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Living the dream, the start of my prototyping shop.

kstone

Aluminum
Joined
Oct 15, 2014
Location
Olive Branch, MS
I have always dreamed of running my own CNC machine shop. I was able to realize that dream last September and started down the road of opening up my own business. I am currently in school for manufacturing technology and am loving every minute of it. I have an idea of the direction I want to take the shop and will start out as a prototyping shop and see where it goes. I spend most of my time in Solidworks doing freelance design work. I have always been more interested in having the ability to make my designs into reality. A few years ago I built my first CNC machine, a 3x4 Plasma table in my small two car garage. That was a great learning experience and the table has been extremely reliable. I have never worked in a machine shop before and have no prior experience running CNC machines. That is why I chose manufacturing technology because I want to learn how to make all the things that I can design. I never thought I would be where I am today a few years ago. Back then my goal was to save up enough money to buy Bridgeport mill and convert it to CNC. The past three years I have been doing freelance design work on the side and that has really paid off. I found that I am pretty damn good at it and some of my designs have made it to market. Last year I took the plunge and found some rental space and started turning it into what I wanted my shop to be. I built out an office and started researching CNC machines. When this all started back in September I had very limited knowledge of CNC mills and lathes, I had no idea what manufactures to look at budget wise and what a slant bed lathe was. I learned a ton in a short period of time thanks to this site. I knew I wanted to go ahead and get a VMC and Lathe right off the bat. That way I could start out doing some pretty complicated stuff and also be able to do small production runs if needed. I ended up with a '92 Fadal 4020 and an '89 Hardinge Conquest 42 with tail stock. I know I will need more equipment and will slowly build up my capabilities as the business grows (hopefully). Right now Im leaning towards a manual American made lathe and a surface grinder for my next two pieces of equipment. I'm still working on tooling up the Mill and Hardinge lathe right now and plan to order more tooling as the jobs come in. This is going to be a learning experience along the way, I may do some dumb things and I know I will ask some dumb questions. Never having worked around this type of equipment before and not having a mentor I am having to learn on my own and I have already gained so much knowledge in the past few months. The members on this site have already helped me tremendously!

And finally some pics of my shop...

I found this Fadal 4020 on ebay. It has been a great machine soo far. They aint fast but mine will hold 10ths and it came with a few surprises! I had planned on upgrading the electronics to a -5 system since it was an older machine. As soon as the riggers had it in place in my shop I popped open the electrical cabinet. The machine already had a -5 system and another member on here pointed out that my machine also has the optional 8" extended Z axis. I couldn't believe that I got so lucky with my first machine. She was very clean and had been very well taken care of. I only had to replace the way lube manifold and replace the way wipers. I am loving my Fadal already!




I got the Hardinge in two weeks ago and was a little disappointed with the state of the machine. It was filthy and looked like it had been dumped off in the back of a shop and forgotten about. Most of the screws on the outer panels were missing and this seemed like a sign that someone had attempted to fix the machine and gave up. I cleaned it up and popped the way covers off to check for damaged linear ways and if there were any way lube issues. I'm very relieved to have found that all of the linear ways look great and there is plenty of oil on them as well....whew. These Hardinge lathes are built like damn tanks. This little machine weighs every bit of 9000lbs. I plan on getting power to it this week and checking to see if I have any control/electrical issues, fingers crossed.

Before cleaning




After Cleaning



Also went ahead and got a 10x18 Band Saw to cut stock..



My humble beginning...






Well that's where I am right now. I am very excited about the journey ahead and hopefully I wont burn down the shop along the way...
 
Kstone,

Best wishes to your success. Looks like you have a good start. Keep your nose to the grind stone and you will be able to overcome any challenge.
 
Where are you located?
I have a couple old american iron lathes that I need to find a new home for. 15" swing up to 28" swing.
PM me if interested.
I will be creating a post for them soon.
 
kstone, welcome to PM....but you need to edit in your location ASAP or risk ban....notice how everyone else has this info.
 
kstone, welcome to PM....but you need to edit in your location ASAP or risk ban....notice how everyone else has this info.

Again, this is a major glitch in the forum software IMHO and should be corrected. His profile shows he lives in Mississippi, but the software requires the user to input their location in their profile in two separate areas. Very confusing to a noob for sure.
 
Again, this is a major glitch in the forum software IMHO and should be corrected. His profile shows he lives in Mississippi, but the software requires the user to input their location in their profile in two separate areas. Very confusing to a noob for sure.
I think maybe he fixed it by the time you looked. What is happening are two things..folks registering via Tapatalk where there are no fields for location (and my IT has yet to figure out how to make Tapatalk add them). The other thing is since I conjured up a double whammy registration question that so far no evil autobots have figured out the answer to, I no longer have to weed thru every new registration to look for spammers.....but then I miss legit folks that "forget" to fill out the location entry.
 
Yes, I remember thinking when you posted your other stuff about the Fadal: "Man! That machine is clean-clean-clean"

Good for you for taking the plunge! It takes some cajones, esp. with no formal CNC machining background. Best of luck to you!
 
Since I will mainly be focused on prototyping I am going to need a fixture plate system. I have been working on the design and decided to use MIC-6 for the sub plate. I have read mixed things about using aluminum as the sub plate. Anyways my initial design is a 20"x36"x1.5" sub plate with fixture plates being 1.00" in thickness. Also thinking about using Jergens ball locks (surface mount).

Fixture Plate_2.jpg
 
I still haven't figured out how these fixture plates are helping anyone do anything. You still have to pick up your offsets since the jaws go in wherever they end up.
 
I still haven't figured out how these fixture plates are helping anyone do anything. You still have to pick up your offsets since the jaws go in wherever they end up.

I plan on having multiple fixture plates. Say I have to make a prototype. If I see fit that a custom fixture plate is necessary I will make one and always know where my part home position is relative to machine home. Then if I have to make revised prototypes I can use the same custom fixture plate. The vises will always be mated to their fixture plates, or I could get the T slot keys for the vises.
I also plan to do small production runs and custom fixture plates would come in handy.

Why not bolt the vice to the table? Add a piece of ally in between just gives it another place to move around.

That's a very good idea.
 








 
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