy to set up and maintain.
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Team 3970 has 2 HAAS TM-2P’s and a HAAS TL-2 we are in the process of learning how to use, as well as a 2 by 4 bed Techno CNC router.
1980s JET CNC knee mill
new ACRA CNC knee mill
2x3ish hypertherme CNC plasma cutter
2x2ish techno CNC router
our school has all of these in its metal shop and gives us access
we also have access to Oregon State Universities College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences shop
which has 2007ish CNC bed mill and a same brand and year
CNC lathe
Torchmate 4x4 growth series plasma table
2 Spectrum 60w Laser cutter
Smithy manual combo Mill/Lathe
Roland MDX50 - Benchtop Milling Machine
Bolton XQK9630S CNC - which just got functional- Thanks to Devin (RoboChair)!
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Haas VF-4 (50"x20"x25" travels)
Shop Sabre IS408 CNC router (48"x96" travels)
Trotec SP500 120W laser cutter (49"x27" travels)
All were acquired through generous donations to the team.
The Fargo/Moorhead teams (4360/4818/7048) got a Velox 5050 before kickoff. Great discount from them too, which I think is available for all FRC teams.
It’s been a breeze to work with. We were cutting wood and plastic within a day, and aluminum a day later. It’s enabled us to manufacture everything in house after having relied way too heavily on sponsors in the past. It’s larger than expected, but we have plans to set up permanent rigs for common cuts.
We also have an Inventables X-Carve that’s mostly dedicated for woods/fiberboard/plastic. It would need to have a true spindle and be more rigid to be able to do aluminum reliably.
Haas TM-1 mill in the school shop bought with school funds in 2007-2008. It has a 10-tool umbrella-type toolchanger. The coolant was disabled and changed to a FogBuster mist system. This machine gets used heavily.
Deckel FP2NC mill in mentor’s (my) garage. 1986 vintage with no toolchanger. It uses the same CPU as the original Mac. This gets used in a pinch.
MDA Precision CNC lathe based on a Wabeco bench lathe. Runs on Mach3. Nobody uses it.
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We have a Tormach PCNC 1100 fully tooled with a 16 x 34" tombstone bed plate. We got this from a grant and a gracious $10k donation from a local company.
We just got in a Velox VR 5050. I cannot say enough about this machine. They have done it right. We bought the 4hp spindle and that was the best advice we ever could have gotten. We have over 22 cutting hours on it since we got it days before kick off, making most of our half field, chassis, and now our upper structure. We are still on the original router bit too!
Through sponsors, we have access to massive water jets and laser cutters.
Our next purchase target is a Tormach cnc lathe.
My team also has an Omio. It took a while to get it up and running and cutting straight but it’s been a absolute work horse. Added a fog buster w/ 3D printed bracket.