Industrial Hobbies Forum

[KEYTEEM]

Hi eveyone , im new to this site , have been here quite a few times and
it has helped me decide on finally buying one ih mill from aaron a few months back. due to a "slight knee seperation, haha" from a dirtbike stint i finally am
able to begin working on the mill now and have finished lapping the ways
, working on a bench now to assemble it on since it is easier to move in
pieces .

i have a ? for mikeaber
are these updates you say are coming from aaron only included in new machines?

did anyone bother to clean up the casting sand and sludge on the inside
of the column like i did?? i didn't find it very much fun, is this cleaning overkill
i didn't want any grit landing on the z-screw.

this is a great site ! thanks

[MikeAber]

Originally Posted by KEYTEEM i have a ? for mikeaber are these updates you say are coming from aaron only included in new machines? this is a great site ! thanks

Hi KEYTEEM,

As far as I know none of the importers of these Chinese machines are cleaning up anything for you. All of the machines are "as built". I own a Smithy 1324 3-in-one machine, Harbor Freight gear head mill, and an Industrial Hobbies mill. All of them had casting sand in them, the Smithy had about 2 cups of sand in the gearbox!

KEYTEEM has a good point here. You need to completely disassemble all machine tools manufactured in China and clean all the dirt, sand, swarf nasty grease and oil from the machine. If your machine came with oil in it change the oil.

I didn't mention anything about updates.

There will be some options available for existing and new machines and some services that may become available. What is interesting to me is more how-to information will be posted at the website and performance improvement information.

I'm going to wait for Aaron to tell the world his plans.

Mike

[ozzie34231]

Hi All,
I'm about to begin some adventures into the IH world and I need some outside thoughts on my ideas.

Okay, it's not a Bridgeport, doesn't cost that much, doesn't weigh that much.
But,,,, my shop is in my garage; concrete floor, concrete block walls. Would I improve the performance/deflections characteristics of the IH by building the table from highly reinforced concrete bonded to the wall and then also anchoring the column to the wall.

I know concrete cures forever almost, but how much would it actually move?
Would tile grout addatives help the concrete? And along those lines would it help to imbed a piece of countertop granite,(1-1/4"), a bit larger than the base of the machine?
I know the wall attachment would need some thought, so as not to warp the column in any way and still reinforce it, but I'm sure it can be done.

The wall and table would be a great start for a super coolant containment box; the table could be troweled to give runoff paths.
Does all this sound off base?

Appreciate your thoughts,
Jerry

[wizard]

Ozzie

I don't know about this specfic mill but in industry I once had involvment in many machines where put on thick granite slabs. Often these where pink granite suface plates. This was done for high precision inspection equipment also.

These where mostly high precison CNC lathes some unitized units sitting on blocks. Others fabricated out of synthetic "granite" with bolted on slide assemblies. Now you may ask how well did this work out as we had some machines without the mass underneath them. I would say the results are mixed especially if the mass isn't an integral part of the machine.

So for the column I would not expect significnat results unless the coupling was really close and stiff. It might be more worthwhile to find out how they or what they make the synthetic machine bases and surface plates out of and fill the column with that. Of course you have to deal with the z drive.

I've given some tohougt to the use of concrete in fabing my own machines. There is a bit of history doing this you know. You do have to consdier though that concrete is porus so you will need to seal it in some manner. Aging is another issue I know that manufactures don't even reccomend placement of a machine on a foundation until an extended curing time has passed. Interestingly enough there are a couple of books available on making concrete kitchen counter tops and other house hold items that may be of interest. With a bit of help you can cast the concrete in open top molds and achieve a bit of complexity. The need for help really comes when it is time to move and palce the concrete. I could see where this could be extneded for just about any machine component. That is givne that you understnad the nature of concretes mechanical properties.

Dave

[MikeAber]

I don’t see any practical way to make a bench top hobby machine into an industrial floor model with concrete or any other material.

If deflection is an issue use a smaller cutter and make a finishing pass. A 1/2" endmill is a large cutting tool for bench top machines.

Mounting equipment on granite surface plates or synthetic granite would improve thermal and long term dimensional stability. The accuracy or deflection values of the machines wouldn’t be improved, however, the equipment would remain in alignment much longer resulting in longer production runs between maintenance and alignment cycles.

[wizard]

Originally Posted by MikeAber I don’t see any practical way to make a bench top hobby machine into an industrial floor model with concrete or any other material.

This is certainly true in the sense that a desktop machine will never be able to do what a 40 year old Bridgeport can do. However a desktop machine in many cases lacks mass and connecting it to and aditional mass can be an improvement.

If deflection is an issue use a smaller cutter and make a finishing pass. A 1/2" endmill is a large cutting tool for bench top machines.

I agree that is likely would be dificult to impact deflection in a signifcant way but you may be able to impact vibration in a more productive way. That is by bolting or bracing the up right box column of some of the desktop mills. At least a few people have web sites claiming that such modificaitons do help, at least on the smaller X3 type mills. For an X3 and its thin box column this pretty much stands as a given.

For the larger box column mills though I suspect that it would be more difficult to get good results. Or get results that justify the expense.

Mounting equipment on granite surface plates or synthetic granite would improve thermal and long term dimensional stability. The accuracy or deflection values of the machines wouldn’t be improved, however, the equipment would remain in alignment much longer resulting in longer production runs between maintenance and alignment cycles.

Well yes and no. If you mount a set of ways directly on a "granite" plate then you will impact deflection values relative to mouning them on supports at either end. If you mount a machine that has feet at each end of the ways then I agree with you. the additional mass can be helpful in controlling vibration also. Vibration Generated by the machine or external influences.

Probably what I did not make clear is that just dropping a machine on a large mass of whatever is at best going to give you a very modest improvement. Making the mass a more integral part of the machine and you end up with different results.

Thanks
Dave