Just took delivery this morning. I opened the crate before going to work to check for damage. I haven't had a chance to have a really good look at it but from initial impressions, I am impressed. The quality looks good and the machine is very robust. I had a 6x26 VMC before and it is much more robust than this. Given that the 6x26 weighed around 900lbs with a cast iron base and this weighs over 1100lbs without a base it isn't surpising.

I will post to this thread my impressions as I get the thing going. I am welding up a table at the moment. By the time I get this done and powder coated it will probably be a month before the thing is operational.

Hey What part of the country you in? If you are from Manitoba let me know as I'm considering getting myself one also.
I was watching an e-bay aution for a Prolight CNC mill, it's smaller but get this, it sold for $9500 CAN! The Tormach seems like a much greater deal for the $.
.
Looking forward to your future posts.

I am in Toronto

I'm in Vancouver and am also looking at the Tormach. I have yet to find anything even comparable to it in the same price range.

My biggest concern is with it's ease of use .. or and lack there of. I am new to machining so I am looking for something relativeley easy to run.

Well ease of use is probably more to do with the software you run for machine control and CAM. I have a lot of experience using manual mills and lathes over the 15 or so years I have been involved in model engineering. Even so it is still quite a steep learning curve getting your head around G code and CAM and so on. However, its just a case of being patient and working your way methodically through it all. Mach seems pretty user friendly and the conversational wizards seem like a good way to learn the basics.

The biggest external factor is probably what you want to make? This has a lot to do with how complicated things get.

Well to start I want to make flanges and other items along those lines. Nothing overly complicated. Maybe pick up some small run contracts.

I have never used a milling machine, manual or cnc. I'm more then comfortable with computers and CAD programs so I'm hoping for the parts I need it will be as simple as bolt some metal to the bed and press go.

How do you find the speed of the machine? What about the noise?

pstockley, I'm in T.O. as well. Would you consider letting me come over and have a look at the machine? I am looking around at small CNC mills, and this does sound like a winner so far... I don't think I could get it into my house, but you never know in the future... ;)

Sure, once its up and running in a month or so.

That's great - I'll look forward to seeing it. If I am a tinge green with envy, don't be too surprised, though... ;)

I am looking into the tormach, also , and would be interested in finding out about it's capabilities. I , too, am considering putting one in my basement. ( new to cnczone and mini-milling).

I am looking into the tormach, also , and would be interested in finding out about it's capabilities. I , too, am considering putting one in my basement. ( new to cnczone and mini-milling).

I am also new to the forum, (first post), interested in the tormach to start a side business, and work downtown T.O.

I would be intersted in seeing one of these machines run and just meet some people that use them. Pstockley, maybe you should be calling up the company for some referral commission or something! :) I'm very interested in seeing how you like it so far and some of the work you have done.

d.

I wish I could show you what I have done with it. The truth is I am still finishing the stand. Its taken a lot longer than I had hoped to build. Don't want to make another one anytime soon!

Well, I (and it looks like others, too, now! :) ) am still looking forward to seeing the Tormach, hopefully in action too. Should we take it off-list to communicate, or is here OK?

Please keep it here as I am also interested in this thread. My Tormach should be shipped next week.

Best Regards (chair)
Phil

Well, I (and it looks like others, too, now! :) ) am still looking forward to seeing the Tormach, hopefully in action too. Should we take it off-list to communicate, or is here OK?

What Phil said. We want to see some Tool Porn (TM)!

-Jeff

No need to worry, I'll keep everyone posted on progress.

The stand should be complete this week excluding painting. I am going to test the machine out on the stand before final painting just to make sure it doesn't need beefing up anymore. I will post pictures soon. I plan to do some experimental tests cutting aluminum first. The steel tests will have to wait until the stand is painted so I can use coolant.

Its been very frustrating not being able to use the machine. I would recommend anyone buying a PCNC 1100 look seriously at buying a stand also. It is far more work than you realize to make your own.

Its been very frustrating not being able to use the machine. I would recommend anyone buying a PCNC 1100 look seriously at buying a stand also. It is far more work than you realize to make your own.


Amen!

My IH Mill "Christmas Present" sits on its pallet quietly mocking me while I go on about a stand. In my case, I am waiting for my contractor pal to hook up my 220V wiring so I can fire up my Tig welder and even get started. I've seriously considered buying a granite surface plate stand (they're strong and nearly the right size) or just pouring a concrete stand.

Best,

BW

Just to prove I haven't been sitting on my rear, here are a couple of shots of the stand I am building.

http://www.cnczone.com/gallery/data/500/Table11.jpg

http://www.cnczone.com/gallery/data/500/Table21.jpg

Its welded up from 2"x4" and 2"x2" by 1/8" tubing. The sides and tray are made from 16g steel. I am kind of regretting not going to heavier gauge steel for the sheet stuff. The tray is pretty stiff but I am afraid it is going to ring like a bell. The problem I have is that I don't have much help to lift it around when welding and even 16g is pretty heavy (>100lbs). Anyway, time will tell once I give it a test run. I just have to finish grinding the spot welds down and weld on the plates for the 5 adjustable feet. Hopefully by the end of this weekend, I can think about how I am going to get the mill onto it!

Nice stand!

One thing I wonder about with these machines is how much protection to provide from coolant spray. If you look at some CNC videos, such as the ones on the Industrial Hobbies site, there is so much coolant you'd have to put the whole machine in a box to keep it under control. OTOH, you look at something like a Haas TM-1, and it has almost no enclosure at all.

What's the story here? Do we need tons of coolant spraying everywhere, or is something a little less crazy in order?

It affects the design of the stand. BTW, I think you are covered either way if you had to build a plexi box atop that nice drip pan.

Best,

BW

Wow! That is a nice looking stand. Wish I knew how to weld, though my wooden stand hasn't collapsed yet! :D

As far a coolant goes, I put a choped off 5 gallon bucket underneath my drain hole and found a "Universal pump" at Home Depot that from what I can tell is rated at 180 gal/hr. Well, after running through my 15 feet of hose, I timed it and I'm getting 1 gal / 9 minutes...

It certainly doesn't blow the chips away by any means, but when a 1/2" endmill is spinning at 3800 RPM in that coolant flow, spray starts flying about 4 feet in all directions... Definitely need to put some kind of guard on the front. It would be nice if Tormach sold just the table shield part of their stand as a separate item. Proably cheaper to build something myself. I do have some left over 80/20 quick frame here. Works well for we non-welders...

Dave.

Hi Dave,

Please an we see some photos of work todate.

Best Regards
Phil

Wow! That is a nice looking stand. Wish I knew how to weld, though my wooden stand hasn't collapsed yet! :D

As far a coolant goes, I put a choped off 5 gallon bucket underneath my drain hole and found a "Universal pump" at Home Depot that from what I can tell is rated at 180 gal/hr. Well, after running through my 15 feet of hose, I timed it and I'm getting 1 gal / 9 minutes...

It certainly doesn't blow the chips away by any means, but when a 1/2" endmill is spinning at 3800 RPM in that coolant flow, spray starts flying about 4 feet in all directions... Definitely need to put some kind of guard on the front. It would be nice if Tormach sold just the table shield part of their stand as a separate item. Proably cheaper to build something myself. I do have some left over 80/20 quick frame here. Works well for we non-welders...

Dave.

Just fired my Tormach after building my stand and coolant system.Haven't cut chips yet, maybe try tomorrow if I have time, next day for certain. It cuts air fine! I tried a program on it from a modified Mastercam 7.2 fanuc post. It worked great on 2 1/2 D. I will try full 3D later.

pstockley......break up those long sheet metal runs....otherwise that thing is gonna sound like a drum......you can probably just vertically weld some short 1 inch square tubing to the sides.....

Forgot to say "Great Job!"

Is your Tormach running now ?

I'm still waiting on some real feedback on this machine.

Is your Tormach running now ?

I'm still waiting on some real feedback on this machine.



Me too. I will most likely be putting money down on one of these before the end of the month. But would still love to see one run and make some local contacts with other owners.

I'm also interested in learning what you use for software. I purchased Alibre which is a solid modeler and I really like it. I'm looking at Sprutcam for creating tool paths.

Mine is. I am putting it through its paces now. I am using HSS mills at this point machining mild steel to do my testing. Eventually most of my machining will be with aluminum. I am using autocad 2000 and mastercam7.2 for my toolpaths and am tweking the mastercam post for my uses. I am now trying to set up a probe to use with the Tormach. It appears to be a good machine for the $. I have not checked it for specific accuracies other than G01, G02, and G03. Using a "cheap" vernier they appear to be accurate to better than .001 (limit of vernier). It will be a while before I test true 3 and 4 D functions.
I have no problems with it and would buy it again. Previous knowledge of CAM is helpful as the docs are sparse in the programming area.

Great looking stand base you made.

Do you have any pictures of the finished stand? Does it have the coolant tank within?

Cheap electronic calipers have a resolution of a half thou, repeatablity of about a thou, but the accuray is down around three thou. Start comparing measurements between a Micrometer and calipers and you'll be suprised.

I used a combo of the wood stand and my own design of a square steel tube support for the base. I'll try to get some pictures out. The entire weight of the tormach rests on the welded steel tube frame. The plywood coolant tray is made of 3/8" and 3/4" for back. I used the plans from the Tormach site and used my Shopbot CNC router to cut the panels. That way I didn't need to re-engineer the design. I fiberglassed the plywood and then coated it with expoxy paint. I have had no leak problems. I probably used a little overkill on my solution. The coolant tank is made of sheetmetal and sits on the floor under and by the machine. I made the bottom so that I could use a pallet mover to move the entire setup.
If I did it over I would have made all of the sides go straight down verus the Tormach wood stand design.

Great to here what has been happening so far with the guys who have
tormachs. I hope It works out to be a fine machine at a reasonable price.
Keep the info comming as I am interested.

I finally got the mill on the stand and hooked up to the PC. I decided to get the drip pan sprayed with spray on bed liner. This increased the thickness from 16Ga to about 1/8" and has greatly dampened down any ringing. It turned out to be a lot cheaper than using 1/8" steel. The spot welds on the pan were filled with car body filler and the bottom of the pan sprayed with etching primer to stop it rusting.

To get the mill through a 35" door I had to remove the Y axis mount at the back. To do this involved using a puller to get the ballscrew bearings off the ballscrew. This was a bit nerve racking but worked out OK in the end.

Getting the mill on the stand was fun because I couldn't easily use an engine crane due to the lack of clearance under the feet. In the end I borrowed a portable A-frame from a race team I know. They use it to lift single seater open wheel cars. However, it was enough hassle that I will be finishing and painting the stand without disassembly. I am going to wait until it gets hotter before painting so I can open the doors to let the fumes out.

As you can see from the photo, there is just enough room with the table at full travel on the limit switch. I have a bit of a space problem so I tried to minimize the table size as far as possible. In the end I had about 1/4" to spare!

Currently, I am working on a splash guard to fit to the table. This is similar to the one tormach offers but doesn't require any modifications to the mill. Some guards for the rear of the machine will also need to be made from some form of plastic. I also need to cut the wood for the lower shelf, then fit the coolant tank, drains....... Still lots to do!

http://www.cnczone.com/gallery/data/500/stand.JPG

http://www.cnczone.com/gallery/data/500/clearance.JPG

Looks real good. Have you taken a look at my splash gaurd on my mini mill? what I did is use some aluminum angle, set those on the outside with the angle pointing out and 2 peices at the ends pointing upward, then finished constructing it all like that. Take a look at my gallery and see if you can get some ideas.
Im going to suggest you make it so you can put it on with the vice on:D I have too many times spent time dialing in the vice then to realize the chip shield wasnt on....

That stand definately looks good.

Jon

I am sooooo jealous!
That rig is awesome- nice job on the stand too. It looks like you took the time to do it right.
-Mike

Darn....that looks sexy ....hope it works as well as it looks.....

Great looking stand. I getting a bit worried that mine might be a bit wimpish. :rolleyes: We will see. How are you handling chips and also how is access to the oiler.

Regards
Phil

I finally got the mill on the stand and hooked up to the PC. I decided to get the drip pan sprayed with spray on bed liner. This increased the thickness from 16Ga to about 1/8" and has greatly dampened down any ringing. It turned out to be a lot cheaper than using 1/8" steel. The spot welds on the pan were filled with car body filler and the bottom of the pan sprayed with etching primer to stop it rusting.

To get the mill through a 35" door I had to remove the Y axis mount at the back. To do this involved using a puller to get the ballscrew bearings off the ballscrew. This was a bit nerve racking but worked out OK in the end.

Getting the mill on the stand was fun because I couldn't easily use an engine crane due to the lack of clearance under the feet. In the end I borrowed a portable A-frame from a race team I know. They use it to lift single seater open wheel cars. However, it was enough hassle that I will be finishing and painting the stand without disassembly. I am going to wait until it gets hotter before painting so I can open the doors to let the fumes out.

As you can see from the photo, there is just enough room with the table at full travel on the limit switch. I have a bit of a space problem so I tried to minimize the table size as far as possible. In the end I had about 1/4" to spare!

Currently, I am working on a splash guard to fit to the table. This is similar to the one tormach offers but doesn't require any modifications to the mill. Some guards for the rear of the machine will also need to be made from some form of plastic. I also need to cut the wood for the lower shelf, then fit the coolant tank, drains....... Still lots to do!

The picture is a bit deceptive but there is plenty of space at the front to pull out the oiler plunger. Regarding chip collection, I am going to rely on the table mounted splash guard to contain most of the chips. I will post some pictures once I get a little bit further along. My guard is going to be pretty big so there is plenty of room for vices/fixtures and to make it easy to remove chips etc. The idea is that you won't have to take the guard on and off, just fold down or remove the clear acrylic front section to gain access.

Regarding, the robustness of the stand, you probably won't have a problem with a less robust stand collapsing. However, I've learned that if it isn't really stiff then vibration during cutting can get out of hand, resulting in poor surface finish. That's also one of the reasons I made mine quite low. To be honest, steel isn't the best thing to use for a machine stand. If I were doing it again, I would create a steel shell and fill it with concrete. You could put a foam cube in the middle to leave a cavity to reduce the weight and provide somewhere for the coolant tank to go. Once the concrete is set, just carve out the foam from the middle.

With regard to chips, I was thinking more about whether you were planned for a chip tray or do they all have to come out over the top.

I have also considered a concrete base however it seems that I move house on a regular basis. Looks like I might be moving again in the next 6 to 12 months time frame. Hence the relatively wimpy stand. By the way my Tormach is due for delivery 12:00 tomorrow. It kinda feels like Christmas eve. Where’s the party hat? :cheers:

Regards
Phil

Regarding chip collection, I am going to rely on the table mounted splash guard to contain most of the chips.......

Regarding, the robustness of the stand, you probably won't have a problem with a less robust stand collapsing. However, I've learned that if it isn't really stiff then vibration during cutting can get out of hand, resulting in poor surface finish. That's also one of the reasons I made mine quite low. To be honest, steel isn't the best thing to use for a machine stand. If I were doing it again, I would create a steel shell and fill it with concrete.

Man, that is one good looking rig you have set up there! Props on the stand!

I have looked at the Tormach briefly, just recently actually, and it has sparked my interest as a candidate for my next CNC mill. One thing that I would like to do is remove the controller unit from the side of the mill, enclose the entire mill and have the controller unit mounted separate or off to the side. Would that be possible with the Tormach, or is there something holding it to that placement?

Another thing with the Tormach that I noticed is that it runs with steppers and not servos. I had almost settled on my next CNC mill to be ran on encoded servos with high pitch ball screws. Would you consider the "high performance stepper motors" to be on the same playing field as encoded servos? I pretty well wanted to eliminate all chances of missed steps and inaccuracies, which for me meant going with encoded servos. I would mostly be doing all aluminum parts, but it is still something I was concerned about.

Has anyone done much machining on aluminum with a Tormach, and if so, what kinds of speeds/feeds are you getting with it? Overall it looks like a great machine and the price tag is reasonable as well.

Still can't get over how well that stand turned out! :)

Thanks for the complements on the stand. I think it should look pretty sharp when fully completed and painted.

There is no reason you couldn't relocate the control cabinet. However, you would need to extend a bunch of cables and it would be quite a bit of work.

To be honest I don't think that steppers are as good as a good quality AC or DC servo setup. However, Tormach have been very conservative especially with their rapid speeds so I think the chances of missed steps are pretty low unless you crash into something. The slow rapids worried me for a bit but if you think about it, a machine of this class will spend way more time cutting than executing rapid movements.

Mike Aber has some video showing cutting steel and aluminum. Given cooling, increased spindle speed and good quality carbide cutters, I think you could do better. However, given only a 1.5hp spindle you can't expect anyway near typical VMC performance.

Links to videos:

Here is a video of my PCNC1100 cutting some 1018 cold rolled steel at 10 IPM. The cut is .300" high and .100" deep at 1000 rpm with a .375" 4 flute HSS end mill. You can see the chips turning "straw" colored at the end of the cut indicating this is the absolute maximum cut for this end mill and the machine isn't loaded down significantly

http://www.cnczone.com/gallery/showphoto.php/photo/2724/cat/9021

This is a video of my PCNC1100 cutting a 1.5" pocket. I could have cut a hole and let the slug fall out but it was more fun making chips. The hole measured .001" undersize. Cut with a 4 flute .250" carbide end mill at 20 IPM with a stepover of .125" and a depth step of .125" each pass.

http://www.cnczone.com/gallery/showphoto.php/photo/2728/cat/9021

My Tormach arrived today, That's 27 days door to door - Chicago to Stavanger Norway. Thats not counting China to Chicago.

I've got the machine unboxed, slung and I did a trial lift with everything looking OK. Now it's waiting on finishing the stand, which will be this weekend. I should get the computer tomorrow so everything is coming together.

I'm extremely pleased with what I've seen of the machine so far.

I also ordered the Tormach Tooling system and if the fit and finish are anything to go by it's going to be top notch.

Best Regards :cheers:
Phil