New guy..with a used mill has a question.

[Kenny Duval]

Tonight's progress. Chip drawer is built. I'll make the screen insert tomorrow.

[Kenny Duval]

Just about ready to drop the mill in it.

[Kenny Duval]

Filled up the tank. Plugged in the pump and suspended a temporary hose to see what the volume of liquid being pulled from the tank would be. This also served as pump and leak testing for me. Everything looks good at this point. It holds 7 gallons of fluid just as the cad program had calculated.



Time to drop the mill in it and start working on the upper portion of the enclosure and getting the plumbing started.

[Kenny Duval]

More progress. She's in her new home. Time to start plumbing, wiring and building the enclosure.

[LeeWay]

Nice!. What in the World are vehicles in the shop for?

[Kenny Duval]

Until I can get a lot on either side of me purchased it's a shoparage.

[Kenny Duval]

More progress today. It's bolted down and cabled up and running. I had to make some adjustments to my travels as I forgot the stick out of the screw on the right end of the table and was able to bump it into the side of the tub. Made some plexi covers for the X and Y steppers. Tomorrow is making the mount for the front way cover and tossing up the temporary shower curtain enclosre so I can start making all the mount brackets for the 80/20.

[Kenny Duval]

Another good day of progress. Got most of the coolant system completed and got a temporary enclosure tossed around it. The local Ace was out of the 1/2" slip fit connectors I needed so I grabbed some threaded units and took it as a chance to get a little practice using the machine. I still struggle with the workflow a little. Made the y axis way cover bracket using just the MDI in a pseudo manual fashion. Again to start imprinting into my brain the +/- direction of each axis. Since I have little to no experience using a mill manually I don't want to be completely dependent on the Cam software to be able to do anything.

I'm at a stand still until the part for the coolant nozzles and my coolant get here.

[Kenny Duval]

More progress made. More problems to resolve. I got my 1st attempt spray head built for the coolant system. The 2 to 4 1/4 inch lock lines will be perfect for the pump. Good pressure but not too much. Plenty of volume though. The Ebay purchase I made included 12 of them so I'm going to experiment with boring the valve on a couple to a larger diameter as there looks to be room to make them 3/8's in diameter.

Now the problem. The coolant clings to the bottom of the chip drawer and ends up making it's way to the edge and dripping in the edge of the lower drawer. This leaves a puddle on the ground in short order. I'm going to have to install a drip rail around the outside holes on the chip drawer to stop the fluid creep. Pan is leak free however so at least I don't have to fight that. I learn a little more every time I go out and spend a few hours with it. It's clear that I still don't think like a machinist as something that should have been simple for me to do eluded me until someone else said it out loud yesterday.

[Kenny Duval]

Resolve the coolant leaking by simply eliminating the 2 outside rows of holes. I still have some accuracy issues to resolve but I did get to make a couple parts. Mach 3 and RhinoCam caused me some grief on Saturday that resulted in Mach3 ignoring feed rates and shoving a couple of bits into my stock at 120 IPM. That was frustrating to figure out. I'm working with a make shift upper enclosure at the moment. This weekend will be spent making the connecting plates for the 80/20 build.

Nothing you guys haven't seen before but here it is running with flood.


And the results are my tool change touch plate.


And here it is on the machine. This was taken to be sent over MMS to a friend so it's small.
http://diablo.homedns.org/cnc/TCTP.mp4

[Kenny Duval]

Good day milling today. It's getting closer to dialed in. I'm screwing things up a lot less and I've worked around some minor issues.

Here's the drawing for some of the 8020 connector brackets for the upper enclosure.


And here's the result of this evenings efforts.


That's about a close as I can get. This is entertaining when it's not entirely frustrating.

[tauntdesigns]

Nicely Done!

[Kenny Duval]

Starting to trust FZWizard a little more on speeds and feeds. These are probably the best chips yet.

Still making brackets.

[Kenny Duval]

Just the doors and door slide left to make.

[Kenny Duval]

Mental note...

If the drilled hole in your part keeps coming out .004 to the left of where it should be then you should stop and check the tram on the machine. You should also do that before you spend half the day re-measuring the movement of the machine trying to find out why the hole is off.

[Kenny Duval]

Control Center V1

[Kenny Duval]

I'm not sure why but I am still amazed when something comes out the correct size.

[LeeWay]

That does not happen by itself.

It says a lot about the care in setup and calibration of the machine as well as good machining skills. Being able to program your CAM so that parts can come out correctly only comes from experience I think.
Some CAM software is better than others at letting you know what appropriate operations should be in what order. Looks good, BTW.

[Kenny Duval]

This is the second thing I designed in Fusion 360 as well as doing the CAM in that. SO far other than the learning curve I like it and you can't beat the price of free for personal use. Now if the second and third operation go as well I'll be happy. They compose the final part.

[LeeWay]

I like it too, Kenny.
I am new at it as well. Free for personal use? I haven't heard that. I did jump on the Ultimate deal they have going on. You can't beat that price either.

Oh, BTW, what are you using for your screen shots?
I have Corel Capture and it fails more times than it works.