Dear All,
I've been looking to upgrade my small 330kg / 730lbs chinese manual milling machine to a bigger manual. However I've noticed that with same or even lower price you could get mid nineties CNC milling machine like Brother TC-211 or TC-229. What is it with these machines, are they awkward to program or endless money pits or what, why are they so cheap? I think I could do most if not all the machining work I encounter with NC machine but that would of course mean programming every task even the smallest (I'm not sure can you use the remote jog for smallest task?). But as a hobbyist I have all the time in the world to do so I don’t bother. What I’m especially exited is that with NC machine I’d be able to do radius and other stuff manual cant.
What do you think, does this make any sense and should I bite the bullet? It's been 15 years since I've tried some small Mastercam and manual G code programming in university (fanuc), so basically need to start from zero. But then again I have time to learn.. I think TC-229 is powerful enough for steel as well at least with small feeds?
Thank you in advance
I've been looking to upgrade my small 330kg / 730lbs chinese manual milling machine to a bigger manual. However I've noticed that with same or even lower price you could get mid nineties CNC milling machine like Brother TC-211 or TC-229. What is it with these machines, are they awkward to program or endless money pits or what, why are they so cheap? I think I could do most if not all the machining work I encounter with NC machine but that would of course mean programming every task even the smallest (I'm not sure can you use the remote jog for smallest task?). But as a hobbyist I have all the time in the world to do so I don’t bother. What I’m especially exited is that with NC machine I’d be able to do radius and other stuff manual cant.
What do you think, does this make any sense and should I bite the bullet? It's been 15 years since I've tried some small Mastercam and manual G code programming in university (fanuc), so basically need to start from zero. But then again I have time to learn.. I think TC-229 is powerful enough for steel as well at least with small feeds?
Thank you in advance
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