New guy needing advice

[Portlyinohio]

So much to learn ...

I've been working on learning fusion pretty much every morning and evening as I find the time .
There is a brain numbing amount of things to learn . So I've just blocked a lot out of my head and concentrate on the basics . I am almost comfortable with modeling basic parts ,
I'm happy with getting that far

I've also decided its best to resist temptation on deviation from my initial plan now that I've got a bit more cash in the kitty then expected.
I'm going to stick with a pair of 4 inch vices to start with and save some money to work with after I get up to speed and possibly save myself from buying things I don't need or aren't particularly useful .

I've also done a lot of math . I could take a few bucks out of my savings and not finance anything And shoestring things along .
But I have worked on a shoestring long enough , I'm going to take a fair sized Chunk of my cash and finance about $3500
That will leave me with about a $3000 cash cushion to get incidentals I'll need and start converting tooling to carbide instead of hss as I need to .
that will leave me with a payment I can afford easily even if I don't make a dime and payed off in a year .

And that leaves me with the most frustrating thing , tormach and delivery .
I am ready to write a check . But I have two issues , free space and unloading the machine .
To unload the mill I need to rent a forklift , to rent a forklift I kind of need to be able to schedule a specific day
And due to having a small shop already stuffed to the gills I need the machine and stand to come at the same time . Or at least know that the stand will come first .
The sales guy I've talked to hasn't been able to promise me either .
And that is frustrating as hell

[popspipes]

When I bought my machine I had it delivered to a small company that had a loading dock, they recieved it and called me to come pick it up, we loaded it with a forklift onto my pickup truck. I unloaded it with an engine hoist onto the driveway at home. This worked out well for me.

[sansbury]

jwatte: I haven't come up with anything for tolerances, though for what I've built, it hasn't been a challenge yet. Mostly it's just been eyeballing and common sense so far. I'd think the Fusion forums might have a better answer from people doing more serious work than myself.

PortlyInOhio: What I found super-useful in learning 3D CAD was having a specific project I was trying to build. The realm of what you can learn is seemingly infinite, but the realm of what you need to learn for your own purposes is usually a lot narrower.

Does Tormach not support liftgate deliveries anymore, or are they just wicked expensive where you are? I had a dock, but a liftgate delivery would have only cost like 100-150 more.

As for financing vs. savings--I'm an advocate of taking the bank's money whenever they will give it to you on good terms, because when you really need the money the bank will laugh at you. The most common reason small businesses fail is that they run out of money. My approach would be to set a minimum "cash in the bank" target, and if you build up money above that, you can always accelerate paying down the note. However, this approach requires discipline so that you don't borrow the money *and* spend the savings and end up deep in the red.

[Portlyinohio]

The liftgate charge isn't a big deal if I could make use of it , but I can't get a truck close enough to my shop to make use of it , throw in a gravel driveway and a forklift becomes well worth the rental quite quickly .
And it isn't all that expensive even living out in the boondocks , have a guy willing to deliver a small pneumatic tired forklift for $135

[mountaindew]

I should change my username to PortlyInBoston, lol....

First congratulations on what you've done. As a business owner I know the work it takes to build up a product business and it is not easy under the best of circumstances, so cheers to your success so far!

I have had an 1100 for very low-volume prototype use the past 6 years and have learned a few things. For me, efficiency is less about volume than it is about flexibility. I make many different parts, so the ability to quickly set up a new part is key. Right now I am using a Shars 550V vise with the Carvesmart and Talon Grip jaw system. The Shars vise is cheap Chinese stuff but the quality is fine and it is very well-sized for the 1100. Unlike other Kurt-style 5" vises it has a very wide opening (almost 7") with the jaws in the inside position. This gives a ton of capacity without moving jaws around which takes time. I love the Orange vise system and the cost was not an issue but size-wise they're just too big for our machines, IMHO.

The Talon Grip jaws are another favorite because you can hold most stock without squaring it up (saves time) and they only need ~.060" to grip so you waste less stock and time milling the back side off. The Carvesmart system lets you swap jaws very quickly and is great if you use a lot of different soft jaws. The 6061 jaw material is reasonably priced. None of this is a must-have like a vise but for me the ~$500 spent here is worth more than it would be on most other areas. I also have a 5" 3-jaw chuck mounted on the table next to the vise which I use for parts made from round which I do many of. I make a lot of round parts on the mill because I don't have a CNC lathe and if I need something rounder than the 1100 can do, I just mill it oversize and finish on the manual lathe. I program round parts to the stock center so that all I need to do is touch off the top of the stock and I can hit "Go."

I also use the passive probe to set up almost every part. It's not as accurate as a Haimer but that has rarely/never been a problem for me when setting up raw stock. I always program my parts so that the top of the bottom left corner is XYZ=0. Then I can toss any piece of stock in the Carvesmart jaws, stick the probe in, run the probing routine, and I'm ready to make chips. Doing things the same way every time reduces opportunities for errors. As I learned to do this I started to crash less and break fewer tools. Same goes for learning how to set up your simulation. If you really want to do it right, learn how to set up the machine model and workholding along with the part so you can simulate the whole setup. I don't use cheap cutting tools and I don't like breaking them because of avoidable mistakes!

Another lesson I've learned is that it's usually worth the time to drill and tap on the mill. Because I'm often making first-article parts I often need to set up new tools, particularly drills and taps (I use and like the T/C holder). To save time I often would just spot out holes on the CNC (I always have a spot drill set up) and then drill and tap them by hand. It works, but after 4-5 holes it doesn't really save time and you can't beat the quality of a CNC-drilled and tapped hole. They look great and are always dead straight.

If you are making any part over and over, it is often more efficient to build fixtures than to use a vise. This is especially true if you have tool changes as you can often design a fixture to hold lots of parts at once, and then you change tools one time per ten parts. A fixture can also help with consistency and packing lots of parts into a small area. If the main costs for your parts are some 6061 stock and time, then a good 5-10 part fixture might allow you to crank these out and reduce cost per part which could create interesting opportunities. Either you could reduce the price and maybe sell a lot more, or just have the time to put towards other things, including going fishing. It would also be a good learning experience in case you ever get a customer who wants 100 pieces of something.

Last thing: as a mechanical designer, the real revolution for me came when I got comfortable with building full assemblies and simulating them in 3D CAD (I use Onshape and Fusion). There is a learning curve but with very good software now effectively free, it's something even a hobbyist can do, and it is very satisfying to design something with five or ten moving parts, mill it all out, and then have everything screw together and work the first time. I spend a lot less time filing, shimming, re-drilling holes, or re-making parts. If you're not familiar yet, that's something I'd start on right away as in my mind it is fundamental to making the most of a CNC tool.

Well said.
I need to do the tallon jaws or something like that. I design and cam around that .0.125+ milled off surface often and it just makes a mess of chips.

[jwatte]

its best to resist temptation

Good man!

Regarding delivery, that's typically done by a LTL delivery contractor with a terminal in your nearest city. They will call you to schedule delivery, so you can agree with them on a day at that time. As long as you don't delay for too many days, at which point they may charge you warehousing fees.

Tormach uses some shipper/broker that arranges for a truck to show up at their warehouse, the pallet/crate/s wending their way to your closest terminal, and then for the final-dozen-miles delivery. That's all handled by the freight company, not Tormach, so they can't guarantee anything. (And your freight may have been on four different trucks or more by the time it gets to you!)

If you REALLY want the stand to show up before the machine, I guess you can order the stand first, wait for delivery, and then order the machine :-)

[Portlyinohio]

You know , even getting that much out of tormach would be great . Fantastic , stupendous even .
But what I got from them in a nutshell was , we get your check , cash it and stuff will ship all Willy nilly starting in 7-10 days .

I'd much rather have some order to things , give me a specific day it will ship on , even if it causes me a week or two delay. At least then I can make my plans accordingly.
And I don't feel like it's to much to ask .

But anyhoo enough on that .
I've stopped taking paid orders for a couple weeks and have been working like a mad man catching up .
And I've started cleaning up my cesspool of a shop , I know I have a floor somewhere and I'm pretty sure it's concrete and not dirt and metal chips !
God I hate cleaning .

I think I'm going to have to lose a machine or two as much as I hate the idea .
I have a 6x18 surface grinder , I don't hardly ever use .
But when I do use it I absolutely love it . I've made a ton of tooling on it and random things like gauge blocks , parralels and just making things perfect and shiny .

But it mostly just sits there , and the five times a year I do use it it makes everything in the shop filthy . And I have an actual tool and cutter grinder now to take care of 95% of the things I did use it for .

I also have a small 6 inch power hacksaw , another machine I absolutely love because it cuts things so gosh darn straight and square .
But I have a bandsaw now , it doesn't cut nealry as nice but it cuts both vertical and horizontal so it's more useful in the long run .

The realization I needed to lose them came about due to cleaning ... I started putting tools away and figured out that my tool cabinet is stuffed to the gills And I'm going to need another tool cabinet to work from with a new mill .

[sansbury]

You can get great service when you’re shopping a parcel (UPS/Fedex/USPS) or a full container/trailer. The space in between (LTL) is the red-headed stepchild and it’s a constant thorn in the side of every vendor who relies on it. Tormach may not be perfect but this one isn’t their fault.

[mountaindew]

Portlyinohio:

The freight company made appointment with me on date of delivery. The mill shipped from las vegas and was 30 miles away at freight company the next day. They called me for delivery day and I delayed it for a week until a snow storm passed. I have a steep concrete driveway so machine deliveries can be a little spooky. The router shipped from their office and took about 3 days to arrive at same freight company terminal. I set appointment and they sent it out that morning. Drama for that one was the crate was huge and driver said it would not fit on lift gate and I needed a forklift. I told him no it is designed for lift gate delivery and we just need to get it to fit on the lift . "I assumed anyway"
I noticed as soon as the door opened the crate was huge and possibly to tall to fit under a standard residential garage door. And it was by 1 inch. So I had to dropp it in driveway and remove crate and then move machine into shop. Turns out that worked best anyway. Would have been a drag in bad weather tho. Also because of steep drive I mount a warn winch to floor in back of garage. Then run cable down to pallet jack to winch crates up driveway. Only safe way to do curb side deliveries here without forklift.

Anyway good luck on your delivery and welcome to the cnc family. May your parts be accurate and your spindles warm

[Portlyinohio]

Talk to enough people and you can get the answers your looking for
Found a fellow who was willing to do a bit of leg work , and they can delay shipping a few days to be able to give a set delivery day . So all is good there now .

I am homing in on getting things organized and ready .
I think end of next week I'll be ready to pull the trigger

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[Portlyinohio]

So I just sent my shopping cart for a quote

770m , stand/chiptray , power draw bar , fogbuster and the tooling I want , $13,753
Soon as the quote comes back I'll send a check .

I'm not quite as caught up on my work as I wanted to be , but the shops fairly well cleaned up and ready so there's no time like the present .

I still need to start a cutting tool list to make the carbide switch , I think I might just give lakeshore carbide a call and let them lead me in the right direction .
Before I start throwing broken $50 endmills in the trash I'm going to use up some of the hss stuff I have on hand to warm up with .

[1minworkbench]

So I just sent my shopping cart for a quote

770m , stand/chiptray , power draw bar , fogbuster and the tooling I want , $13,753
Soon as the quote comes back I'll send a check .

I'm not quite as caught up on my work as I wanted to be , but the shops fairly well cleaned up and ready so there's no time like the present .

I still need to start a cutting tool list to make the carbide switch , I think I might just give lakeshore carbide a call and let them lead me in the right direction .
Before I start throwing broken $50 endmills in the trash I'm going to use up some of the hss stuff I have on hand to warm up with .

I just spent 45 minutes reading this thread and I’m dying to know what happened! Did you get the machine? How are things working out?

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