Hey guys, first let me make this clear - I'm new to metalworking, having found my way over here through woodworking - specifically, INCRA woodshop equipment sparking my desire to learn to mill metal. So please bear with yet another fng / stupid newbie asking stupid newbie questions that have probably been answered over and over again.
2nd, I'm going to take some time to explain my situation. I'd like to learn how to mill, with the end goal of learning how to CNC my own designs. I work in the knife industry and have my own products / designs I'd like to make, so I'll be working in 6061, 7075, 440, 154-CM, S30V, 6AL4V, G10 and some other materials. I am not looking to set up a large shop or factory. I do not have access to a huge workshop area. Let me emphasize this: I do not have a huge garage / shop area available. So for you guys who are going to immediately say, "Buy a bridgeport!" I'll respond with "I'd love to, but that isn't in the cards, right now."
My location choices are: the basement of my house (optimal), the warehouse of my work (suboptimal, as I don't want to drive 20mi to tinker with designs), and my garage (worst of all, since there's no room, no place to park my truck if not in the garage, it's unheated, and we have a high break-in and vandalism rate here). Not to mention the commander will unleash her fury on me if it's in the garage.
So, that leads us to 3: what I've done thus far. I've been searching, googling, and reading through this forum for over a week now, collecting more information. I'm now asking for advice, because my meager knowledge is depleted.
The idea is to machine items, be it firearms accessories, sharp pointy things, or other misc & sundry stuff, that will measure from 2" long (small knife handle scales), 17" or more long (large fixed blade knives), or 30" pieces of aluminum (not likely but it's nice to dream). Yes, I know the restrictions on making firearms myself, I've done the research on this so we don't need to waste time with that discussion - I'm not going to break the law. I've spent too much money on my suppressors and machineguns to have them taken away for doing something stupid in my home shop. I just want to get my accessory designs down and do home work / prototyping before having large shops do the actual production on my product designs that I've come up with.
The ideal would be to find a
Research thus far has shown me that this doesn't seem possible. No way I'd be able to break down a bridgeport that small, and it'd be too tall regardless.
- knee mill of some sort,
- with head tilt & swivel,
- already set up for CNC,
- with a nice large table
- with the ability to contour cut,
- (if CNC, allows manual setup too)
- no taller than 86",
- able to be broken down enough to get into my basement through 30" doors
- runs on single phase, or can be converted to single phase
- for under 7k preferably, under 10k max.
My forum members (bladeforums.com) recommended Sherline initially, but research here shows they aren't sturdy enough, and there isn't enough X/Y/Z travel for me. Further research lead me to the X2, then the X3 / Super X3, but I have doubts about it's ability to machine something like an AR-15 upper receiver to the tolerances I want. In addition, it seems to lack the head tilt & rotate options I want, which just many not be possible without a knee mill (again, I'm ignorant & new on this subject). From what I gather, it's more important that the head tilt than rotate anyhow, since I can always add a rotary table to the machine for an additional axis of movement.
So, here I am. What's the next direction I should look in? Should I be focusing on Tormach? Industrial Hobbies looks good but is really lacking in information on their site. I called Microkinetics today, and they should be sending me a quote, but it seems that their head swivels around the base but doesn't tilt. Basically, I'm getting very frustrated and don't know if I'm looking in the right directions, or even what I should be looking for at this point.