Thread: A very small Shop for very small machines.

I'm a big fan of the entrepreneurial spirit that's on Practical Machinist. For years I studied the threads of members shops planning to have my own one day. About two years ago that journey started, since this forum and the members where defiantly part of my inspiration I wanted to share where I'm at.

The primary focus for my business was tooling for carbide stamping dies and high speed automation. As a tooling designer I new could leverage my contacts in that field for work. I also do regular machine shop work but that's only 20 percent of my business.

- Haas mini mill for the pre heat treat work. it also handles the occasional non tooling related job.
-Parker majestic #2 for surface grinding, I need to build or buy a lot of work holding for this. right now it's limited to flat square and parallel blocks.
-Mori Seiki NVD 1500 DCG- I wanted to start machining carbide form punches and dies and regular steel hard cutting. This machine was purpose built for that work. The 40K spindle allows me to be competitive with the small tooling i need to use. I'm cutting carbide with tools as small as .008 and steel down to .004". The travels are x5.9" by y5.9" , most of my work is under 2" so that's fine.


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Good to see you here Adam, been following you on IG for awhile always some neat stuff.

What kind of tooling do you use to mill carbide? Or I guess another question is what grade carbide are you milling?

That little Mori looks cool!

Ahh, after JP's comment, I just made the connection between you and the SMW shop tour!
Cool to see you ventured off on your own path. The stuff you do looks very cool. And, that little Mori is quite interesting.
Thanks for sharing.

How about more photos of that little Mori, it looks real interesting!

I general cut 12 and 15 percent cobalt in a variety of grain and binder conditions. Most people assume that this is happening at the green state before sintering but this is fully hard 89 rockwell. When I first start doing this I machined a pattern into an endmill for a show and tell piece, now Kern has bested me and made a very elaborate show piece with gear teeth and a threaded hole. For tooling I mainlt us Union tool, but an old friend has been put in charge of PH Horns Carbide Machining Program in the States, so i might start messing with their cutters. Stepover, feed per tooth, and doc are all very small when doing this work. Finishing cycles can be several hours, which suits me fine.

A .5mm R ball endmill and two carbide work pieces.




this part is M390 finished with cbn

Moving the mori was stressful. My friends and I handled the Rig as we do with all of our equipment. The mori is 40 inches wide but the way it sat on the trailer and cribbage meant we had to inset the forks to 30 inches, very tippy looking going across the street.

I liked the wood trays on the machine, gives it a real touch of class.

Originally Posted by wheelieking71

Ahh, after JP's comment, I just made the connection between you and the SMW shop tour!
Cool to see you ventured off on your own path. The stuff you do looks very cool. And, that little Mori is quite interesting.
Thanks for sharing.

Thanks, I had fun making that video with John and Ed. High Speed Manufacturing doesn't get as much attention as machining, so it was rewarding to see the video do so well view wise. I enjoyed working there, the scale of the projects was fascinating and I got exposed to some very interesting technology.

Looks like an interesting niche market, I always assumed carbide was all done by grinding/edm, thanks for sharing.
That Mori is pretty cute.

under the sheet metal. The bridge frame holds the z axis and straddles the table, twin screws on z and y . also the 30 pot ATC

What kind of spindle taper is that for the Mori?

The plant that I worked at had some high speed Bruderer presses that ran carbide stamping dies. Amazing how fast they could run and still hold tight tolerances.

this sounds really cool as to fairly small footprint. When looking at the thread title, I thought that you were talking about micro machines and various ways to photo etch parts on silicone.

What types of manufacturing would use these dies? What will they stamp with it, sheet metal?

Originally Posted by _boris_

this sounds really cool as to fairly small footprint. When looking at the thread title, I thought that you were talking about micro machines and various ways to photo etch parts on silicone.

What types of manufacturing would use these dies? What will they stamp with it, sheet metal?

Boris, Most of the dies I make components for run thin material, stainless and copper alloys are fairly common. The parts are generally contacts connectors, terminals and mounts for electrical applications.

Originally Posted by Mike1974

What kind of spindle taper is that for the Mori?

hsk e32, Max capacity is 10mm

Originally Posted by SND

Looks like an interesting niche market, I always assumed carbide was all done by grinding/edm, thanks for sharing.
That Mori is pretty cute.

Machining carbide certainly has its limitations and I don't see those other methods going away. I try to rough as much as possible on the surface grinder, not only is it time consuming to mill but the cutter cost is about 3x to 4x a comparable size conventional tool. Where it works for me and the few customer I have is low quantity work on 3d dimensional forms.

Been following you on IG for a minute... glad to see you here! Very interesting work... your previous job was interesting as well. Not to hurt anyones feelings but its also cool to see someone in their garage that isn't in the aluminum widget game.

Originally Posted by kustomizingkid

Been following you on IG for a minute... glad to see you here! Very interesting work... your previous job was interesting as well. Not to hurt anyones feelings but its also cool to see someone in their garage that isn't in the aluminum widget game.

No kidding, right! They should all leave that to the professionals........like me!

I agree with you though Kid. Your work is pretty freaking amazing Adam.

Thanks for sharing. That Mori is very interesting...I've never seen that model before.

btm