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Looking for cnc mill to fit 7ft door

MoriMillMan

Aluminum
Joined
Jan 6, 2019
Looking for cnc mill to fit through 7ft door. No knee mills bed type will be considered but hoping to find a small vmc. Siemens would be strongly preferred but I know there's not many to be had.

Let me know what you got.

I'm in Missouri. 20k max

Thanks

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Chevalier lists their EM1620L as max 91" high, and their brochure picture suggests the upper structure could be taken off to make it shorter than 84". EM1620L / 2033L / 2040L EM1620L-2033L-2040L. At 91", it is the shortest full-on VMC I have run across. I am not sure what the upper structure is, but it does not look like a casting. A Euro-style CNC like a Deckel or Maho can easily fit under 84". They're better than a knee mill, but not a VMC and have no ATC.
 
To be completely honest, any machine can basically fir through a door of that size. An ideal machine is derived from what you intend to do with it and what you NEED it to do, then upsize that as much as possible. What fits is more a function of how much you are willing to disassemble and reassemble. A FADAL is my suggestion, the upper motor is easy to remove and reinstall and there are lots of parts and support available. They are not the fastest machine, however it is all in what you NEED/want it to do. Your budget is also a large portion, off hand there are many machines that can be lightly disassembled to get through your door, i.e., HAAS mini mill, HAAS VF0 (older style), ProtoTRAK has a 2nd OP machine that has a small footprint and low overhead height, there is another machine out there similar to it but the travels are minimal. Can you be more specific as to what you need in terms of table travels, tooling, etc.
 
Thanks guys. I'm just trying to find a good machine to start out with. It will do a 200ish pc engraving job first and some other small milled features . Thats in steel and cast. After that no idea. want to get the most machine I can within my limitations of height and money.



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Getting thru a 7' door to what's on the other side?

8',9'..10'

engraving you probably want a higher rpm spindle

what's your available floor space once inside?
 
1984 Kitamura My Center 1 | eBay

Laugh all you want but that is a good machine to start with and likely a very simple fix

I don't know about that machine but many machines will throw a spindle alarm when it's just an open chain preventing the spindle amp from coming on.

I have an 85 H300 Kit... That same machine with 10k more iron turned on it's side... I would agree that 08 spindle alarm is probably a very easy fix.

Two reasons I would not recommend buying that kit vertical- No enclosure will be a disappointment. It's probably BT35. If it doesn't come with toolholders I would make sure what you need is available.

I had an early 90's Mitsubishi MV40. I think Takisawa made the same machine or rebadged it as well. That thing was a little ass-kicker. Big tool mag inside the column made it super compact- Literally 5ft square footprint, but it still had like 16x24 travels. I should have kept it, but I got a big $$$ offer from a hobby guy and sold it.
 
I have an 85 H300 Kit... That same machine with 10k more iron turned on it's side... I would agree that 08 spindle alarm is probably a very easy fix.

Two reasons I would not recommend buying that kit vertical- No enclosure will be a disappointment. It's probably BT35. If it doesn't come with toolholders I would make sure what you need is available.

I had an early 90's Mitsubishi MV40. I think Takisawa made the same machine or rebadged it as well. That thing was a little ass-kicker. Big tool mag inside the column made it super compact- Literally 5ft square footprint, but it still had like 16x24 travels. I should have kept it, but I got a big $$$ offer from a hobby guy and sold it.

While I agree not having an enclosure is a PITA the fact the OP is concerned with door height makes me immediately dismiss any luxuries such as enclosures or necessities of production. I've seen people get by with some creative guarding.

As far as BT35, they are often on ebay and I've seen big lots of them go for very little at auctions. Such as 300 pieces for a grand.

In regards to the Takisawa/Mitsu, I think there is one of those on ebay right now
 
While I agree not having an enclosure is a PITA the fact the OP is concerned with door height makes me immediately dismiss any luxuries such as enclosures or necessities of production. I've seen people get by with some creative guarding.

As far as BT35, they are often on ebay and I've seen big lots of them go for very little at auctions. Such as 300 pieces for a grand.

In regards to the Takisawa/Mitsu, I think there is one of those on ebay right now

BT35 is kinda strange because nothing has used it for decades, but they made a shitload of machines with it in the 80's. I believe it was also common for wood routers into the 90's. Owning one, I find that finding what I need can be a PITA and expensive. I got 100+ toolholders with my Kitamura, but, of coarse, 95 of them were useless for me. I've bought quite a few on Ebay and there's definitely more demand than supply.

In contrast, I had a BT45 machine for years. You can buy anything BT45 for peanuts on Ebay. Shitloads of it are available. I bought brand new tapping heads for $15 each and a new 90 degree head for a couple hundred.
 
How big the the engraving work you have planned? Would something like this work out or is it too small: [Mori Seiki NVD1500 DCG]. REMEMBER: it may not be too small now, but near every machine becomes too small at one point or another. Granted you can't see the future or know exactly how things are going to turn out, however you can make a fair assumption as to what you do or do not want to do with your equipment. The biggest cost is the machine, also the biggest cost is tooling the machine. Endmills, drill sets, reamers, carbide inserts, tool holders, indexable tooling, single point stuff (for engraving), work holding (vises, fixtures, bolting, t-nuts, etc, and an box to organize everything. This is the stuff that winds up costing thousands upon thousands. Buy quality stuff, avoid China and similar quality as you get what you pay for. You outgrow machines, rarely does someone outgrow the tooling when you enter in at the level you are inferring. Avoid Tormach and similar machines, they don't have the spindle RPM you would want and the cost is what you could get a used Mini-Mill for.
 
BT35 is kinda strange because nothing has used it for decades, but they made a shitload of machines with it in the 80's. I believe it was also common for wood routers into the 90's. Owning one, I find that finding what I need can be a PITA and expensive. I got 100+ toolholders with my Kitamura, but, of coarse, 95 of them were useless for me. I've bought quite a few on Ebay and there's definitely more demand than supply.

In contrast, I had a BT45 machine for years. You can buy anything BT45 for peanuts on Ebay. Shitloads of it are available. I bought brand new tapping heads for $15 each and a new 90 degree head for a couple hundred.

Pretty sure Nikken still makes them. I know they are around 2+ bills each but I don't see the OP needing 500 holders.

Funny thing is I was looking at a machine that was BT45 and that scared me away as I had never heard of it.
 
Pretty sure Nikken still makes them. I know they are around 2+ bills each but I don't see the OP needing 500 holders.

Funny thing is I was looking at a machine that was BT45 and that scared me away as I had never heard of it.

I liked BT45. It's closer to 50 taper than 40. Seemed like a real good size to me. The Mori I had came with 100K+ spindle run hours on the original spindle. Spindle was still excellent when I scrapped it, only 4500 rpm though.
 
How big the the engraving work you have planned? Would something like this work out or is it too small: [Mori Seiki NVD1500 DCG]. REMEMBER: it may not be too small now, but near every machine becomes too small at one point or another. Granted you can't see the future or know exactly how things are going to turn out, however you can make a fair assumption as to what you do or do not want to do with your equipment. The biggest cost is the machine, also the biggest cost is tooling the machine. Endmills, drill sets, reamers, carbide inserts, tool holders, indexable tooling, single point stuff (for engraving), work holding (vises, fixtures, bolting, t-nuts, etc, and an box to organize everything. This is the stuff that winds up costing thousands upon thousands. Buy quality stuff, avoid China and similar quality as you get what you pay for. You outgrow machines, rarely does someone outgrow the tooling when you enter in at the level you are inferring. Avoid Tormach and similar machines, they don't have the spindle RPM you would want and the cost is what you could get a used Mini-Mill for.
Thats probably too small but really cool machine. I'm not really looking for a machine solely for engraving. I would probably be fine at 5k rpm honestly. I dont expect to do engraving frequently. Just want good general purpose machine 20inch + x travel and hopefully with a modern control (I really want siemens 810/828/840) I'm being kind of picky or I'd probably have a used mini mill or fadal. Just hoping to find something nicer

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I do see a bostomatic 400-1 with newly retrofitted 828d control. 20inch x but 40inch ish table. Insanely oversized box ways bigger than we have at work on machines 5x the size. 40k secondary spindle 5k main. Second isn't wired or integrated. A retrofit companies side project. Comes with lots of tooling.

Anyone have thoughts on this?

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Checkout Brother Speedio, I got one under a low doorway into my shop. Yamazen removed part of the machine to get it through the door.
 
Checkout Brother Speedio, I got one under a low doorway into my shop. Yamazen removed part of the machine to get it through the door.
I've seen a few i think they were pushing it on price for me.

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