gundog
Hot Rolled
- Joined
- May 31, 2004
- Location
- Southwest Washington USA
I make parts for my own business I have a Trak DPM Bed Mill with an AGE 3 control and a Shop Sabre CNC router IS510. I have been making parts for my own business I don't do any job shop type work.
I have started a new line of products where I am needing to tap 6061 T6 aluminum parts. I make some of the parts on the bed mill and some on the router the router has a 15 place tool changer with a MQL oil mist system. The problem with using the router for aluminum is I basically have to run it as a manual tool change to position the oil mist nozzles for each tool. The mist nozzles will hit the tool change rack if I don't move them out of the way during a tool change.
The bed mill is a manual tool change with no enclosure I run cool mist on the bed mill it has flood coolant but you can't keep it on the machine what a mess when I tried to use it. The bed mill has no tapping except when I run it in 2 axis mode and use a tapping head. The parts I am making use 5 tools and then I put them back on the machine after running a batch to tap them using the tapping head. I tried taping with a drill and tap but that doesn't work well the holes do not get tapped straight which makes them not align well with the matting parts. The tapping head works good but it is not very productive. Having an enclosure and being able to tap would make cycle times very fast.
Why a mini mill one it can be ran single phase. I don't need a super rigid machine I only plan to mill aluminum with it. Down side is I would like at least 20" of X but the bigger mini mill starts getting more $$ than I wanted to spend. What other brands could I look at. No Tormachs for me I would consider Sharp or Brother, Hurco Etc.
I need to keep this under 50K to make the ROI make sense. The other reason I like the mini mill is I plan to retire in a few more years and I can move the mini mill into a garage to putter around with.
Programming I use software specific to a CNC router that does not support any tapping and the Trak mill I program at the control. I have been doing my own programing on the machines I have for 10 years but I will need to learn something to make my parts on the new machine. The reading I have done make it sound like the haas would be fairly easy to learn. No 4th or 5th axis work just really simple profiles and drilling / tapping operations. I can draw the parts easily on my current CAD program and export as a DXF if need be.
Thanks for any suggestions.
I have started a new line of products where I am needing to tap 6061 T6 aluminum parts. I make some of the parts on the bed mill and some on the router the router has a 15 place tool changer with a MQL oil mist system. The problem with using the router for aluminum is I basically have to run it as a manual tool change to position the oil mist nozzles for each tool. The mist nozzles will hit the tool change rack if I don't move them out of the way during a tool change.
The bed mill is a manual tool change with no enclosure I run cool mist on the bed mill it has flood coolant but you can't keep it on the machine what a mess when I tried to use it. The bed mill has no tapping except when I run it in 2 axis mode and use a tapping head. The parts I am making use 5 tools and then I put them back on the machine after running a batch to tap them using the tapping head. I tried taping with a drill and tap but that doesn't work well the holes do not get tapped straight which makes them not align well with the matting parts. The tapping head works good but it is not very productive. Having an enclosure and being able to tap would make cycle times very fast.
Why a mini mill one it can be ran single phase. I don't need a super rigid machine I only plan to mill aluminum with it. Down side is I would like at least 20" of X but the bigger mini mill starts getting more $$ than I wanted to spend. What other brands could I look at. No Tormachs for me I would consider Sharp or Brother, Hurco Etc.
I need to keep this under 50K to make the ROI make sense. The other reason I like the mini mill is I plan to retire in a few more years and I can move the mini mill into a garage to putter around with.
Programming I use software specific to a CNC router that does not support any tapping and the Trak mill I program at the control. I have been doing my own programing on the machines I have for 10 years but I will need to learn something to make my parts on the new machine. The reading I have done make it sound like the haas would be fairly easy to learn. No 4th or 5th axis work just really simple profiles and drilling / tapping operations. I can draw the parts easily on my current CAD program and export as a DXF if need be.
Thanks for any suggestions.