small to medium CNC milling machine advice

[slow_rider]

i'm asking this for a friend... he has a shop with a few medium sized cnc milling centers and other equipment and they just bought a new machine. the thing is that the machine is pretty big and it's not ideal to run on small parts (4" by 4" and such). he is looking for a small machine up to $10,000 that could do small parts, must have closed feedback loop and should be accurate to 0.001mm or ~0.00004" does not matter if it is open design or milling center.

if anyone have suggestions for models or even makers that make these kinds of mills that would be highly appreciated.

[Geof]

Originally Posted by slow_rider ..... up to $10,000 .....accurate to 0.001mm or ~0.00004"...

I think these two requirements are totally incompatible; add a zero to one or take a zero away from the other.

[slow_rider]

i'm not sure about the price of the emco concept 55 but it has a resolution of half of what i wrote here, i'm sure it's not a very expensive machine since they sell it for model makers and classrooms and because of this reason it might not be good enough for heavy use.

[PMT]

Resolution and accuracy are two different things.

[slow_rider]

oh sorry, i was talking about resolution. it's just that hebrew lingo you would say "error" and actually talk about resolution

[Geof]

Originally Posted by slow_rider i'm not sure about the price of the emco concept 55 but it has a resolution of half of what i wrote here, i'm sure it's not a very expensive machine since they sell it for model makers and classrooms and because of this reason it might not be good enough for heavy use.

Half of 0.00004"; i.e. 0.00002". Are you really sure? I would have thought something like this should be in a climate controlled seismically isolated room; two one hundredths of a thousand of an inch is very tiny.

[JPMach]

Geof, slowrider is talking about encoder resolution which is very small even in our Haas mills. I remember retrofiting a new control on a big router that the encoder resolution was in the 5 decimal place range but the machine was only repeatable to maybe two decimal place. The CHNC III + super precision I ran had DRO res to 10 millionths and probably was accurate to 40 millionths and repeatable to 20 millionths. I know when you manually jogged that thing that if you screwed up and put the jog handle res to the 10 millionths setting that you could sit there and spin the pulse generator for a long time and never see the thing move.

I agree though if you can find a small cnc mill with 40 millionths accuracy for $10,000 let me know where, I'm sure I could find the money somewhere. The rubber isolated climate controlled room might be another mater though not to mention the shrink fit tooling and all I would think if a machine like this did exist that instead of just adding one zero to the price you might as well turn the 1 into 4 also.

JP

[Geof]

Originally Posted by JPMach Geof, slowrider is talking about encoder resolution which is very small even in our Haas mills...JP

Oh; thank you. I was letting resolution = precision.