Newbie- Tormach or CNCMasters CNC Jr or Syil X3

[btang]

I am a complete newbie to machining and CNC. I am a part time knife maker and would like to get a mill for profiling blanks, drilling holes, milling spine work, making small folder parts, and possibly even trying to machine the bevels on a knife blank. Would also like to be able to make handle blanks with various textures out of G10, Micarta, Carbon Fiber, etc...

A friend of mine is trying to talk me into a bridgeport. We looked around locally and found a Gorton Mastermill 1-22 in very good condition for 1250. I am very close to buying it and then came to my senses that it probably would not be able to do most of the things that I am trying to do. It is also nearly 2ton and take up a whole bunch of space that I don't have.

I am looking into a medium size CNC machine such as the Tormach, CNC Masters CNC Jr, or maybe even the X3.

How long would it take a complete noob to learn how to use a CNC Machine to proficiently to make parts.

From what I can understand... I need to design the part in CAD or similar software then use CAM to generate the G&M codes and then inputing it to the CNC machine to let it do its thing. How hard or easy would it be to learn these programs?

Sorry for the long post.

[cameraman32]

Hi. I have a machine similar to the CNC Masters CNC Jr. It is a cheap Rong-Fu mill retrofitted with steppers. I got a Rong-Fu mill from billstoolcrib.com and retrofitted it with parts from homeshopcnc.com. If you need precision I wouldn't recommend it, the spindle column that raises up and down isn't held precisely, it is more of a mill/drill and I constantly have to tweak my gcode to and coat it with heavy way oil to improve the accuracy. However, I see on their site that they have a new "cnc baron" maybe it is better, although it still looks like a retrofit. If you have the money then I'd go with the Tormach. I've been druling over that machine for a while. Good luck.

[unco]

G,day btang,
I have a rf-31 mill which I retrofitted with the cnc-masters retro fit kit. I use the machine predominently for producing small aluminium parts. I am extremely happy with the results. I experienced some initial problems with the power supply as I had to convert to 240V and also experianced some problems recognising the correct port but this turned out to be a problem with my computer not the software. There seems to be a lot of bad pr when it comes to cnc masters but for mine this is a very good option and well worth persisting with. It suits my application perfectly and I think it should suit you as well. The software supplied is adequate for simple applications and very easy to learn. Wish you all the best and hope I have helped you.

[apache405]

I would guess it will take a month or so to get going. The actual time is going to depend on if you are playing with the machine on a daily basis or not. You're going to ruin some tools and material as part of the learning process. I would start with machinable wax, MDF and/or scrap metal. Machine simple designs that are easy to verify also so that you can determine what you know and what you don't.

I don't have a CNC machine yet, but this is the basic process I use to teach myself how to use any shop tool. I've been using Solidworks (CAD tool) on and off for about 2 years now. It took me about a week or so to get the absolute basics down and then about six months to make CAD model that drive the robot on link below.

http://ieee.ucsd.edu/projects/micromouse/

I also did the reconfigurable maze in Solidworks as well.