Metal With a Wood Router???

[Oldmanandhistoy]

Max,

Thanks for the reply and link I’m sure I see these machines on Ebay quit often. I must admit that it was a surprise to see you were using a machine without supported rails and getting the results you are.

Would you mind giving a bit more detail on your cuts; you said 2mm, is that depth of cut and if yes what width of cut and size of end mill (or is it a router cutter designed for Aluminium) you using?

Thanks,
John

Originally Posted by maxbela Hi John, My machine is a Heiz S-1000 or google "prototools" for a UK distributor. All the Heiz machines have twin X axis drive screws which means the gantry stays square, a big help if you do heavy work well off the centre of the table. I suspect the smaller machines would be more rigid as there is less length to flex. My client for the alloy blocks won't let me post pictures, -copyrighted design or something-, but basically I was taking a 130mm by 260mm pocket 22mm deep out of 30mm thick alloy blocks. I made 10 of them altogether. I can think of several ways to beef up my machine, if I needed to, but the basic design of it is excellent. As I have said elsewhere in the forums, I needed a machine in a hurry for a specific contract I landed, and bought this one on the grounds that I knew it would do that job and, even if it didn't come up to scratch on other work, it would have paid for itself already. I have been doing all kinds of work on it for a year or so since then and I am very happy with it. I also like the Win PCNC software that came with it. I upgraded to the Pro version to get a 4th axis control and the ability to digitise with a probe which the supplied version does not support but for most 3 axis work the included version is fine. I bought direct from Germany since they had no UK distributor then and got excellent customer support via e-mail from both Heiz and Lewetz " www. lewetz.de" who wrote the software. I consider I got at least what I paid for and probably more. Cheers, Max

[Oldmanandhistoy]

Originally Posted by tahustvedt I mill lots of aluminium with mine. Here are some parts I made for one of my RC helicopters.

Hi tahustvedt,

Very nice job on the heli parts; do you have a picture or link of your machine?

John

[maxbela]

Originally Posted by Oldmanandhistoy Max, Thanks for the reply and link I’m sure I see these machines on Ebay quit often. I must admit that it was a surprise to see you were using a machine without supported rails and getting the results you are. Would you mind giving a bit more detail on your cuts; you said 2mm, is that depth of cut and if yes what width of cut and size of end mill (or is it a router cutter designed for Aluminium) you using? Thanks, John

Hi John,
The 2 mm is depth of cut per pass. I was using an 8 mm endmill to start with as that is the largest collet which will fit my Kress spindle.
Once I had milled sufficient space I changed tools and took out the bulk of the metal with a twin flute 16 mm steel router cutter, side cutting only, i.e. the Z motion was into the area the 8 mm mill had already cut away. Doing that I was able to take out 4 mm per pass at a reduced feed rate but still quicker overall than using the 8 mm for the whole job.
I think if I tried to machine like this in the centre of my table the fact that the rails are unsupported might cause a problem, but I always set things up so my workpiece is as far into a corner of the table as possible so the cutter is therefore as close as it can be to the supported ends of the rails in both directions.
I would prefer a milling machine for this kind of work obviously, but I can't afford both and, since my last bit of work was a 450 mm by 3 metre long wooden sign board, I think I have the best machine for my particular needs.

Cheers,
Max

[Oldmanandhistoy]

Cheers Max,

I very much appreciate the extra info and the time you took to post

John

Originally Posted by maxbela Hi John, The 2 mm is depth of cut per pass. I was using an 8 mm endmill to start with as that is the largest collet which will fit my Kress spindle. Once I had milled sufficient space I changed tools and took out the bulk of the metal with a twin flute 16 mm steel router cutter, side cutting only, i.e. the Z motion was into the area the 8 mm mill had already cut away. Doing that I was able to take out 4 mm per pass at a reduced feed rate but still quicker overall than using the 8 mm for the whole job. I think if I tried to machine like this in the centre of my table the fact that the rails are unsupported might cause a problem, but I always set things up so my workpiece is as far into a corner of the table as possible so the cutter is therefore as close as it can be to the supported ends of the rails in both directions. I would prefer a milling machine for this kind of work obviously, but I can't afford both and, since my last bit of work was a 450 mm by 3 metre long wooden sign board, I think I have the best machine for my particular needs. Cheers, Max

[tahustvedt]

Originally Posted by Oldmanandhistoy Hi tahustvedt, Very nice job on the heli parts; do you have a picture or link of your machine? John

Here a thread avout the build: http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=808224