CNC, limited space, beginner

[NavyShooter]

Hello gents,

Firstoff, let me introduce myself. I'm a Sonar Technician in the Canadian Navy for, well, going on 19 years now. That involves electronics repair, and maintenance of everything from the 510 Hull Mounted Sonar, the SQR-19 Towed Array, plus various navigation systems including the Mk. 49 Ring Laser Gyro Compass, a couple different GPS systems, etc etc. So, I'm reasonably technically savvy.

BACKGROUND

Before I joined the Navy, I completed the first semester of a machining course at a community college, and alas, the fact that I dropped the course to join the Navy without completing the other 3 semesters has been one of my few regrets.

Since I moved into my current home (6 years ago) I've been working on building up my home machine-shop. I'm now in posession of a RF-31 style manual benchtop mill, and an old Southbend 10K lathe that's mostly clapped out, but for $400, I couldn't say no.

Before the 10K and the -31, I had a Sherline 4400 lathe/mill combo setup that I was into for the better part of $2000 in parts, tooling, etc. I was, well, substantially disappointed by it's slow cutting and small work-space.

I'm now able to make some decent sized items, and have built, among other things, parts for some of my firearms, and some other little jobbies that have kept me busy and amused.

I am, foremost, a hobby machinist, not a production guy. I have helped friends out with some little jobs here and there, and enjoy that.

FUTURE PLANS

That said, I'm looking down the road towards my retirement from the Canadian Forces, and am pondering the idea of a small prototyping machine-shop setup.

For that, I would consider a CNC mill a mandatory item, and would think that for the size jobs I'd consider doing, a Tormach 770 or 1100 would be adequate, or at least a machine in that class/size. (I have thought about getting the CNC Masters Junior CNC upgrade for my RF-31 mill, but at $4500-ish, I think I'm almost better tossing the $$ into getting a dedicated CNC mill such as the Tormach for only 1/4 more money.)

My retirement from the CF would not be for at least the next 4-5 years.

So.

With those thoughts and considerations on the table, I would like to get a small CNC mill, and the Taig CNC mill seems to fit the bill for the size and space and budget I currently have available.

GOALS

The primary goal for this level of machine is to learn CNC.

The secondary goal for this machine is to produce some small parts, ie, rifle bolts, optic mounts, etc, for my own use. Some parts will be steel, some may be aluminium.

The tertiary goal for this machine is to retain some capital value so that I can sell it down the road when the time is right to upgrade to a larger CNC setup.

BUDGET

I'm currently on an overseas deployment where things are wet, but close to the sand, and an old friend from 1986 has come back to bug the world. As a result, my income has taken a bit of a spike UP due to the allowances/pay/etc that we get in theatre. As such, my budget for this upgrade, including tooling, is about $4000.

I have a significant pile of R8 tooling onhand for my RF-31 mill, but understand that I'll need to buy some that would be exclusive to this machine.

TIMELINE

I am not planning to make my purchase until I re-deploy to Canada (Halifax) in the fall, so there is no rush to my decision, I have time to consider my options and spend my money wisely. That said, when I get home, I would like to have a big box (or two) waiting for me to unpack and play with during my post-deployment leave.

WAY AHEAD

I'm looking for information that will help me determine what I best need to suit my goals above. I will not consider a Sherline, and am strongly leaning towards the Taig, though in some reading on here, it would appear that I should not buy the CNC directly from Taig. From what I've read, here's what I'm pondering:

1. 2019 Taig CNC Ready Mill
2. Gecko Driver thingie
3. Motors (???)
4. Etc.

I'm interested in the idea of having the ability to do 4-axis machining, as there is a rifling job I've been considering working on, but have never actioned due to not being able to make the mandrel I've wanted. A 4-th Axis would allow me to do that.

So, I understand that there is a gentleman (Deepgroove1) who offers a nearly "turn-key" package (though much assembly is required) with a suitable system.

DISCUSSION

I present the following questions for discussion:

What machine (if not the Taig) would suit my needs/goals?

What combination/package would be recommended?

What options would I need included?

What additional items should I expect to need (on top of the "turn-key" package)?


I appreciate your help and input, and look forward to your replies. There seems to be quite a lot of knowledge here, and I have some time to tap into it before I spend the money I'm earning looking down the barrel of a bunch of artillery pieces.

NavyShooter

[darrellatg]

I bought my CR19 mill used a month ago. It is a great little machine as long as you do not want to hog steel or spin large tools. You can get tooling cheep off ebay if you keep your eyes open. Taig tooling in general is not very expensive compared to larger machines. I really like how modular the Taig machines are, the T-slots in the spindle are great. In fact I liked my Taig so much i got the lathe a week after I got the mill.

The taig is a great machine for learning. It was very easy to get running with EMC2. The guy I bought mine from used MACH3 , so either would work.

I use the gecko G540 and it works great. If you get an SSR you can hook it to the spindle VFD output and you will have CNC spindle on/off which is very useful. I built my own power supply with bits laying around. If you have some electronics experience its pretty simple.


My suggestion is to avoid the low quality chinese machines. If you are doing this for fun you want a machine that is fun to work with, and thats an American Tag or one of the German machines like EMCO or OPTIMUM. I had one of the Chinese ones and it was not fun to work on.

This canadian guy sells CNC Taigs. I talked to him on the phone a bit about his ball-screw kit but have not bought anything from him yet.

[nomedia="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIg2FO6e52k"]YouTube - ‪PS3 Sixaxis controller as CNC MPG control pendent with EMC2 and QtSixA‬‏[/nomedia]

[Jeff-Birt]

My general advise is this:

If you want the fun of building a CNC machine than buying all the parts separately and assembling your own control will be for you. This is a lot more work and may save you a small amount of money. Mostly though folks choose this route for the adventure of it and they wind up spending more money as they have to try 2-3 times to find the right components that work the best for their machine.

If you want to concentrate on the fun of making things with your CNC machine than buy a complete kit. All the engineering is done so all you have to do it bolt it together and concentrate on making stuff.

There are several companies where you can buy parts and/or complete systems. Look for the value of what you are getting not just the sales price. What does it include. Narrow your choice down to 2-3 places and then give them a call and discuss your application. You should be able to get some good suggestions and wind up with a better idea which company you want to do business with.

[NavyShooter]

Some good points here guys.

I'm looking at the build threads and see that generally no-one place sells all the bits you need, so I'd have to buy stuff from 3-4 suppliers to get a working machine, and that's no guarantee that things will actually work, whereas a single package would have everything I'd need.

Hmmm.

I think the only two things that the Taig doesn't have that I think I want are a steel clamping surface/table, and R8 tooling compatibility.

Otherwise, I like it.

How much do those two issues matter?

Brad

[darrellatg]

The table is made of fairly hard aluminum, its surprisingly scratch resistent. It wont get scratched from just setting steel things on top. I have a homemade tooling plate of .250 AL that I usually use when I am doing something dangerous. The ER16 Spindle system works pretty well for the smaller tooling. Its quick to change and you can use stop rings on your tools if you need to do tool changes without having to re-zero Z. This is standard practice for milling PCBs. I have not used R8 tooling so I dont really have any basis for comparison, but I can say I like not having a draw bar. Most of the time when I am doing PCBs that require a lot of tool changes I dont even use the spindle wrench. If everything is clean and in good shape you can get it plenty tight for 1/8 tools with just your hands. In this mode tool changes take only 20-30 seconds, chip to chip. The key thing when you are using collets instead of tool holders is to not let chips or dirt get on the mating surfaces when you are changing tools. Sometimes this is easier said then done.

[darrellatg]

Oh and I forgot one thing, if you have limited space, Taig machines are perfect. My whole machine shop fits in a closet:


[nomedia="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUe3_MT3EH4"]YouTube - ‪Mini machine shop fits in a closet‬‏[/nomedia]

[awetmore]

If everything is clean and in good shape you can get it plenty tight for 1/8 tools with just your hands.

This might be true for 1/8" shank tools with smaller cutters that you use when making PCBs. I don't agree that you can hand tighten a 1/8" carbide endmill that you'll be using for milling out aluminum. The bit will slip pretty easily.

I have the older Taig collet system and like the end mill holders for it because they keep everything at a constant Z height. I wouldn't want to use collars on my end mills because that would require me to extend my endmills farther (by the length of the collar), leading to more chatter and bit flexibility. That can be a concern with 1/8" bits.

My Taig works well for me. I'd like a Tormach, but I haven't really seen any CNC machines priced in between the price point of the Taig and the Tormach that I'd prefer to own compared to a Taig.

[Fixittt]

Im going to chime in here, because I see this alot!

First off, I admire the drive and the ability to look into the future.
The taig is in fact a small light weight machine. But it is cheaper then most others as well. It has its positives and negatives in the design.

You need to understand the size and weight difference between your manual mill and the taig. The taig is probably twice the size if not a tab more then the sherline. Its not really considered a BENCH TOP like your manual mill, its more a "DESKTOP".
With that out of the way, now here are something you need to look at. The sherline is within your price range, and I highly recommend buying all the bits and setting it up yourself. This gives you an understanding of how everything ties together to make a "SYSTEM" Sure you might blow something up or have to replace something, but if you got a turn key machine and something goes wrong in a year, will you know how to diagnose the problem? The key thing I am trying to touch on here, is EDUCATION. If you build it, you will get an understanding of how it all works.

Now to the machine itself. The taig is in the lower price range which makes it perfect to LEARN CNC on. This is where most people fail. They think that they can take a machine out of the box, plug it in and make parts. I see soo many machine on ebay and in storage closets because this stuff "IS NOT EASY" Tooling is not cheap. Buy the cheaper tooling to learn on. You will break them, the more expensive/better quality tooling is better in the long run once you gain the experience to successfully operate the machine within its limits.

80% of machining is not cutting the physical part itself, but fixturing. If you cannot hold the part, you cannot machine on it.

There is also a host of other equipment that complements and makes life easier for the cnc machine. If you cannot get your material on the machine you cannot cut it. So you have to shape and square raw material. That is where your manual mill and lathe can be useful. But you will probably need some sort of saw. Once the parts ahve been machined, how are you going to remove the burs? A small belt sander is also invaluable. Shop vac to clean the mess up. These are just some of the things that I talk to our clients about because when they got their cnc machine "NO ONE TOLD ME THAT" is what I hear all the time.

Do yourself a huge favor, if you have been looking at the MAXNC line of machines (same price point as the Taig) DONT! The Taig while not the pretty blue color of the maxnc is a far superior machine.

[NavyShooter]

Well,

Here I am, a couple of months further on in my deployment, and on the "home stretch" (almost) with less than two months left on station.

I want to thank you guys for your input on this, and I think I've actually made some decisions on what I'm going to be doing.

Having both the manual mill and lathe, I have some other shop accessories, including a metal bandsaw for cutting stock. (HANDY!!!) so I save cutting charges at the metal supply shop now, I buy bigger chunks of stock material, and can lop off the pieces I need. This was a good purchase I made a year or so ago off Kijiji (craiglist equiv in Canada.)

I've contacted Keling, and have ordered a set of stepper motors, a Gecko driver, and power supply to be delivered to me here on the ship, so I should be able to put together some of the wiring harness while I'm here, and may even get the motors turning before I get home, just to see Mach3 doing something REAL from my laptop, rather than just watching virtual motion on the screen.

I've been playing a bit with Mach3, and find it interesting, but have realized that I need a decent CAD program to go with it, I have a copy of solidworks at home that I hadn't really used much, and wish I had it here with me to muck with and program a bit.

For the machine? Well, I damn near bought a Taig, and if my little bro had lived a bit closer, or if the machine had already been in Canada, I would have. Instead, I think I'm going to go with the Seig X2L, and build it up myself using some of the CNCFusion parts.

Is it ideal? Nope, I realize going in that it's not the biggest, best, most rigid machine. But, there's a lot of expertise here that I've been reading from and it looks like some folks have developed some very good results anyhow.

It's an interm solution, and I understand that. It's something to learn on, and build myself. I have space for it in my current shop area, and that's a factor too.

I expect I'll have more updates to my project in September-October, and will keep you guys in the loop.

Thanks for the help!

NS

[Fixittt]

sounds like you have a solid plan.

[cameraguy]

Well,
Is it ideal? Nope, I realize going in that it's not the biggest, best, most rigid machine. But, there's a lot of expertise here that I've been reading from and it looks like some folks have developed some very good results anyhow.

There are a lot of upgrade projects discussed for that particular machine, because it takes doing a lot of upgrade projects before you can make that machine even reasonably functional. Some call it 'experimenting' or 'pushing the envelope', but most just call it turd polishing. I remember one person here a few years ago made a hotrodded X2 that finally didn't have any problems. He had replaced the Z axis with something custom he made, then the X and Y axes, then the spindle, and the motor, and the base. Every major component was replaced - all incrementally mind you. However, by the end of a couple of years of work to get it howling along, there were literally less than 5 pounds of original parts left. It reminded me of that Johnny Cash song about the Cadillac.
Taigs on the other hand work straight out of the box, and usually require little tweaking to push them.

Taigs are good to make parts with. X2s are good to make parts for. Pick the hobby you wish to pursue.

[NavyShooter]

Cameraguy,

That's a VERY compelling discussion point/distinction.

I've been reading about the X2 modification threads, and there's a lot of talking about bracing the main column, replacing shims to tighten the gibs up, and the inevitable variations that come from the chinese quality control...

Looking at price as well, the X2L in Canada starts at $799, ($1000 including shipping and taxes) plus a $579 conversion kit (about $790 including shipping, cross border fees, currency conversion and taxes). That's $1790, plus I have to tear down, clean, assemble, and hope everything fits.

Or, the Taig 2019 is about $1100 US ($1450 including cross border fees, currency conversion, shipping, taxes.) and all I have to do is bolt on my steppers and hook up the gecko....

The $350 price difference would let me get a tooling plate ($90) plus some of the ER-16 collets and end-mill holders. Hmmmm.

Plus, the Taig has a larger working area, though the X2 can be expanded if you put some work into it.....but again, more fiddling about instead of bolting things together and building.

HMMMMMMMMMMMMMM.

Next question....

Accuracy?

I saw in another thread that it's reasonable to expect .002" accuracy on parts made on a Taig? While an X2 is in the .005 area? Are these numbers correct?

What accuracy would I reasonably expect out of the box with a Taig, and with an X2 converted using the CNCFusion kit?

.005 seems like a large error for a CNC system to me?

Thanks for your help and input! 44 days to home!!!

NS