My Tormach PCNC1100 arrived today

[warpedmephisto]

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!

[pstockley]

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/showp.../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/showp.../2728/cat/9021

[phil burman]

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
Phil