noahjlb
Cast Iron
- Joined
- Aug 19, 2002
- Location
- West Linn, Oregon
For those of you who have had hands on experience with cnc mills please advise: I have been told that a CNC knee mill is better for a low volume shop ie. one-offs, prototyping, than a CNC bed mill because of the knee mills greater flexibility (ie. ram that extends beyond table etc.)...but what about the Z axis?
When you program a CNC knee mill are you limited to the length of the quill in your machining programs or can you use the powerfeed on the knee to give you the z axis depth that you want in the program ?
Concrete example: during the course of cnc milling you want to drill a 7" deep hole thru an aluminum block. On a CNC bed mill with a 20" z axis you just program it in and end of story. With the CNC knee mill and say a 5" quill would you program the machine to drill a hole 5" in depth followed by withdrawal of the bit from the hole then a stop in the program so that the knee can be raised to drill the additional 2"...or can you program the powerfeed of the knee mill to raise automatically ?
When you program a CNC knee mill are you limited to the length of the quill in your machining programs or can you use the powerfeed on the knee to give you the z axis depth that you want in the program ?
Concrete example: during the course of cnc milling you want to drill a 7" deep hole thru an aluminum block. On a CNC bed mill with a 20" z axis you just program it in and end of story. With the CNC knee mill and say a 5" quill would you program the machine to drill a hole 5" in depth followed by withdrawal of the bit from the hole then a stop in the program so that the knee can be raised to drill the additional 2"...or can you program the powerfeed of the knee mill to raise automatically ?