An interesting Mill/lathe setup

This job was presented to me this past week. It would be a great job for a CNC lathe but since I do not have a CNC lathe I found an alternative technique. The part needs to have the radius machined, machined to length and the end chamfored.



Below is my setup. Everything in the pic is homemade. I have a cylindrical grinding attachment mounted to the table of my homebuilt CNC mill.




The video tells the rest of the story. The endmill itself is used to position (or gage) the part for the next piece. The CNC controller starts the spindle and also starts the cylindrical attachment after the part is milled to length. I'm using the coolant output on the CNC controller to start the cylindrical attachment so the entire process is automated. Not sure how long it will take to load the video. A few seconds on my computer.

Video of the job running

The plan is to build another cylindrical grinding attachment and run the same job on my
CNC Bridgeport. This way I can keep two of our unemployed kids employed for a couple of days. :wink:

More pics of homebuilt mill

Hope this was of interest
Jim

Seems pretty quick AND slick, to me!

Jeff

I like the idea of adapting the end mill to be a stop but it appears that you are using a collet which usually draws the piece back. Is that movement consistent? Is that piece sticking way out for filming purposes?

I have dismissed these small CNC mills but it is getting tedious to replace the 4 jaw chuck with a C5 chuck so that small pieces can be held. Some people may think HSM but it can be appropriately sized and complement larger machines.

RDL said:

I like the idea of adapting the end mill to be a stop but it appears that you are using a collet which usually draws the piece back. Is that movement consistent? Is that piece sticking way out for filming purposes?

I have dismissed these small CNC mills but it is getting tedious to replace the 4 jaw chuck with a C5 chuck so that small pieces can be held. Some people may think HSM but it can be appropriately sized and complement larger machines.

Click to expand...

The collet does pull the piece back a tad but all I need to do is finish off the end and mill the radius relative to the end. Someone else pointed out how far the piece extends from the collet so I'm going to look into that. Pulling the piece against the endmill while tightening the collet at the same time greatly reduces pull back.

I also have a Bridgeport Series I CNC that I did a retrofit on. Works great but requires running a phase converter to run the spindle. The little CNC mill I made runs on 120V
so I figure it is cheaper to run and is located in a comfortable area of my shop. So much of my work is small stuff so the little CNC mill gets used more than my Bridgeport.

Thanks,
Jim

I have to admit. In 15 years of the existence of Photo Bucket, I have NEVER been able to access ANY photograph on that site at ANY time using ANY computer.

jscpm said:

I have to admit. In 15 years of the existence of Photo Bucket, I have NEVER been able to access ANY photograph on that site at ANY time using ANY computer.

Click to expand...

Do you have one of those old 300 baud modems that you lay your phone into?

I have never had any problems with photobucket, whether still pics or videos.

Big B

Jim,

Pretty innovative solution to your machining predicament. Thanks for posting it.

Regarding your Bridgeport retrofit, did you buy a kit or piecemeal it out? I have a Bridgeport that has an old control on it and am thinking of upgrading the control. Just need to find the right setup and the time to make it happen.

Big B

jscpm said:

I have to admit. In 15 years of the existence of Photo Bucket, I have NEVER been able to access ANY photograph on that site at ANY time using ANY computer.

Click to expand...

It helps to have digital camera software loaded on your computer particularly when viewing
videos.

Adding a VFD to your Bridgeport instead of the phase converter would be well worth the money :-).

Another option may be to use the spindle of the mill as a lathe like a gang lathe with mutiple or even a single point bit to profile. I didn't see how long the pieces are, but they may be short enough to when you do cut them on your BP they can be set with a stop at the back of the tool holder and preset off the machine like a tool setter.

The piece you see machined is not the exact piece. The actual piece is proprietary.
The opposite end of the actual piece is much larger than the end being machined. My setup lends itself to easy loading and unloading. The parts need to be loaded from the left side of the cylindrical attachment and extend through the collet. It is possible to hold these parts in a chuck with special jaws but for now the 9/32 collet does a good job.

There are also parts in two different lengths. 2000 parts of one length and about 2000 parts of the other length. Nice job but not at all high volume. Today I'll take samples to the customer and find out if I get the job or not.

I have been looking at CNC benchtop lathes. Seems like I'm turning away more and more
of this small lathe work.

"willbird Adding a VFD to your Bridgeport instead of the phase converter would be well worth the money :-). "

Yes, I know. I have a VFD on an old drillpress and it works great. I should have one on the Bridgeport as well. But when I set up the Bridgeport I made a rotary converter and it works so well I'm not motivated to upgrade to a VFD. When something is working I tend to just leave it alone.

EDIT POST: Customer found someone to do this job for 25 cents each. Considerably less than I was going to charge them.

Appreciate all the Ideas, suggestions and compliments.
Jim