New to CNCZone very new to Machining

[Egonsith]

The Nice message at the top told me to post in the club house so here I am. I have been an RTV Mold maker and Resin Caster for about 10 years and have been interested in what CNC mills can do for about that long to.

For right now I have a project that will require me to cut Limestone in shapes such as circles triangles and crosses mostly between 1/8 and 1/4 " later on if it is possible up to 2" thick.

I hope I can find the right information on the setup and software i would need if that's even possible to do.

Looking forward to all the great info.

[awerby]

Are you planning on cutting wet or dry? The tooling usually appreciates flood coolant on materials like this, but if it's subject to staining, then you should carefully evaluate any additives besides plain water. Water, of course, is likely to rust steel rails, beds, and dovetails, so you need to protect anything like that. That's a good idea in any case, since stone dust is pretty abrasive stuff, and will tear up the machine if it gets into the cracks.

The software shouldn't be a big expense at this point, since you're just doing cutouts, but from your background it sounds like you're going to want to get into 3d carving sooner or later. But by then, you'll have a better handle on all this...

Andrew Werby
www.computersculpture.com

Originally Posted by Egonsith The Nice message at the top told me to post in the club house so here I am. I have been an RTV Mold maker and Resin Caster for about 10 years and have been interested in what CNC mills can do for about that long to. For right now I have a project that will require me to cut Limestone in shapes such as circles triangles and crosses mostly between 1/8 and 1/4 " later on if it is possible up to 2" thick. I hope I can find the right information on the setup and software i would need if that's even possible to do. Looking forward to all the great info.

[Egonsith]

awerby,

thanks for the reply I read that cutting stone needed coolant or else I would risk chipping the stone. I was looking into a Novakon NM-135 with the coolant attachment. I will have to look into the staining issue and rust of the coolant, I never even thought of that as an issue.

You are right about the 3d modeling in the future but i started out making small 2d cast copies when i started with RTV and figured its a goods way to work myself up again.