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waty19

Plastic
Joined
Jul 25, 2014
Location
Atlanta, GA
I've been looking around this form to answer my questions but I haven't been able to find what I'm looking for.

I work for a manufacturing company that is starting to insource a lot of work that we use to outsource. The primary parts we are want to do are 1.25, 1.375 and 1.5 303SS round shafts with keyways cut into them at the ends and sometimes in the middle. Shafts range from 6in to 70in in length. We do about 1000 a year of these. I'm assuming they are done on a mill.

We also do a lot of UHMW parts. I thought about a waterjet but with the maintenance I'm leading towards a cnc router. The UHMW parts we do are .75" and 1" thick. We'd order the UHMW in 4x8 sheets and cut the parts from that. We also cut sheets of 1/4" aluminum. We knock out a 2'x2.5' window in the sheets. I was hoping the router could handle this as well.

Lastly, we drill holes in 1.25"x1.25"x.125" SQ S.S. tubing. Each tubing would be anywhere from 20" to 60".

I was wondering if there was a CNC machine that could handle all of this or would be have to buy a router and a mill? Looking to spend 65-75k on each machine. Less would be better but thats my top end. Would consider a used machine with few hours on it.

Any thoughts?? Am I heading down the right road or way off? We have never used any type of CNC so a lot of this is new to me.

Thanks for the time.
 
A decent CNC router could handle most of what you've described. The cutting forces don't look to be that great and the router could easily handle the 70" long parts. A mill with this much travel would be getting expensive. Figure you would have to rig up some sort of coolant system for the stainless stuff and do some thinking about how to hold the UHMW parts as they are being cut from the sheet.
Haas GR 510 would do it if you can find one used.
 








 
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