Well there are a lot of bad reviews of tormach. I think they are ripping people off for a Chinese machine. I am hesitant to recommend this company but syil is much cheaper and they seem to have decent offerings with a real controller not Mach 3.
Well as mentioned it's a far off pipe dream -- I make far too much doing what I do now to risk moving to something like this. You also seem to have gotten a REALLY good deal based on your posts about buying them on this forum. Googling showed nothing less than 10k.
Maybe I'll just save for a few months and get a Tormach. I hate being so analytical about this -- I just want a new toy.
Robert -- Ah okay that makes sense.
I've got a large 2 car garage and I've only got 2 work tables (One to do stuff and one with a miter saw and drill press), but unfortunately it's not climate controlled so I'll need to do some research on the rated temperatures of different electronics. I rent so I'm not too keen on installing some sort of air conditioning unit. Not sure what other options I have. I looked at renting a climate controlled storage unit, but it looks like they kind of frown upon that.
Well there are a lot of bad reviews of tormach. I think they are ripping people off for a Chinese machine. I am hesitant to recommend this company but syil is much cheaper and they seem to have decent offerings with a real controller not Mach 3.
Funny, I've read a LOT of posts here over the years, and never noticed a lot of bad reviews of Tormach. But I've read a lot of posts from people that are happy with their Tormachs.Well there are a lot of bad reviews of tormach.
There are bad reviews of everything. You just need to understand what you are reading, and in some cases, who's posting it.
Gerry
UCCNC 2017 Screenset
[URL]http://www.thecncwoodworker.com/2017.html[/URL]
Mach3 2010 Screenset
[URL]http://www.thecncwoodworker.com/2010.html[/URL]
JointCAM - CNC Dovetails & Box Joints
[URL]http://www.g-forcecnc.com/jointcam.html[/URL]
(Note: The opinions expressed in this post are my own and are not necessarily those of CNCzone and its management)
I have not bought from this company. That said if I was going to convert a pm25 instead I would go with this.
https://m.ebay.com/itm/PM-25MV-Mill-....c100935.m2460
It already has the conversion and it seems everything else at a pretty reasonable price.
Ben
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Just to be clear it does not come with the enclosure. The enclosure is available assembled or separately for a good bit more cost. Might be worth it to contain the mess.
Ben
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I see no point in throwing 3000 dollars into a taig.. If you're not going to replace the Z axis and the frame with something that looks like 6" or larger square tubing, and the z axis with linear rails. and if you were to do that then why buy those parts in the first place
the only reason for taig to stick with the structure they have is to retain the ability to drill or machine using the z axis tilted at an angle, which few people do anyways, and you could still preserve that functionality with a weldment if you put a bit more effort into it.
my taig has an 8 inch channel iron welded frame that weighs about 140 pounds, and 90 percent of my problems are my worn out X and Y axis. i've converted it to 8mm diameter 3mm tpi ballscrews.. which is fine but they are only rated for about 300 pounds.
the taig XY axis might be a good value for the cost if you buy just the XY axis parts and convert it to ballscrews yourself using 8mm ballscrews which require no modifications to the machine. to got to 10mm or 12mm ballscrews require making room for the ballscrew.
I don't know how the cnc ballscrew conversion handles the thrust forces but it probably needs to be re-designed. 608 bearings are just not stiff enough and replacing them with 11 dollar 708 bearings is probably not a good investment if 6202 bearings can fit and are stiffer axially. as for mine the stepper motor on the x axis.. i can watch it bend up or down slightly as the ballscrew pulls on the bearing housing arrangement because the ball screw is located below the bottom of the X axis table. there really needs to be a half inch thick aluminum plate with 4 bolts holding it to the side of the table.
btw 3mm pitch is .0006" per step. which is fine for steppers, the 10x micro stepping will handle the fine finishing passes but when your cutting tool is exerting a couple hundred pounds of force on the 3 mm ball screw the stepper motor will be lagging behind the true commanded position by up to half a step (any more than half a step and it will lose a step and fall back) so you're only going to loose 3 tenths on a roughing pass due to the intrinisic stiffness of a 200 step stepper motor and a 3mm pitch ball screw. the stiffness of the ball nut, the thrust bearings will be in excess of this 3 tenths by a significant value for a single ball nut on an 8mm ball screw with 608 thrust bearings.
Yea I’ve seen several bad reviews too. Seems like tormach doesn’t care about putting out a quality product. I wanted to get a lathe from them but after seeing the specs along with reading some bad reviews I decided there were better options.
I really don’t know but I feel like tormach try’s to sensor people with problems and if you look up nerdly on YouTube see the trouble he had with them.
That turn-key PM25 through e-bay is looking pretty appealing. Only draw back is I can't order it today. Hmmm.
I've been scoping out e-bay and craigslist for industrial level machines and there's quite a few that would fall into my price range. I just don't know about the electrical requirements. The town I live in is super strict and you need permits for seemingly everything. Not sure what the legality is of running phase 3 electricity and such to a residential dwelling.
If you get a smaller Fadal they are usually convertible to 60amps single phase 220v
Some of the smaller haas machines can also be single phase.
I may be interested in selling my smaller Fadal if you are interested.
More of an issue may be the cost of getting 3 phase power to a residential building, if it's even possible at all. I've heard of numbers in the $5,000-$10,000 range.Not sure what the legality is of running phase 3 electricity and such to a residential dwelling.
Gerry
UCCNC 2017 Screenset
[URL]http://www.thecncwoodworker.com/2017.html[/URL]
Mach3 2010 Screenset
[URL]http://www.thecncwoodworker.com/2010.html[/URL]
JointCAM - CNC Dovetails & Box Joints
[URL]http://www.g-forcecnc.com/jointcam.html[/URL]
(Note: The opinions expressed in this post are my own and are not necessarily those of CNCzone and its management)
Ah yeah that's waaaaay to much for something I won't own. Guess for the time being I'll stick to a smaller machine and see how it goes.
I'm considering calling some machine shops in the area and asking if they'd be interested in having free labor on the weekends in exchange for letting me learn and observe. Do any of you who run machine shops think that's practical or would the fear of law suits or something similar scare them away?
Ianagos, I'll certainly consider it. It's going to be a month or two before I've got a sufficient amount of disposable income. I think I saw a post saying you were in Cali though, is that correct? I'm all the way down in Florida ;(
Well my machines are in Georgia and I may be driving down to Florida to buy a larger machine soon so just let me know.
On the shop thing I could not find anybody willing to let me work for free on the weekends.
I’m in the military that’s why I’m currently living in California. My brother and father run the machines and can load them etc.
You had the same idea huh? That's a shame. I might see what they say anyway.
Is the machine running or does it need to be fixed? What are you looking to get for it?
Pm me to discuss on the machine I’ll send you my phone number.
And yea but that was here in California you may have better lick there.
PM-25's are on back order for 6 weeks. There goes my plan of ordering now and playing with it manually for a few weeks while I save the money to convert.
You might also want to consider something like the Tormach 440 CNC mill. There's a forum for Tormach CNC machines here on CNC-Zone. They are near Madison, WI and have a showroom in case you are close enough to stop by. They also maintain a list of owners that are willing to demo their own personal machines.
A friend has a CNC-d Taig mill that he uses for model IC engine parts and he is quite happy with it.
I'd love a Tormach, but they're on the VERY extreme end of my budget. I wouldn't be able to order until late November/early December and I'm WAY too impatient for that.
At this point I keep changing my mind daily. The sales guy at Precision Matthews told me they have some PM-25's with some cosmetic rust that are slightly discounted so I'm considering that, but I'm very leery since this is my first mill and the CNC conversion is going to be difficult enough without worrying about rust.
I'm thinking about just getting a Shapeoko 3 and playing with that for a couple months while I save up money for something REALLY nice.
I've got an e-mail out to the Omio sales guy trying to figure out how much in duties I'm looking at for the X8 machine.
Basically I've made 0 progress and actually probably back tracked by bringing in even more options.
Regarding OMIO:
Pretty please read the full OMIO cnc report thread - all the 105 pages.
Better be informed about QC and "customer support" BEFORE you buy: