Anyone heard of / tried one of these things yet? -- http://www.vivaek.com/cnc3001.html I tried searching here but came up empty, surely someone's at least heard of them before? "Zero-backlash", .0005" accuracy, 1 HP 0-30,000 RPM water-cooled spindle, 12"x12"x3" envelope, 167ipm rapids (stepper motors with "German" ground ball screws), weighing in at 187lbs... For $1,855 it sure sounds like a pretty good deal... I paid more than that for my CNC Taig mill, and it doesn't come close to .0005" accuracy or 167ipm movements, nevermind the variable 1HP spindle. I just got a few $K award from work (basically for machining all kinds of stuff at home in my "spare" time, go figure!), if this thing is as good as it seems I want to buy it. Then I can sell my Taig to the company and do all their machining here instead of killing all my personal time. Worse case I guess I can buy it and if it's not great just sell it on eBay or use the parts?? Anyone?? As it is there's hardly 2 pages of results searching them on Google, and mostly just links back to thier website. Sending an email now asking a few questions of them...
http://us.st11.yimg.com/us.st.yimg.com/I/yhst-35106614702942_1986_57552

The site has very few real details, but the specs that are there are impressive - so much so I would be very, very leery.

If this stuff is for real and as advertised, I'm buying several. I don't think a month from now many people on here would still be using what they have now if these things are indeed what they claim. As such, I'm somewhat suspicious.

Certainly worth a try anyway, Just make sure the purchase is on a major credit card in case things go south!

Thanks for the heads up on these things, I think I'll try ordering one as well just to play with. Keep us up to date on how it goes with you.

Exactly... If they start messing around I could pull the transaction on the credit card.. Hopefully it's all that it says it is. I figure there should at least be some info found by Google good or bad, but nothing.. It's wierd.

Looks interesting at a pretty damn good price for what it says it does.


-Jason

I'm just starting to look for one. Taig is about 3 miles from my house, so I'll probably go with them. But, this looks interesting for the price. They are from Georgia, but no dealers or anything else listed.

Hunter12- I have the Taig, I love it. But back too topic. Looks interesting.


I wonder what Kinda cuts in can make.

-Jason

This machine looks pretty nice. I think I would have to spend the extra bit and get the one with the 1.5hp spindle and add the bigger table. Only 18000 rpm but thats a good bit more ooomph. Did I miss the clearance under spindle or is it there somewhere?

Did I miss the clearance under spindle or is it there somewhere?

Looks like 3"

Don't get me wrong, I've loved using my Taig CNC so far. It only has a 1/4 HP motor, but I've done a ton more with it than I ever thought I could. I've hardly ever run it at 10,000 RPM, mostly 1-4k. But to remove a lot of the backlash, I've got to crank down the adjustments so tight that I can only do 8-10 IPM with the thing. Any looser and I get pretty bad backlash. I can physically move (twist / rock by hand) the X axis back and forth with the Y loose enough to run 15 IPM, I can see and feel it move. Lately the Z axis is acting up as well.. Most of the stuff I cut .008"-.01" accuracy is all I need; I actually was looking for a nice quick / precise machine with a 3-4" capacity for some close-up small detail work when I came across this "new" machine. If it really does what it says it can do the small detailed stuff as well as some bigger stuff, and with 1HP it should have 4x the oomph of my Taig. I'm guessing it's a DC spindle given the size and adjustability? I don't know much about spindles tho..

I think the 3" is the z travel. Which might also be the clearance under the bottom of the spindle at the very bottom of its travel, but not necessarily.

As far as the spindle goes, I guarantee it is prolly a Chinese made spindle and the 1hp is a bit exaggerated. Also, I never thought that I would ever use the high rpm's on sieg, and by that I mean the 2400 rpm, until i started using smaller cutters and cutting aluminum. Then 2400 rpm became extrememly slow. Now that I have the spindle doing 6000 rpm and am using carbide cutters, the higher spindle speeds is a wonderful thing.

DNS registration is very new. Suggests it's either "sketchy" or too new for the claims to have been verified?

Domain Name.......... vivaek.com
Creation Date........ 2008-01-09
Registration Date.... 2008-01-09
Expiry Date.......... 2009-01-09

D.

I heard back from them within a day of my email, which is really good. The person that replied is apparently the owner of the company, or at least has the same last name as the machine. Some of the details I got are that it can either be run directly from the PC (Mach2 / 3), or can have G-code stored and run from it's internal 1M memory in the controller. It comes with 1/4" and 3/8" spindle collets, so most likely others can be made to fit. At least they're interchangeable. Supposedly reciept of the machine is within 2-3 weeks in a "wooden crate", so I'm assuming a direct ship from overseas. Unless someone comes up with anything bad about them, I'll probably place an order in the next few days, then wait and see. The spindle can always be "upgraded" I'm sure, even if it's to attach a Taig-style one. I'd probably have to come up with some type of adapter as it is to use my Taig-specific tools anyway, like the flycutter and tool holders I had made. I use the 2nd highest speed on my Taig with .015" and .010" cutters to do plastic work, mostly .01" deep at a time... Oh- also he said it can run from 120v as well, the website states 220v as it's probably the standard overseas.

If you do order, please make a whole new thread! Very awesome.


BTW- Can't you fix the backlash on your taig, get new parts and stuff.



-Jason

I *could* probably make it better, either with new parts, or some very careful (time-consuming) alignment and adjustment. I've seen some descriptions of how to set up and lap the ways, but unfortunately I'm in so far over my head with machining stuff that I can't afford to take it down / rebuild it for a few days. Besides that, I'm self-admittedly a bit of a hack when it comes to this stuff. LOL I prefer to take something out of the box and have it just be as accurate as I need without too much work. :) Most of my problem with the Taig is probably just due to lack of maintanance / adjustment by myself. Someone that knows what they're doing could probably get it set up pretty decently with a bit of time. Someone needs to set up a Mill tuning place! :) I'll definitely start a new thread if I get one!

Hey Rice, did he make any mention of the clearance under the gantry?

No... I'd have to guess about 6" to the bottom of it from the picture... 3" to the bottom of the spindle and looks like another 3 'till you get to the Y axis gantry. Looks like you could move the spindle up in its mount a few inches to get taller stuff in there, but you'd still only have 3" of travel.. The only thing that worries me there is my vice is probably 3" tall by itself... Maybe some spacers could be made to get the gantry up higher if necessary.. I like the fact that all the ballscrews look like they're covered. It looks like it would lend itself pretty well to building a containment enclosure around it for wet machining... I'm constantly cleaning the Z axis on my Taig, one of these days I need to do something about that. One more thing I think I'd like about this style mill is that the base plate is always equally supported. With the Taig (and other similar mills), say you're machining all the way to the left or right of your table, I've got about 18" of metal and motor hanging off the other side torquing the heck out of the Y axis ways. That's one of the other problems I have, since I can't tighten the Y gibs up too much or it will especially bind when doing machining like that.. :( Almost added some roller wheels under the table down to the bench to keep the weight off it. Would be in the way too much though. I did add a 13lb gas strut to the Z axis to neutralize the weight of the spindle / motor which helped the Z a *lot*going up.

Never having used a taig, I couldn't comment on the torquing on the y axis for those machine's. But it doesnt happen on my X3, and is not common to any other machine I have used.

As far as the vise goes, start using a fixture plate or a sacrifice plate, and an angle plate if necessary. They work awesome, especially with some auto clamps.

Actually.. As I mentioned my "hacker" status before.. 98% of the stuff I do on my Taig, I screw down to a sacrificial MDF plate. Basically I bolted 2 1/2" MDF boards to the table, then milled the perimeter to the max that I can. (12"x5" or so) That way I know quickly just how far I can go with the cutter. Then I just drill holes and attach my parts (usually under 1/2" plastic sheets, circuit boards, etc..) with drywall screws or sheet metal screws and washers here and there. That way I'm not constrained by a pre-set grid of holes, and I can come up with all manner of funky hold-downs. For any vice work I'd gotten by with the crappy $5 one that comes with the mill, but got annoyed with the "lifting" of the part as the jaws closed, so I bought a cheap (~$50) eBay screwless vice which has been great. I rarely use it, but it does come in handy for holding things that I can't screw down. While I'm on that topic, how do people normally hold down something where you're cutting the perimeter? If using step blocks / holders from the outside, I'd think you'd have to keep moving them around to go all the way around. If your part's internal holes line up with a pre-set grid then great, you can screw it down to the table or a tooling plate, but what if they don't? I feel kind of "cheap" and "hacker-ish" by using basically an MDF table, but it's worked great so far. On the (all too often) occasion that I crash the cutter into the table, I usually only dig into the MDF. And every once in a while I run the fly cutter over it to re-surface it until I get too many holes in it, then just replace the top board. Also more GREAT news, I just got called into the boss's office, and they gave me another check for $1k in leiu of stock options.. :D Looks like I'll be ordering the thing sooner than I thought. I also mentioned selling my mill to them and he doesn't have a problem with it. Yay! Maybe I'll get a Taig mini-lathe too, sooooo many things I'd like to do with that.. My spare bedroom is getting smaller by the minute. LOL

For doing the perimeter, I have a few ways of doing it. If I have any holes in the middle, I make a fixture and do the perimeter in a 2nd step.

If I don't have holes, then I figure out what depth of cut needs to be to leave about .02 of material holding the main piece to the waste part of the block. Then, I do my finish cut taking away that .02 of material. I'm left with a little hunk of metal on the end when I finally get around to it which comes off very quickly with a disc sander or a dremel.

Some people will also leave tabs all the way around the part. I'll do the same if i'm only making a small amount of parts. If i'm doing a bunch of a part, i'll try my best to use a fixture so I can have a nice clean finish all the way around my part.

Wade

Since their main page says: "Material suitable for Cutting : PVC, Plastic, Wood, Aluminum, Copper, Wood". Is it correct to assume that you could not machine iron or steel?

Thanks for placing an order!!!!

Placing an order? Did you order one yet? I haven't just yet, but likely will today. I'd think you could use it on steel if you calculate the feeds / speeds so as not to overload it.. Assuming the tolerances really are as good as they say it shouldn't deflect the table or anything.. Then again, it could have really good precision but have tiny rails that can't hold up to much force... I just want to get one and shoot a video of 100+IPM rapids. :D

I thought you were ready to order? Must have read into that.

lol.. As soon as the check from work clears I'll probably go ahead. Then the painful waiting..

Since their main page says: "Material suitable for Cutting : PVC, Plastic, Wood, Aluminum, Copper, Wood". Is it correct to assume that you could not machine iron or steel?

New update so we can all stop speculating; The machines are legit (at least, they do really exist and the guy is open and responsive), and look they have some real potential - I've seen one with the sheet metal off and they are quite interesting, but not what most of us are hoping for as a benchtop mill goes unfortunately.

I will start a new thread with a detailed review when I get actually get a chance to do a teardown on one, if someone else gets one first please do the same!

They still look to be a very good deal for what they are, but the price is not "too good to be true" either. Nothing wrong with them at first blush, and they actually look to have some neat features and be well thought out, but they would best be described functionally as a router and not a mill and so not quite our cup of tea. Definitely not much for heavy milling, but the desktop router guys, engravers, and circuit board folks may certainly have a very valid new choice.

These are my first impressions so far from what little I've seen;
From the Chinese printing on one of the parts bags, and some of the general hardware I spotted, I think we can likely put the origin speculation to rest. Construction is an odd mix of cast iron, aluminum plate, and some plastic. Unconventional, but looks reasonably well thought out. What isn't apparent from the low-res pictures on the site is that the slotted table is actually plastic, milled from several pieces of a frosted clear acrylic or plexi material. They offer an aluminum slotted fixture plate of some sort as an option to cover over the plastic surface as an added option, but I did not get to see what one of those looked like. They do indeed have ballscrews with flanged ballnuts, and have a bearing at the floating end (nice), but no bearing at the driven end - leaving the stepper motors own shaft-end bearing to do that job (not so nice). Each axis runs on open linear bearings on two decent sized round linear rails. Looks well designed and suited to task for a router, but from the looks of the end mounts likely not rigid enough for much in the way of heavy metal cutting. Limit switches are built in, and other nice design touches are apparent throughout. Motors are single-stack Nema 23 round cans, don't know how powerful but 100 oz/in range at best I'm guessing. Won't know until I put a meter on one. Driver has nice features like a spindle speed control, but I'm guessing the drivers won't push much current, and based on the steppers and other indicators it will definitely be light duty and may be unipolar or otherwise not microstepping. Not a complaint, as it looks well suited to the both the motors, the apparent rigidity of the overall build and the higher speeds it looks designed to run at, but is another indication this wasn't meant for making metal chips fly. Won't know exactly what kind of stepping or motor wiring until I get the control unit open and see the guts though.
The guy seems nice and my impression is that he would be as helpful as he could if issues arose, but he doesn't seem to know a single thing about the machines themselves, or machining or CNC hardware in general. He is definitely an importer and not a CNC nut. Again not a big deal, as most of us really don't need much in the way of handholding and tech support, and for the price you can't complain. Personally I'd rather have that than the extra middlemen adding cost for a service I likely won't use, but for some it might be important.

In summation, first impression is of a nice router with good value and potential, and very nice hardware inside versus its competition, but a total non-starter to replace jobs done by true mills, at least any ones heavier than a Sherline.

Wow, great information! The guy's name / mill name makes sense now, most likely a re-badged import then.. In your opinion would it do Ok for upgrading? Say, installing some extra bearings, swapping the motors for some 400oz ones, new machined aluminum table, etc.. From the driver standpoint, it sounds like it may be worth it to stick with a Xylotex box? I doubt I would really ever use the internal Gcode storage anyway, and wonder how robust the drive electronics could be for the $195. And for a drastic turn of events, just checked the website and the 3001 machine is no longer on it! The 3003 is similar but looks to be a bit cheaper setup, at least from the picture.. Humm... Was really looking forward to some ballscrews and rails.. Then again most of what I do is small, detailed stuff in plastic, and if the zero-backlash and .0005 resolution specs are correct, that would take care of it for me. Just have to do the "real" machining at work... Monkey - any chance of getting some pictures of the one you saw? Anyone else know where I can get some cheap ballscrews, nuts and rails? :)

I'm afraid I might have been responsible for the 3001 disappearing, I think it was an accident he still had it up. At any rate he seemed surprised when I pointed it out, and said they were the really same machine underneath the sheet metal. The two did seem pretty identical underneath in quality and fundamental design - one just appeared an evolution of the other. The 3003 had a better one-piece table, thats for sure. In fact another unassembled machine looked to be even a third even more radical variation, but still same basic setup. From the looks of it, the types of changes made, and the obvious intensive hand fabricating of parts suited better to mass production than hand fab, I'd say someone is really trying to streamline the design for mass production and we are seeing early units as they are ramping up for serious numbers. If this was meant to be a small run mill, some of the specific types of changes wouldn't have been made the way they were. I've seen things like this before doing industrial R&D, and I have the strong feeling were gonna see a lot more of these things down the road from somebody. I also think these will be a rude wake-up call for some of the benchtop router competition out there.
I will send you pics if you like, and probably post at least one up here once I go figure out how.

Aaah.. :) Hard to tell from the small-ish pictures, I thought the table looked better on the 3001. Still interested, but also looking at other (not many..) options. Considering what I do it's probably still worth it. The table is probably the easiest thing to make new / change anyway. Any pictures would be awesome, if you want to email them it's rice_burner_98 >at< yahoo.com .. I can host them on my Comcast web account and link them here if you want also..

LOL!!! Direct from China on eBay! (Very bad "Chinglish" in the ad though..) --> http://cgi.ebay.com/3030-cnc-router-engraver-machine-mini-engraver-cutter_W0QQitemZ130207128104QQihZ003QQcategoryZ46744QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem Only $1000 for shipping by air! :) It looks like the same mill as the 3001.. Also $2200 instead of $1800 from Vivaek. Funny...
http://i17.ebayimg.com/01/i/000/c2/4f/c5a2_1.JPG

Here's a few more pictures, from Stepper Monkey...

http://home.comcast.net/~riceburner98/HVAC/unassembled_sm.jpg

http://home.comcast.net/~riceburner98/HVAC/z_axis_sm.jpg


Not too bad for the $! Certainly better than what I could come up with quickly. I'm going to order one in a few minutes.

And for an idea of what I've been making... (made all the parts except the LCD glass, which I had made by an LCD company. Wish I could make those!)

http://home.comcast.net/~riceburner98/HVAC/button_army.jpg

http://home.comcast.net/~riceburner98/HVAC/Lit_up.jpg


And my current setup in the spare bedroom:

http://home.comcast.net/~riceburner98/HVAC/mill_sm.jpg

Darn, those look pretty nice for 2 grand. They look heavy enough that it might even be worth it to upgrade the linear bearing and screws so you could do some metal work. Very nice work you are doing Rice. Looks great.

Nice looking machine, not a fan thought of the plastic tray :(


-Jason

Nice looking machine, not a fan thought of the plastic tray :( -Jason

My first thought too when I saw it. Not the best choice they could have made. There is hope though, as if you look at it closely there are three distinctly different tables on the three different supposedly identical mills. The first multiple-part acrylic one looks really crappy, the Ebay pic still shows an acrylic but much better designed table, and the third and newest mill shows a much thicker and beefier table made from some opaque ????
Besides, if all else fails just drop an aluminum tooling plate on over it and call it good. For the price you can't really knock it I guess.

Like I said before, I strongly suspect these are early, almost prototype units as they ramp up. I would guess they will vary less and less each progression until the kinks get generally worked out and as they get feedback from distributors about consumer resistance on certain points like the table material and weak steppers (which I notice the newer one has bigger square motors, so maybe they've figured that out already too).
Once the design is locked down we'll likely see a flood of the things hitting our coasts under any one of a variety of brand names. It's too early to tell but I think I have narrowed down the specific factory they are coming out of and if I'm right this is their first foray into milling equipment, though not motion control. If this is the case I would expect a few questionable hit-and-miss design choices in the physical mill hardware, at least until they figure it all out.

I can't wait to work with one and see what it can actually do. With very few design mods these might actually work as suitable light mills as well, mods I hope they incorporate at the factory so we don't have to. Either way I suspect these might just start winding up on a lot of our desks soon, it certainly looks an interesting set of base elements to work with.

I also think these will be a rude wake-up call for some of the benchtop router competition out there.

Yeah, I've also been waiting to see something like this come along. In terms of engineering complexity, your average $79 inkjet printer will eat these things for lunch. But they make those in runs of thousands per hour--probably more per day than Sherline sells per year.

I think the tools are still too complex for the mainstream hobbyist though, and that's not a problem the Chinese are going to solve. I subscribe to MAKE magazine and the stuff they have for "projects" are the kinds of things we did in Cub Scouts. Looking around my circle of intelligent, well-educated friends, most refer to screwdrivers as "straight" and "the other kind." So the level of projects actually makes perfect sense given they are trying to reach a more general audience. I was fortunate in that my father had the Bob the Builder gene so I learned all the basic stuff long ago.

What I would like to see is a system (not just a mill, but CAD + CAM + Driver + Machine) where you can start with a simple sketch and select a material and it spits out how to fixture it, how to machine it, etc. A machine with 160ipm rapids and a 30k spindle should probably be driven very differently than our typical benchtop mills.

Better still have this integrated with a nice online service which rough-cuts blocks of material to size and ships them to you, sparing the need for that damnable bandsaw, and besides, a lot of people don't have retail metal suppliers nearby anyway. Combine this all with a nice website where people can share designs and you are starting to get somewhere very interesting.

Anyone get one yet or any new info?

I suppose being that I started the thread I should have updated sooner... Literally minutes before I was about to place an order for the Vivaek machine, I found a deal too good to pass up on some heavy duty precision ballscrew slides and related parts. They're probably 20 times the strength of the slides in this mill, so I changed directions and spent all my $ on those and supporting parts to build my own mill/router. It's going to end up taking longer (duh!) to get going than if I had ordered this machine, but I just couldn't pass up the deal... In the mean time I'll try and clean up my Taig to at least get it in proper condition to sell to the place I work. I'll be needing it to build parts for the new mill anyway. If anyone does order one, feel free to continue the thread, I know I'm still interested in how these things do with real use!

I have a spindle on order from him, we'll see how that goes first. If all works well (and the prices and models stop changing almost daily!), I will likely pick one of these up and see what makes it tick, it might be a good solution for some of my customers.

Stepper, do you have details on the spindle, e.g. toolholder (collet type), dimensions, etc.?

Stepper Monkey,

How much did the spindle motor cost and what are the specs?

Thank You

Jeff Alessi
jalessi@aol.com

Stepper, do you have details on the spindle, e.g. toolholder (collet type), dimensions, etc.?

Nope, not yet. He didn't either. We'll see when it gets here. Don't know the collet types yet or anything until it shows up, and since the included collet sizes are actually mm and not inch like he thought, I hope they are standard easy to replace collet types or it's likely more trouble than it's worth right there! Seems like it could be a good deal if it works though.
Figured I'd take the risk and see how it (and he) stacks up before I even think about a mill. He is definitely just selling for someone else, I'm going to have to come up with all the measurements myself.

Any new info on these mills?

I do have an update;

I got the spindle today. It is everything I was expecting it to be - though completely not what he thought it was - but like I said before he knows nothing about the machines so that really isn't a complaint. The guy is for real though, and definitely nice to work with and attentive. He's just clueless about tech details. He is just selling complete mill packages though, and isn't really there just to sell parts, so I guess there isn't really a logical reason he even should know all the individual part specs. We're just geeks like that, and I keep forgetting most people aren't....

Anyway, the spindle appears to be a basic, very decently made Chinese High-frequency spindle. Likely a knockoff of an NSK or something. Connector on top with four pins for power (it came with the mating connector as well), and two water cooling hookups. It came with standard ER11 collets, so extras are readily available but limited to 1/4" or so maximum size. The body appears to be stainless, and is 62mm diam, and about 180mm long and it is pretty dense, probably weighs almost three kilograms. Markings on the outside are: RH62DX-.08/11, 400hz, 24000rpm, 220v, 3.9a. Can't find any specs online and he didn't have any, which is why I had to order one to find out.

Now the problem - I need to research a good way to drive this thing now that I finally have the specs as to what it needs for power. Any suggestions from the peanut gallery?

Mill is coming next, I'll update on that in a couple weeks most likely.

The spindle needs a VFD to drive it.

I like the Danfoss unit because it will go up to 1000 hz.

That way if you upgrade to a better spindle such as a Precise you can use the same VFD.

Checkout

http://tinyurl.com/52tm9t

Jeff Alessi

I guess the one thing I learned of real interest is that the Vivaek units have true HF spindles with a water cooling unit, a VFD, and obviously some kind of step up converter to run the whole thing off of wall current built in there somewhere.
If nothing else, how many $2k router packages offer that for a stock spindle option?

Definitely going to order one now and see how the rest of the unit stacks up.

Thanks for the tip on the Danfoss unit, I have no experience what to best use to economically drive something under 1kw like this.

Anyone try one of these mills?