simplycnc maxi mill for gunsmithing

[K Battenbough]

Hi folks, im new to cnc machining and am in the process of setting up a gunsmithing business.I was wondering if anyone has had any experiances with the maximill from these guys:- www.simplycnc.com and knows if it would be up to making rifle parts ie:- the helical cocking cam on the bolt, and the bolt head, etc ?
Many thanks
Kevin

[LongRat]

Sieg X3 mill.. good machine, but I have always found it difficult to justify the price for their CNC converted machine, considering the manual machine can be bought in the UK for £800. You could convert one yourself for a great deal less.

[K Battenbough]

Thanks for your reply longrat, do you know who sells sieg x3 mills and if you can buy them already converted to cnc, im just looking for a machine that can produce the above said parts (ill try to attach pics) without paying a fortune for it.

[LongRat]

I'm sure those parts could be made on an X3 with the appropriate equipment. The main UK source for the X3, and the cheapest that I know of, is Arc Euro Trade (http://www.arceurotrade.co.uk/). I think some other places may also be selling them on but not sure. If you just need a system running ASAP, I guess the simplycnc setup is not bad, but you could buy the machine for £800 and set it up with big steppers or servos, Gecko drives etc and some decent cam software for considerably less. You might want to do a search and look out for Wabeco machines, I have seen these set up for cnc ready to go for about £4k I think. Beautiful machines, nicer quality than the chinese stuff, good as they are. I think they may be sold by a company called Pro Machine Tools in the UK.

[K Battenbough]

Just looked at the cnc mills from wabeco and they look pretty good, are you sure youve seen them priced for around 4K, i cant find a price guide anywhere.That seems reasonabley priced to me, although i would need the 4th axis rotary table aswell.

[itsme]

Hi there,

I've just been looking at the SimplyCNC machines and there are a few things that I don't particularly like (but it's not all negative). The biggest 'issue' for me would be that it is only the quill that is CNC driven - I would much prefer the whole head moving up and down. It also sounds like the cheaper version doesn't have ballscrews (although I may be wrong - there isn't much detail on the site). If it doesn't have ballscrews, then I would avoid it. It's OK on the smaller machines, but on a machine that size, you want ballscrews (unless you are willing to accept poor tolerances).

A few months ago there was an article in model Engineer's Workshop about converting the Sieg X3 to CNC. It can be downloaded from the Arc Euro Trade website. The guy who did that did it for about £2000 including the machine. His conversion also used ballscrews. That price didn't include software, but something like TurboCNC or Mach2/3 is very reasonable.

You should probably find out a bit more about the SimplyCNC machines from SimplyCNC, as I'm sure they could give you more detail on how they have done their conversion.

Regards
Warren

[LongRat]

I can't be sure on the 4k, I was told that by the guy who was demonstrating one at a show in London. Seeing them in action first hand, it is clear they are a cut above the rest.

[miljnor]

On a side note. Nice to see some countries in the UK haven't taken all the guns away!

[K Battenbough]

Thanks for all the advice guys, i shall do abit more probing around and see what ill come up with, although im starting to have my doubts about a benchtop mill and might have to take a look at the bridgeports interacts, its amazing how once you start looking into something it can snowball into something else

[tokyocrow]

Not sure if there is a distributor in the UK but they're made in .de so I suspect it could be had. As a price point looking at the U.S. dist at the bottom line of the CNC ready to go mills it is about £4k ($7390 USD). See www.mdaprecision.com for more info on Wabeco in English. Although I've not bought a mill yet I've done quite a bit of looking first hand (at the importers here in Tokyo) and came to the conclusion the Chinese mills just wouldn't cut it for accuracy without extensive rework which in the end costs just as much as a Wabeco would. Also on the MDA precision site there is a link to GOLmatic machines - aparently there is some connection between these machines and a gun manufacturer. Personally though I'd be darn leary of loading a live round in anything made at home though hehehe.....

[LongRat]

Here is the link to what appears to be the UK distributor of Wabeco machines.
http://www.emcomachinetools.co.uk/

[whelen]

K Battenbough
Kevin, I am having my MicroMark MicroLux Milling Machine #82573 converted to CNC. The machine is a SIEG X2. You are interested in a SIEG X3. KDN Tool & Automation Engineering Co is doing my conversion ( www.kdntool.com and kdntool@cox.net ). I mention this because they specialize in SIEG milling machine conversions, and build CNC mills from the bottoms up. They also are very flexible in listening to customer requirements, proposing solutions, and implementing them - all for a very reasonable price. I could not afford a conversion to CNC if it were not for KDN Tool. But you may ask what is the quality. Well the features available are so many, that I have purchased, that I can not elaborate on them all. So here are a few:
Zero backlash ball screws
Lubrication of the steel ways for all 3 axis - one shot pump
Optical limit and home switches
Various price point and torque stepper motors from different manufacturers
Inclusion of DeskCNC board into stepper motor driver electronics
Conversion from stock gear drive to belt drive taking the stock 2,500 rpm to 9,600 rpm
Bison ER-32 collet chuck system for tool bit holding
Solid state relay box to run collant pump, and optical limit switches
Incorporation of rpm tachometer and digital readout from Little Machine Shop
4th rotational axis
Working with my CAD CAM software author to insure that there is no G-code dialect problem with DeskCNC
Precision alignment of entire mechanical system
Upgrade stepper motor driver electronics to Geckos

I will not mention the price because it is related to the options you choose. You may purchase the mechanical subassemblies, electronics, and motors and assemble them your self. By the way they have shipped CNC conversions throughout the world. I mention all of this because I knew nothing about CNC conversions a few months ago. It seemed that the more I researched the subject the less I knew. So I started to research manufacturers of complete CNC desk top milling machines, but I learned that I could not afford any of their products. Well a fellow sent me a message, on a forum and told me that he was having his machine converted by KDN Tool. I looked into it, e-mailed them many times asking questions, reviewed their quotes, added more features, and I'll have my converted machine this Saturday. Hope this helped.

Whelen