Just bought Taig mini mill CNC/ new to CNC and machining

[duffy99]

Hi this is my first post so I thought I'd give you a brief intro , I'm not sure if this is the right forum for this post . I'm a Combat Vet with 3 tours of duty and 12 years of service as an Infantryman. I returned from my last tour in Afghanistan May last year and released do to service related injuries in September last year. I have recently taken up custom knife making for the past 6 or 7 months.

The thing that brought me to this forum is that I came across a Taig Mini Mill fully set up for CNC with stepper motors and computer yesterday basically never been used . I wasn't expecting to buy a Mini Mill or a CNC machine at that but when I was able to get it for a cheap price after some bartering $500 off the asking price for $600 total. The owner was a small business owner who did engraving work and had bought it 2 years ago with making 3-d objects in mind for $2000 but never got around to using it. I watched the posting and he went from $1500 to $1100. I researched the machine and it's retail price when set up as a CNC machine and looked at some work made with it ( by people who knew what they were doing ). Then I went to see him with cash and basically said I have cash in my pocket to buy today and it's 2 years old I'll buy it right now for this price or you can just sit on it longer.

I thought it would be a good investment. I figure at worse I can just sell it for a couple hundred more then I paid and at best I can use it for guards and 3-d textures on g-10 and micarta handle materials. Now lies the problem . It comes with MACH3 but as a person with no background in writing g-code or CAD I'm looking for a good place to start with tutorials and basics to actually run the thing. I know that since it's a mini mill the size of application will be limited but the cost and my thoughts about reselling if it's to much to handle played a part in the decision.

What is a good start point for studying and learning to write g-code or where to get small amounts of code written for me. Example a 1.5" x 4" piece of g-10 milled to have a "wavy " texture. I'm in a bit over my head at this point and broke my own rule about buying things I don't totally understand . How hard can it be and where's a good start point to learning to use CNC , write code or software to design that can be transferred to the machine . I know you probably get newbie posts like this all the time and I apologize in advance for that . But I'm totally lost and don't know where to start.

[Al_The_Man]

Get a couple of goods books such as CNC Programming Handbook by Peter Smid, and there is also a fairly good free CNC simulator at CNCsimulator.com.
Al.

[duffy99]

Thanks for the reply, I'll purchase that book today. It didn't come with any tools or attachments . What should be my first purchase Collets and end mills, a vice , chuck and arbor . I noticed that Lee Valley Tools sells accessories for the Taig Lathe , is there any other chain stores in Canada that stock tools compatible with this or do I have to order them. The regular tool places seem to only stock R8 and not ER16 .

Also was what I paid a good price, I see that brand new ones with CNC are $2000 but they do come with an tool and accessory pack. It looks as if it's never been used , the computer adapted to hook up to the motors was still sealed in plastic.

Get a couple of goods books such as CNC Programming Handbook by Peter Smid, and there is also a fairly good free CNC simulator at CNCsimulator.com.
Al.

[lsces]

duffy99
The starting point for information is free ... The Taig Lathe and Milling Machine
And an alternate list is taigtools : Taig Machine Tools ( some of us don't get on with this on-line stuff )
One piece of the picture that is missing though is exactly which version of CNC controller you have. There are a couple of options supplied by Taig under the Microproto name, the big black boxes, but a lot of machines have been supplied with third party controllers as well.