Originally Posted by Rick Linnabary  I prefer to use a mill. I can make better money building more complex parts and if you use the proper machining, tool and programming techniques you can do any lathe operations as needed without having to put the part on a lathe to do any other operations including possibly having to go back to the mill if needed after doing the lathe work.... more time and money gone. I was told buy an owner of a multi-million dollar machine shop that "if you farm out the lathe work, at least you know how much money it's going to cost you (and you don't loose!). I believe that he is right unless you have a very large high dollar assembly that you need to do the lathe work in house to control quality, delivery time and cost.
I do 3-6 axis CNC Mill Programming for my specialty using Mastercam X and I have not found anything that I can't build on the right mill to build the parts as required, I have also been known to build "5 axis parts" on a 3 axis machine before; you just have to have a good ability to use your imagination and a bit of creativity. You can not do that with a lathe!!! |
why dont you post some pics of your work or end product rather, would like to see them
