Hello guys, I'm looking for some real world experience. I recently purchased a 1996 BP VMC1000 that came with a ton of tooling but no boring head. I run a small shop producing automotive performance parts, not space shuttle parts. I've only ever used the criterion .001" boring heads that I'm pretty sure every machine shop owns (including myself). It works well enough in my cincy toolmaster with indexable bars, but I have definitely opened a few bores up more than .001" when the dial was turned one division. Barring my past experience, I'm thinking that a precision adjust boring head might be a better match for the cnc even though I don't need to chase tenths every day like many here.
There are a few parts I'm planning that will require .75"-1.5" diameter holes about 1.25" deep in aluminum and durabar. Quantity will be maybe a few hundred a year and tolerances of +/- .0005" is more than enough.
So that brings me to the question of has anyone actually used one of the import precision boring head sets like this Precision Boring Facing Head .0002" fine machining 8mm-201mm (0.315"-7.9") Comb | eBay Obviously its Chinese, but it looks to be significantly above harbor freight level Chinesium. Naturally all the inserts it comes with will strictly be used on test pieces and Sandvik/iscar/kennemetal inserts used for parts. I've looked at other boring sets (such as the nice maritool package), but they're all $1.5k+ and just can't be justified at the current moment. Maybe in a year or two, but the machine needs to actually make some parts and get out of the money pit stage haha. I have a spare long 3/4" straight shank criterion head that I could chuck up in a holder and use in the cnc, but I'm expecting that will end up fighting me to hold any kind of repeating.
Thanks for any real world feedback!
There are a few parts I'm planning that will require .75"-1.5" diameter holes about 1.25" deep in aluminum and durabar. Quantity will be maybe a few hundred a year and tolerances of +/- .0005" is more than enough.
So that brings me to the question of has anyone actually used one of the import precision boring head sets like this Precision Boring Facing Head .0002" fine machining 8mm-201mm (0.315"-7.9") Comb | eBay Obviously its Chinese, but it looks to be significantly above harbor freight level Chinesium. Naturally all the inserts it comes with will strictly be used on test pieces and Sandvik/iscar/kennemetal inserts used for parts. I've looked at other boring sets (such as the nice maritool package), but they're all $1.5k+ and just can't be justified at the current moment. Maybe in a year or two, but the machine needs to actually make some parts and get out of the money pit stage haha. I have a spare long 3/4" straight shank criterion head that I could chuck up in a holder and use in the cnc, but I'm expecting that will end up fighting me to hold any kind of repeating.
Thanks for any real world feedback!