I have some parts I want to make, some parts are just UHMW or Delrin plastics, other parts are 300 series stainless steel. I was thinking a CNC lathe that could also do some milling because as you can see in the pictures I need to cut some slots and also drill some very small holes on the face of some round parts. I don't have 30K+ to buy an industrial machine but I definately need CNC capabilities because I need the parts to be uniform and one part can't differ from the next when I am running sets of 15+ pieces at a time. So I wanted to see what was available in these smaller lathes that might be able to do this work and not cost me a ton of money to buy one.

These parts are no more than 3.5 inches in diameter, about 5 inches long at the most (usually more in the 2-3 inch range), and have radius's in the inside of the parts, etc.

http://www.thewholepkg.com/images/Photo_Albums/Change_Parts/img_0050.jpg

http://www.thewholepkg.com/images/Photo_Albums/Change_Parts/img_0052.jpg

http://www.thewholepkg.com/images/Photo_Albums/Change_Parts/img_0388.jpg

http://www.thewholepkg.com/images/Photo_Albums/Change_Parts/img_0395.jpg

Well the Wabeco CC-D6000E high speed lathe (www.mdaprecision.com) will most certainly do the lathing that you require for those parts...as for the perimeter holes, unless you can adapt live tooling to a small lathe, you are not going to be able to do those on your lathe. If you were enterprising enough you could attach an indexing plate behind your chuck to act as a C axis, and rig up an air drill or die grinder to provide the "live" tooling...

we are still talking 13K for that lathe, is there anything available cnc lathe in the 5K range?

squale - your parts look pretty heft for a 'small machine' - it would be slow. a motion programming messup could really thrash something.. my enco lathe, for isntance, would be able to make those parts, but it would be a terrible ordeal. each one would be a nightmare.. the only hope would be very sharp tooling i suppose, and low feeds.. if you dont mind it taking some large chunk of time to make each part. it also seems to me the experience to pull off such parts on small equipmet would imply a decent ability to select said small equipment.

look for something big old and used, and retrofit it?

There is also the C6 CNC lathe from Syil USA (www.syilamerica.com). Again, power is a problem with the smaller machines. But a slow CNC will beat a very talented, accomplished manual machinist every time with a proven program. I am both a manual machinist and CNC operator/programmer/setup person and though I use a manual lathe at least once a day, I still take 5-10 times longer than the slowest CNC machine I have ever used. (That is not to say that I am a very talented, accomplished manual machinist...just that I know my way around a lathe, mill, radial drill press & surface grinder very well...well enough to know that I'm always learning)
Smithy (www.smithycnc.com) is talking about introducing a CNC lathe with very similar specs to the C6 Syil, though a complete system will still be in the $10-13,000 range before tooling. I have also heard rumblings that Tormach is planning on introducing a CNC lathe to their lineup. The indicated price range would be around $7000 give or take. Both of these options are still 3-6 months in the future, if at all.

well the SYIL CNC C6 can be had for $4,500. does this include the Mach3 software and all? I have a laptop to run the software on.

how can the SYIL CNC C6 be less than $5K and the others be in the 10-13K range... is this SYIL CNC C6 just not very good? i wonder how the precision compares to the bigger more expensive CNC lathes.. such as a Hass TL-1 ?

does the SYIL CNC C6 use standard g-code the same as what is used on bigger cnc machines?

wyld

i agree about the cnc always being faster than manual... the difference here might be a $5,000 but larger used lathe versus any 5k range new cnc lathe might be the roughing out on the metal parts.. they look like they would take hours on a small cnc machine and minutes on an old manual 2 or 3 ton machine. Also, i am skeptical about the time needed to learn all the cnc stuff when proposing a difficult task with (probably,it wasnt indicated) limited experience... not to mention how messy a small machine would get with each part, the drastic wear on the machine, trying to turn out 3.5" chunks of stainless on a machine meant for small stuff.

squale

the syil cnc is based on a $700ish asian lathe.. like those at grizzly or enco.. so you are paying the other $3500 for ballscrews, motor drivers, power supply, etc.. plus the red paint!

also, these syil machines seem to be a product arising from a percieved hobby market, as where the other machines mentioned seem to be aimed at education..

in either case the intended use of these machines isnt turning big bunches of stainless parts... the delrin parts on the other hand would likely come off any of these machines very nicely. if you already have a workshop, perhaps jigs, indexers, or other manual devices could fill a gap...

the problem with these small cnc devices for producing comparitevely large parts is the mismatched scale... small everything wears fast when faced with a 3 or 4" thick piece of stainless... especially if the tooling isnt basically new. at least in my experience which isnt really in 4" stainless on small lathes, so what do i know.

i feel too negative though.. where there is will, maybe there is a way.. maybe a good program on these small machines with the right coolant, tooling, chip colection, etc...

the problem with engineering is the '2/3rds rule' - you want accuracy, speed, and low cost - you will only ever get 2 of these, at best... i dont know if i believe in this rule. rules are for squares, but there is a reason a job shop would want $300/part or more for these..

well the main use of the machine would be for the plastics. I really don't need to do the stainless stuff, but the plastics would be the main parts that I would use this machine for. Would this SYIL CNC C6 be able to hande 3.5" diameter plastics and bore out the middle and put a radius inside the piece? how long do you think plastics would take on this machine?

Squale
Precision compared to a Haas TL-1...hmm...well, given adequate preparation and willingness to optimize your program for your machine, I'd say that you could produce a part just as precise on a C6 as on the TL-1. But you're comparing apples to jolly ranchers really. The C6 doesn't have much mass or much power compared to the Haas. And the Haas really isn't the benchmark for precision. I can appreciate what you're going through...but you can't expect to pay Ford Focus prices for Ferrari speed & handling and GMC Diesel ruggedness & reliability. If you really feel the need to CNC machine these yourself and you are patient or at least willing to learn what you don't know, the C6 could be a great way to bootstrap yourself to a point where you can afford to purchase an industrial lathe with all its own attendant headaches.

VacPress
I don't really recommend an older, used CNC machine for any person who is looking to do hobby or very small production runs. The hassles of chasing down parts or paying for service calls is way too much and just plain expensive. I went down this road when my old shop wanted a Hitachi Seiki off their premises to make room for a new Daewoo Puma. As part of the deal I also received a second, dead machine for parts. Aside from the boards and some mechanicals, almost nothing else was able to be used. The turret uses a cam mechanism that is hand fitted to each housing and "massaged" to work correctly with that housing via grinding and laboriously fiddling. I never could get the damn thing to run right and this was after I had been repairing and maintaining the machine (weekly, it seems) at work for the better part of a year BEFORE purchasing it from them. In the end, I sold it to someone else who was dead set that he had to have them to get his business started. I let him know exactly what he was getting into and they still sit in his shop immobile and inactive.

well basically to give a little more background info, I have just completed a manual machine shop class at a county college and I wanted to get into CNC machining. Our family business is selling parts for packaging machinery and right now we sort of act like the middle man, such that I and my father go to companies and sell parts, I draw the parts up in Solidworks, we give the prints to our few different machine shops we use, they make the parts and we mark up their prices. Since I know how to measure and draw the parts, I am pretty computer savor (computer programmer by profession), I was also interested in learning how to actually machine some of these parts. I also have a younger brother who is about to finish highschool that wants to get involved in the family business. My dream is to one day open my own machine shop so that the work we sell to our customers we have full control over the pricing, delivery time frame, etc. if we have our own shop. So my brother would be very wise to learn machining and I also have an interest in learning some machining. I just need a CNC machine to make the parts we sell. Of course the more advanced parts we will always continue to have our main job shops make because they have the large high priced cnc equipment, but I would like to get a smaller cnc machine that can handle some of the parts we sell and at the same time learn how to operate a cnc machine, get my brother into it as well, and also learn the g-code, etc. I would assume the g-code used on these smaller Cnc lathes is the same g-code used on the larger industry grade lathes and mills right?

so as you can see I don't have a ton of money to make a large investment, I'm looking for a smaller cnc lathe that I can fit in my garage of my house and I really dont' want to get a phase 3 converter, so something that runs on 110 or 220 single phase would be very helpful. I would think that those plastic parts would be something that one of these small SYIL CNC C6 type cnc lathes could handle right? I just wonder how long it would take to cut one of these parts on a machine like that..

As I said before, given your willingness and desire, I think the C6 could be just the thing for your smaller parts. Expect cycle times to be measured in minutes rather than seconds and expect to experiment...a lot.
Depending on what software you use, the G & M codes will be the same as on industrial machines.
I think that you would be wise to do your research on the sources I gave you for hobby type CNC lathes, give yourself plenty of time to scrutinize, think & rethink your decision. Think some more. If after a month you are sure that you still want to plunk down the $5000 or more to purchase the machine, plus about $1-2000 more to properly tool up for the parts you wish to make, then by all means. If things don't go as planned, as least you have a toy you now are familiar with and know how to use. You own it, not the bank.

I got both, my machining center and the cnc lathe for under $10K in ebay.
I think oldies are the good ones for starting a shop.

Everardo

well some people say that buying a 5K cnc bench lathe now is a waste of money, because in the future I will probably want to upgrade to a larger industrial type of lathe. But what I don't get is why these people think I should go buy a 30K cnc lathe to start off as my first cnc lathe..

Maybe they think that for the kind of parts you posted, specially the stainless one.
Even if you tell later that only want to machine plastics, the brain just have its first impression locked in.

Personally, the impression I have about smaller lathes, like a chucker or bench, is that their jobs are far below 1" in diameter. Usually 1/4" stuff.

Anyway. Can be $5K, $10K or $30K... there's always somebody who routinely makes $100,000 jobs, so your own anual budget is what he expends in one month tooling.

yeah but don't forget, this machine is also to LEARN on. that's the other big factor, learning cnc hear..

is it possible to buy the C6 from say Grizzly and then put the CNC capability on it? does anybody know how much this costs to do and how hard it is to do for a first timer?

otherwise the Syli CNC C6 costs $4,500

thanks

Learn... well... mmm

You better get a job in a shop first. The only thing worst that crashing a machine is to be the owner of it ;)

Tooling is expensive, align the turret a bit complicated, and the service guy charges $100 hr to resucitate your machine after a lightning.

Squale,

Not sure what these are being used for and if this is even a viable option or not as I dont know if these are the only parts you are interested in making or not?

You may, and I repeat MAY be able to reproduce these using rubber molding and using liquid plastic. it is just a thought without much else to go off of it may not be a possiblity.

But you have to also consider these parts have a small slits cut in them, as well as other holes drilled, so these wont be easy to finish even on a CNC lathe.

yeah I was thinking those slits and small holes in the plastic parts could be done with a lathe/mill combo? can you index at say 60 degrees with a lathe/mill to drill these holes?

if not I would need a mill with saw attachment to cut the slits and then drill the holes..

yeah there are a few different ways to be able to machine the slits or drill the holes. A mill drill combo is one option, also using a band saw as well in a fixture plate too..just really depends on the final application

well my main concern is those ID and OD radius cuts, then need to be smooth as a baby's butt, I don't think you can do that with a manual machine... that's why I think a cnc would be a better match or this type of job??? I am mainly talking about the plastic parts here..

oh for sure, those radius cuts would be ideal for a cnc lathe. You can do it manually but it will take a lot of practice, specially to reproduce them with accuracy. I have machined thousands of delrin/acetal parts on my small and large lathe manually, and all of that can be done with great finish result. Now I am adding one of the headstocks on my small lathe to my X3 mill to have a turning center/4th axis.

http://www.cnczone.com/forums/showthread.php?t=45602

That is my machine...I dont think a lot of people like my coolant tray idea but my shop is literally packed with not much room for anything else so the idea of building an full enclosure wasnt one I wanted since I would loose valuable table space.

well if this part can be made on one of these CNC bench lathes here is a drawing you can download, does anybody want to quote it? I would need 12 pieces. And also quote for 24 pieces. There are 3 files in here, a Solidworks part file, a Solidworks drawing file and a .DXF drawing file.
http://www.jkevin.com/solidworks/Quote_Me/Insert_Quote.zip

squale..

the plastic parts, from experience, would go very well on a smallish cnc lathe. with some decent programming they look like their cycle times would be around 2 minutes each, plus the manual center drilling.. the slits could be cut accurately and efficiently with a simple jig and a band saw with an appropriately thick blade, likewise even a router table, or an improvised router table with a small laminate trimmer and jig would be ok. a jig for this could be made pretty easily, especially if you didnt mind hiring someone. i could imagine making a jig for this for a bandsaw for you for under $200(aluminum plate, delrin bushings for the table slots, indexing rotary mount for part., not that 'just any' shop would do it for that price. that is just an example, not a proposition so much, rfq site might actually deliver a very low quote on these parts in general, given the type of competition there.

a $750 imported lathe seems to me to need about $1000+/- $500 of parts put into it to make it into something like the c6. you need 2 stepper drivers, 2 stepper motors, 2 motor mounting plates, 4 pulleys, 2 mxl belts, a parallel port card (get a $150ish one that has the lathe indexer inputs, etc.. unless you are good with electronics and can figure all that out), a method of indexing the lathe chuck, and some tooling.. all ofthis can be had for around $2000
then to do the slots, a manual mill and bandsaw can both be purchased new or used for aroud $2000 more or less for something worth owning. $1000 will get you new tools from harborfreight.com. a mill drill, lathe, and bandsaw from them will be under $2000 upto about $4500 for better stuff. to cnc it all is like another $2000/machine. allot less could still do a good job on these plastic parts.

at that point you would have a small but flexible shop setup that fits in a corner and can make very accurate parts with automation to do the hardest surfaces. you may find the learning curve steep though. i know i took a few years of casual interest before being able to really make good parts.. but, i always had to rely on my own pathetic income to purchase tools and stuff. it took 5 years in my case of constant bargain hunting, etc. to get a decent shop together... and i still couldnt make the parts you have specified except as prototypes.. once i cnc my small lathe, that would be another story.



oh, and as for doing a rubber mold of these parts.. it will be hard to make concentric round parts using molding. also, without looking at the parts again, it seems to me you will pretty much still have to chuck them to center drill. If these parts are more like adapters and dont spin or have strict concentricity requirements, molding might be a very good and inexpensive option. then you just need a small manual lathe to center drill. or, you could try and put a plug in the mold, but that is not an operation i would want to do without facilities.

i just wouldnt recommend this exact method

i dunno. there are also some pretty easy methods to just index the parts on the lathe to do the slits...

to index the part you could simply manually layout and grind in indexing marks on the lathe chuck and devise a clamp to hold it, with practice, accuracy would likely be quite good, some sort of spring loaded indents is what i would do, probably. not sure if it would be recommended, but maybe a simple tapped hole and bolt would work - ask someone else about that!

mount a dremel on the slide, and put a 1/16" or 1/32 endmill with 1/8" shank in it..

use some sort of hack saw blade and a special 'mitre-fixture'..

i think the short answer is you can do the plastic parts with small equipment, the stainless parts would be much more difficult but still possibly for an intrepid programmer and setup savant. figuring out how to deal with the flood coolant and not hurt your cute little c6 would be my first interest ;)

you don't need coolant for the plastic parts right? but definately for the metal parts?

the plastic parts might benefit from a airjet, but otherwise, no, no coolant.. someone correct me if i am wrong. i teach myself most things, and look for reference sources when needed. i suggest getting a copy of 'machinery's handbook', as well as 'machine shop practice'.

combined, these 2 books or sets are invaluable. other great books include ones of the '1001 mechanisms' varieties. look on ebay, or on amazon. i have dozens of such books in my design library.

Squale you could buy a heavy old turret lathe to rough your parts in and then finish them on a table top cnc.This way all the heavy cuts will be done by the turret lathe which can be picked up cheaply.And the finished dimension VIA the inexpensive cnc.

well a couple things I didnt read anywhere..what is the quantity you need to make, a handfull or in the thousands? And price range. a few dollars or $100 each?

So these are for the packaging industry correct? Which are the most import dimensions that need to be taken into consideration?

Is it just the bottom portion which looks like it has some sort of lock fit. and if it is for packaging is the hole just for items to fall into? so as long as it is smooth are all the dims that important?

There are many different ways to make these parts, but there are other considerations as well. If you get yourself stuck with one certain machine to make these exact parts, it may not be what is most import.

There are lots of jigs and fixtures you can build and use cheaper machines along side of a small cnc lathe, instead of buying multiple pieces of eqiupment that may not even serve another purpose. Also the selling price is another factor, compared to what tolerances you actually need. Again I will go back to either rubber molding or injection molding. These CAN be very good alternatives, and no you dont need the right facility to make these.

You could make these parts with a 7x10 cnc'd lathe with xylotex board and a few steppers , and have a band saw at $150, and a drill press for $99, all of it could be had for around $1k. But not sure if that would serve the long term purpose.

I made parts off a 7x10 lathe for some time until i was able to purchase a larger lathe, but my point is my 7x10 lathe paid for a second 7x10 and a 11X26, a cnc X3 mill, anodizing, powedercoating, and sheet metal equipment.

You can easily over engineer these parts. But there is a few more pieces of info needed to really figure this out.

none of my parts are production runs, everything is one of these, two of these, or maybe at most like 25 of these. The tolorences can be +/- .005" but I like to stay within the .002 range. These parts sell anywhere from $100 a piece to some of the stainless steel parts I make being $1K+ per piece. The cheapest parts I make are usually no less than $50 per piece.

hmm doesnt really sound like there is too much money it then unless you get lots of orders for the stainless ones. It may almost be more worth it to get a board member to help you for some extra money...

you mean just have a board member make my parts instead of buying machines to do it myself?

If Kos suggestion is to get somebody else to do your parts, just for money issues, then I disagree.
It is important the formative part (and the fun) of this profession, to actually cut chips by yourself and learn that "is not the way I tought it was". You actually have a product to sell and the customers. That is the most difficult part to do: Get customers.

Yes that was what I was suggesting to try and partner up with another board member to make parts.

ERD39030, the reason I suggested this, is I am not 100% squale is doing this out of a hobby or if it is strictly business. As well if it is only these handful of parts that were shown before and at low quantities, then it may be a better decision to look for a home shop machinist to make these for him instead of buying them from a larger machine shop that would charge much more.

Now if there are other ideas, or it was a hobby driven venture then that is different. And my advice is probably not warranted.

I have a small business where my parts have all been my design, made by me and then sold around the world. I have been very crafty in how I make stuff as well as sell it. I also understand that if it is low quantity and just a handful of parts that it will take a while just to get some ROI on the machines purchased. Looking at it from a business stand point I have no idea how long the ROI would take, and at that point you have compare that to how much money would be made having a board member make them for you....Not to mention the learning curve. It is not like a cnc lathe will show up today and a part will be of sellable value tomorrow. There is a pretty big learnin curve, which can also translate into loss of value for the company...but on the flip side down the road it may be worth it...this is just my .02

If there are underlining factors here I am missing, then obviously I am off base.

KOS,
from a business standpoint I fully agree with your recommendation. Why? well because right now I have a couple small machine shops making my parts for me, and they are pretty good on their rates, charging about $60 an hour for their machining time and they don't kill me on their material prices, etc. The one shop we currently use is just a one-man shop and he does 100% of our work, actually he only does our work. To give you an idea, we paid him last year $350K in parts, and for every year going back for about the last 6 years we paid him an average of about 275K per year. So I think he is doing damn good, before this he was only making 40K a year at a larger machine shop where he was employeed. Anyhow, from a business standpoint I know that the learning curve would be huge and that it would take away from my time in going out and getting more work and selling more parts. But I'm more interested in actually getting some small cnc machines to get my younger brother (who is a junior in hs) into this machining field so that in hopes one day he can open his own machine shop and make the parts for our family business. I myself have taken a college machine shop using only manual machines and I am a computer programmer by profession so the cnc machines interest me and I always wanted to learn how to cut parts myself more for the learning and hobby part of it. When it comes to seriously making a living as a machinist well I could make much more money just going out and selling parts and having them made by other shops and charging my markup (middle man fee) to the customer. This way my income isn't limited by how many chips I personally can cut in an hour, but instead by how many jobs I can sell. I also draw and engineer the parts in Solidworks so I have the know-how of how to engineer new parts or reverse engineer existing parts and provide drawings to machine shops. So as my work load gets bigger, I just find more shops. I don't work with large machine shops because all of my work is small run stuff which is constnatly changing. I literally sells HUNDREDS of different parts, new parts I've never sold each week. So a small shop that is able to adapt to change quickly and make a variety of parts is what I'm looking for.

I just started looking at buying some small cnc lathe and mill machines so I could sort of learn it as a hobby and maybe make some of the parts myself when time permits but mainly to get my younger brother into the trade and give him a place to learn how to use the machines. Unfortunately the machine shops courses around here are all in manual machining (which is important at first), but they don't really offer much in the way of cnc machining or at least the cnc machines they have are huge production orientated cnc machines which are different then the cnc machines that our shops use on a daily basis to make our small run jobs. So I wanted to find the most economical way to get a small cnc setup going in my garage so that I could play around with it and also my brother could start learning the trade at a young age in hopes that 2-3 years down the road he will be able to start making some nice parts which I could buy from him instead of outsourcing the work to other shops as I am doing now.

I hope this gives a little more detail into what I'm interested in doing. But by all means I am also looking for good quality machine shops (small shops) that are up for taking on onesies, twosies, etc. and can give good pricing with good turn around times.

oooh...yeah! there is the underlining info I was missing! So not sure if budget is a big issue or not. Sounds like you have some time to get things settled and figured out and possibly even do some of the building yourself then.

Here is my personal reccomendation then. Take a look at a CNC X3 mill, then add on a head stock where you can use it as a lathe attachment and even add a stepper for a 4th axis to. Then pick up one of the 8x14 lathes for any manual work...

It may give you a few more options down the road as well. You could even do a cnc on the 8x14 with xylotex and steppers for inexpensive...if your budget allows more, then just upgrade these ideas...

could you elaborate more on the headstock for lathe operations on a cnc x3? I don't know how this could work putting a lathe on a mill?

well you will have to do some modifications. basically you will need to mount a tool post on the mill head in order to be able to use it in a turning application, but mach has a turning function so you will be able to use that. You will just have to configure the Z as your Y etc etc...

here is a pic of mine so far. It is not finished, I still need to add a fixture plate for it all, and make a tool post holder.

But in the end you will end up with a CNC mill and a cnc lathe as well with a bunch of capabilities. Then by adding another lathe to the shop you could open the door to endless possiblities. Not sure on your budget, so you could go either smaller or larger with the lathe and mill etc etc.

I have the cnc X3, a 7x10 lathe that I recently converted to a 7x19 lathe and a 11x26 lathe so i am set up to build a lot of different stuff now.

cool idea.. how are you going to mount a tool post on the spindle of the mill head? and aren't you basically doing the same thing as what a lathe + mill combo does currently?

where did you get just the lathe turning motor, headstock and chuck from? can you set this up for indexing, so you can hold round stock and say index it at every 30 degrees and then drill a hole with the mill head? sorta like getting a mill and putting a 4th axis indexer on it?

how much did the cnc x3 cost you? did you buy it already made from Syil or did you buy a regular non-cnc x3 and then make it cnc capable?

no I wont be mounting the tool post to the spindle, as that turns, so the collet holder will either have to be removed and a special made holder that bolts to the underside of the mill head made to hold the tool post, or make a mounting plate that bolts on the underside or possible even front to hold the tool post so the collet holder could remain in there at all times. Still a work in progress so I will have to see what I think will work best for me.

I had 2 of those 7x10 lathes in my shop, so i took off one head stock and used it for the mill, and then cut down the bed on that one and attached it to my other 7x10 lathe to give me 7x19 now. so that leaves me with the 2 lathes as well as the cnc set up..

Havent put any thought to indexing the lathe head, i would imagine you could add that to it as well and have the whole lathe tilt...just add in another axis to move that..

I bought the X3 from grizzly, then went through ken at www.kdntool.com for the cnc kit, with ball screws etc. I am running gecko G203V's for the controllers. I have a joy stick for it as well that I need to finish setting up. I basically just ordered everything I needed, shipped it to Ken and shortly after that I got a complete bolt on kit along with the set up file for mach. He probably offers the most complete turn key you can find that is just bolt on and go...then after the lathe head and joystick are done I will continue to work on the auto tool changer...

If you are thinking about drilling the holes the same, you could just easily cnc the part out using the lathe attachment. build a fixture plate so you could then just run the mill and drill in your holes.

if the lathe head doesn't index (i.e. it only spins at whatever revolution you choose), then this won't work for indexing. I need it to index the part say every 30 degrees, stop and hold the part there, then come down with the mill head to drill the hole, then the lathe head turn the part to index at another 30 degrees and do the same drill head movement again..

how much did the entire x3 setup cost you after having the cnc kit and everything installed? you had the x3 sent to Ken from Grizzly and he put on the ball screws, cnc controller, etc.?

well with a stepper motor you can do exactly that. but it would be on that top surface so you could drill holes etc no problem. However on those side flanges you would have to reposition it to drill those holes. So basically it will be indexable on the horizontal axis, but on a vertical axis would require a whole new axis set up to be able to do something like that.

So with the lathe motor you get a turning aplication and with the stepper you get the control of where you want to machine something in a specific location on the part.

No the X3 was sent to me, just the motors, geckos and powesupply were sent to ken. he wired it all up, and shipped it back ready to go including motor mounts and ball screws etc. I really cant remember how much everything cost now as I have had it cnc'd for a while. But just give ken an email or call and he can quote you. But the mill is $1050 with shipping, then $450 for the geckos, just over $200 for the steppers??? cant remember, then I dont remember what I paid ken though.

The mill will prob be worth about 7k when I am done with the lathe and stepper attachment, ATC and joystick, including all my tooling. But that is not what I have put into it, just what I think it will be worth.

if you put on a lathe head to act as a 4th axis on a mill, how can that lathe head also index? doesn't the lathe head just spin at a certain rpm that you set?

and how would you bore out the center of a piece (like the plastic parts linked to above in this long post) without getting say a lathe boring bar INSIDE the piece to cut it? I would think the milling spindle would only be able to cut the OUTSIDE of the round stock which is chucked in the lathe head?

if you put on a lathe head to act as a 4th axis on a mill, how can that lathe head also index? doesn't the lathe head just spin at a certain rpm that you set?

and how would you bore out the center of a piece (like the plastic parts linked to above in this long post) without getting say a lathe boring bar INSIDE the piece to cut it? I would think the milling spindle would only be able to cut the OUTSIDE of the round stock which is chucked in the lathe head?

Squale,

Some people have modified the lathe head to be driven by a stepper or servo, hence instant indexing.

Alan

ah okay so the lathe head or milling head is usually not a stepper or servo motor? what type of motor is it? can I stepper or server spin as fast as a regular spindle driving motor..?

Yeah basically that is it. I will have a motor to run the lathe as normal, just spining at an RPM, then also attach a stepper motor to it as well to allow for cnc control of the positioning or indexing of the material.

You will either have to do the boring on a regular lathe, or flip it and cnc it with the mill. The idea of a 4th axis as well as using it as a turning function can just give you more possiblities down the road..however those parts still look they will need to be touched a couple of times before they can be completed. Or get the newer X3 with the tilting head and somehow set the up for tilt aat a 90 deg and you could do it all with one machine.

the lathe motor is just a DC motor..I used the one that came with my lathe originally. You are not going to be able to have the stepper run the speed you need it to, it will have to have two motors on it.

so on a regular mill what is the purpose of the 4th axis then? I only see a purpose for a 4th axis as being an indexer.. I don't know why somebody would want a 4th axis as a lathe head? wouldn't that mean you would need to put cutting bits on the vertical spindle of the mill and keep the spindle locked and not spinning?

so on a regular mill what is the purpose of the 4th axis then? I only see a purpose for a 4th axis as being an indexer.. I don't know why somebody would want a 4th axis as a lathe head? wouldn't that mean you would need to put cutting bits on the vertical spindle of the mill and keep the spindle locked and not spinning?

For many people indexing is the main purpose, however, take a look at this thread. Dan actually uses the lathe head on the table of his CNC mill to create a quick CNC lathe.

http://www.cnczone.com/forums/showthread.php?t=30385

I have also seen a person mount lathe tools on the mill table to turn the mill head in to a quick lathe. There was a video where a person was turning out bushings (or something similar). He had a cut-off tool, a boring tool and a cutting tool all mounted on the mill table. He would mount a piece in the mill spindle, bore the internal diameter, move the next tool in position and finish the outside, then move to the cutoff tool and part off the bushing.

A lot of it is about ingenuity, "How can I do the job with what I have?"

Alan

if you put a piece of round stock in the mill spindle via a chuck then you can't move the table any higher than the bottom of the workpiece without crashing.. so I don't see how effective you could be at cutting the OD of the part..

no i think he meant that there was a some sort of tool post attached to the mill table. It would have to be raised off the table, and depending on how much height they needed you could just space it off the mill table that way...run the Z up and down to make the cuts...

no i think he meant that there was a some sort of tool post attached to the mill table. It would have to be raised off the table, and depending on how much height they needed you could just space it off the mill table that way...run the Z up and down to make the cuts...

That's correct. I wish I had a link to the video it made it all very clear.

Alan

yeah that above link to that thread is 30 some odd pages long, ouch! a video would be cool..

well I was thinking, if you put the lathe attachment on the mill bed and have the piece spinning in the horizontal plane, then the milling head could NOT spin and you could put a cutting tool in there.. this would allow you to turn the OD of the piece.. but then if you wanted to turn the ID or bore out holes inside the piece you would somehow need to either turn the milling head 90 degrees horizontal so it's in the same plane as the stock spinning in the lathe head or you would need to take the piece out of the lathe head and mount it in a chuck and bore the hole with the piece standing vertical.

Search youtube for Taig.
more pictures of the mill are herehttp://microtools.ca
Mark

yeah that above link to that thread is 30 some odd pages long, ouch! a video would be cool..

well I was thinking, if you put the lathe attachment on the mill bed and have the piece spinning in the horizontal plane, then the milling head could NOT spin and you could put a cutting tool in there.. this would allow you to turn the OD of the piece..

In general, your right. I wasn't claiming any great shakes for the ideas, just ideas that in some cases are productive. Dan (Hoss26) actually mounts a tool holder on the spindle. For outside turning it could be useful but nothing beats a lathe when you really need a lathe.

but then if you wanted to turn the ID or bore out holes inside the piece you would somehow need to either turn the milling head 90 degrees horizontal so it's in the same plane as the stock spinning in the lathe head or you would need to take the piece out of the lathe head and mount it in a chuck and bore the hole with the piece standing vertical.

And if the piece is very long this would not be a good idea. However, Dan actually modified the X2 to rotate the head in two different planes. So for short pieces he could actually bore a piece mounted in the lathe head. It is fun stuff but I still lean towards a lathe for lathe jobs.

Alan

now they need to make a cnc mill/lathe that the cnc controller and actually turn the spindle head 90 degrees to bore out pieces in a lathe head on the mill bench..

Before I built my cnc bench lathe I messed with my 7x head mounted on my x3. I made a spindle clamp, mounted a stud in a modified r8 collet to hold a tool post flat against the spindle face. So the z axis was stationary and the table moved the lathe head.
It worked real well but not in the same league of performance of my linear rail bench lathe I just built. In fact this early setup was what inspired me to go ahead with a full buildup of my small cnc bench lathe. It is a nice simple way to get some cnc type lathe work done cheaply if you have a spare head laying around.
You could also bore holes with this method with a boring bar in the tool holder. Mount a small 1/2" grinder in the tool post and you could also do light manual indexing tooling work if you installed a indexing disk with a simple clamp brake to the back of the lathe head.
Just a thought.

http://i109.photobucket.com/albums/n48/S_J_H/x3%20mill/milllathe005.jpg
http://i109.photobucket.com/albums/n48/S_J_H/x3%20mill/milllathe007.jpg

Steve

Hey SJH

Did you have a lot of problems with this set up? If so what were they? chatter etc?

since I had 3 lathes I decided to sacrifice one and do just what you are doing...you saw what I did with the other one..then I have my "big" lathe. Some of the big issues I have with cnc'ing my 11x26 lathe is that i think I will loose some of the functionality having hand wheels on steppers, I use it endlessly for manual jobs for just about anything like I am sure most do. And I just think having the motors and wires there would restrict some of the conveince i get from it as just a manual.

I may consider cnc'ing the smaller one with the extended bed later but we will see how this goes...

that's some pretty cool stuff guys.. never thought of a lathe setup where the bed holding the material moved and the cutting tools were stationary. I wonder how well this works. It's like essetially doing the opposite of one of those Grizzly (Sieg) combo turning/milling machines.

Kos, no chatter issues and really no problems at all. I did not really put much time into the setup and try and push it hard though. The only thing that I did not like was going back and forth between milling/lathe setup. Just to much hassle for me. But after seeing what I could do with it I started to plan a dedicated cnc bench lathe and built the machine shown in this thread- http://www.cnczone.com/forums/showthread.php?t=40584
That project was quite a ride.
But I think with some good planning a quick mount for the lathe head on a mill could be made.
I probably would not cnc the 11x26 either. I agree, For simple quick lathe tasks it's easier/faster manually. Although I'm sure a good manual/cnc setup could also be built to keep it manual use friendly.
Steve

Wow that is an impressive project you took on. Looks like it cuts real nice and smooth as well.

I think I am more looking for having a cnc lathe capability along with the benefit of a 4th axis later down the road. Also if I decide I may possibly cnc my 7x19 later but who knows. I think the effort involved in making the 11x26 manual friendly is probably out of my budget and paitents too! lol.

I have gotten into this kick about trying to get my mill as completely set up as possible..we will see how it goes, I am only now spending time working on my tools, before it was all about making stuff and selling it..so this is a little new to me :)

the only issue I see with putting a lathe head on a mill is that how do you set up your cnc program for the lathe cuts? like how do you find the perfect center axis of the stock turning in the lathe head, you need to know this so you can tell the mill table how much to move in the x,y axis in order to turn the piece of stock to the require dimensions. If the mill head Z axis is higher or lower than the stock centerpiece or if the table's y axis is not perfectly centered with the cutting tool on the mill head, then I can't see how's it possible to turn a piece of round stock correctly..

you would run mach turn instead of mach mill within mach 3 to run your program.

There really is no difference setting up your tooling like this than it would be on a regular lathe, or a cnc lathe...basically all the same principles will apply.

This was just an idea to get you going. In the end you will have to figure out what may best work for you...there is a bunch of ways you can build the parts you need.

There are how to videos on the net for all of this stuff as well as tons of books, I would reccomend digging into some of those to get a little more familiar with all of this. Or
possibly start by getting a lathe that fits you budget and start to learn with a little hands on so some more of this makes sense. Then do a conversion to cnc later, or purchase whatever other machines you may need.

I have worked on manual lathes and bridgeport mills. I need cnc to make the parts I sell. About how expensive is it to get a cnc mill and put a lathe head on it?

ball park it around $3500 with some tooling...doing it yourself that it..

hey squale your PM box is full so i couldnt reply to you message...have to go in and delete some