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Old 01-30-2005, 09:45 PM
nervis1 nervis1 is offline
 
Join Date: Aug 2003
Location: az
Posts: 812
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I had a Taig for a while that was CNC with a flashcut system. If you are fooling around on Sat afternoon with a few hours to burn they are fun. As soon as you want to make anything bigger than a watch case in steel, or aluminum, with 1-2 thou tol, you will be dissapointed. 1/4 EM will bog the motor and feeds are really limited due to the 1/4 hp motor.

Listen to Hu, get a used VMC and be done with it, even an old bridgeport retrofitted would be a hundred times better than a little desktop.

I remember taking almost three hours to cut a little part on my Taig in 6061 that was 4" in diameter, bunch of 0.5 inch pockets, had to stand there the whole time with a squirt bottle of coolant and a brush, yuck. When I got my little Fadal I cut the same part in less than 5 min, with a much better finish. Plus I could walk away and do something else while it cut (not that I did my face was glued to the lexan window .

I've seen plenty of used CNC knee mills for 5k. If you get into the 12-15k range you can get a decent VMC if you look around.

As far as CNC being hard, it depends on the complexity of your part, and a lot on how good your CAD/CAM software is. I still have a lot to learn but I've done things this year that I would have thought were impossible last year, never really felt overwhelmed, just learn as you go and ask lots of questions (the set up is the hardest part sometimes).


What are you planning to use to program / run this mill?
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