Would you recommend building a CNC milling machine?

[alexccmeister]

Hi all,

New here. First post and first thread. Need some help with the above question. I am looking to get a mini mill from Taig on ebay for US$1400. Not sure if this is reasonable. Its CNC ready and all I need to do is connect up to my PC and I can start cutting away. But at the same time, I am also keen on building my own CNC mill out of steel parts (crude) and some hardware stuffs. Not retrofitting a mill drill or a taig manual mill but out of diy parts.

The work I am doing involves milling aluminium and plastic parts for an imaging device. Not big. A mill with max travel of 12" (X-axis), 5.5" (Y-axis) and 6" (Z-axis) is sufficient for me. However, some parts involves a lot of cutting away of the aluminium.

Would anyone recommend just getting a Taig mill or building my own. Would building my own be a complete waste of time? The reason I ask is that from what I researched on, cnc mill isn't too hard to do. I can get parts like stepper motor controller, stepper motor and softwares like mach3 from the net. All I need to do is build a mill rig out of hardware stuff and fit the stepper motor onto it. Is it that simple or there are alot more to it?

Thanks. Hope someone can enlightened me on this. I have an offer for a cnc ready taig mill. Keen to get it but wait for comments from here. Thanks.

Alex

[Zumba]

Don't trivialize the contruction and design of a mill. If it were that easy, machinery companies would be out of business. Your question is kind of like asking, "can I build my own car? Seems pretty simple... four wheels and an engine."

Let me put it this way... if you had the skills and knowledge to build a quality CNC mill, you would not be asking this question.

[dertsap]

there is NO reason you can't build your own as long as you have you wits about you , you could weld up some steel channel , get some linear slides ,and build a spindle setup

taig and such don t just up and fall out of the air ,someone has to build them

no reason to under estimated the capabilities of a person without knowing him


good luck

[CJL5585]

Alexccmeister

It will take most people a year or more to build a quality CNC mill. The amount of money spent will be about the same in the long run.

I have built one machine. I will buy either a kit or a completed unit if I need another.

I would personally purchase a unit.

[alexccmeister]

Thanks all for the constructive criticism and supports. I am new to this after all so I am sure there are lot more thing I am missing out and will find a struggle when starting my own cnc mill. I think the only difference I am keen about it is that if i do my own cnc mill, I can do as big or as little I want and with as much horse power or as little as I want. The drawback (and its only a small drawback) of getting a taig mill is that I am limited to small parts fabrication only. But with a bigger size diy cnc mill, well, alot more can be done.

But here I am also thinking, the accuracy of setting up a cnc mill by myself must be top priority and if the alignment is out a bit, the mill will not cut accurately. Am I right?

[alexccmeister]

Hmm! I wouldn't mind taking up the challenge of building my own car. It may not be a mercedez or BMW, but it will probably get me somewhere just as easily. I know enough of diy stuff to venture into cnc mill on my own out of scrap or hardware stuffs. But my concern is, as CJL5585 has mentioned, it may take me up to a year to set one up. And where I come from, parts aren't easy to come by.

If I am building cnc mill and selling them later at an affordable price, I will definitely venture into it even if it takes a year or two. But I have no plan to sell. I just want a cnc to get my end product out from the machine.

Maybe I have just answered my own question. But if anyone can enlightened me some more. That'll be great. Thanks.

[dertsap]

do some searches there are a few nice builds that have been done within the forums here ,
i don t know anyone who has built a car from scratch , but i know a lot of guys who have built their own sprint cars and dune buggies

[grahamweekes]

May I draw a parallel, my profession is architecture so I kid myself that I know a bit about putting buildings together. I have done a fair bit of DIY building myself, both my current house and the one I owned previously were self built. I enjoyed the experience, saved money and learnt a lot. However, my experience is that every job takes far longer than anticipated and requires learning skills some of which can be quite challenging. You have to find out what aspects require tight tolerances and what can be "good enough" and then set your own standards to suit.

I recently became interested in CNC and chose to buy a used Taig mill and convert it to CNC with parts bought through the internet. When I have finished my conversion and learnt how to operate it I plan to use it to help build a larger 4 axis router for machining timber. My decision was based on my lack of patience and the knowledge that I would rather be making chips this year and learning CNC skills instead of patiently working away making the machine itself. I am not trying to dissuade you from building your own. If you already have the skills or the time and patience to learn them go for it.

I don't know of anyone who has recently built a car from scratch but Jean-Joseph Etienne Lenoir did just that in the mid C19. Coming back to the present day, there is a cracking book by Ron Champion: Build your own sports car for £250 ($500). He sourced the engine and transmission from a cheap old runabout car and transplanted them into his own self built chassis and body. The book is a complete DIY manual!
Good luck whatever you decide

[alexccmeister]

Thanks Graham,

Making a sprint car is way out of my league. But its a challenge I wouldn't mind taking up if seriously challenged, but that's a big if.

The reason I posted this thread is simply because I see alot of large size CNC mills that are convertible to CNC mill like the SIEG X2/X3 and Harbor Freight 47158. These machine costs soemwhere around a tiag manual milling machine and the cost of retrofitting aren't that expensive either. So for the effort I put in to retrofit a CNC unit, I have a much bigger mill that can do a much bigger parts. A Taig is limited device. And I am just not sure if I am wasting my time doing the retrofit or just get a new Taig CNC ready machine instead.

[grahamweekes]

Would you recommend building a CNC milling machine?

CNC converting a Sieg mill sounds a lot less challenging than building from scratch especially in the USA where there are companies supplying the parts at reasonable cost.
In UK parts are expensive so although it is still worth upgrading a Sieg or similar the cost savings are not so great. Currently the $/£ exchange rate is favourable so it can be worth importing items to UK even after paying import duty and VAT.
I expect to spend about as much again doing my conversion as it costs to buy a basic non CNC Taig mill.
Perhaps it would be useful to prepare a detailed budget based on cost of parts delivered to you.
I don't know what you intend to make but I wanted a high spindle speed of 10k rpm or more so the Taig scored points over the Chinese mills.
Best wishes
Graham

[Jason3]

Perhaps read this: http://www.5bears.com/cnc.htm - for a good idea of what is involved in building a machine.

You know yourself better than we do, you should know if building your own is for you once you have a clear idea what is involved. Getting stuck shouldn't deter you, there are plenty of good people here who will help you out.

We expect a build thread if you do

Regards,

Jason

[alexccmeister]

HI Jason,

Its been a while since I last visited this website. A lot has happened since then. I bought a Sieg X2 and lots of CNC parts but everything I wanted or planned to do stalled. Now I have a few thousand dollars worth of parts just sitting in my little machine shop. Really haven't been able to get started on CNC'ing my mill.

Since my first post I have learned so much from CNCzone. Its an amazing website. I will pick up where I left off soon as I really like to cut and make things out of aluminium. Will surely put up a build thread when I do get started again. Thanks for the link. Will read it sometimes.

Alex