[z28]

I am thinking about pulling the trigger on a new Tormach 770. I have never used a mill. I have built my own cnc plasma table so i understand the basics of cnc. I use solidworks, sheetcam, and I have messed around with meshcam. I want to machine my own billet parts out of T6 6061 Alloy. I have the knowledge to create them in solidworks. Im pretty mechanical I am self taught in solidworks and sheetcam and I seem to get around pretty well. I guess im just looking for a little insparation not sure if I will be getting in over my head. I dont mind spending the 12000.00-15000.00 on a tormach if its somthing a beginner can figure out. I have thought about buying a Taig desktop to learn on but I dont think I would be happy with it after I figured everything out. Everything I have read says buy the biggest mill you can afford. I want to be able to run a small production line with this thing and I dont think the Taig would be up to this.

Any suggestions would be appreciated. Is this a machine I can learn on?

Shane

[David Bord]

I am thinking about pulling the trigger on a new Tormach 770. I have never used a mill. I have built my own cnc plasma table so i understand the basics of cnc. I use solidworks, sheetcam, and I have messed around with meshcam. I want to machine my own billet parts out of T6 6061 Alloy. I have the knowledge to create them in solidworks. Im pretty mechanical I am self taught in solidworks and sheetcam and I seem to get around pretty well. I guess im just looking for a little insparation not sure if I will be getting in over my head. I dont mind spending the 12000.00-15000.00 on a tormach if its somthing a beginner can figure out. I have thought about buying a Taig desktop to learn on but I dont think I would be happy with it after I figured everything out. Everything I have read says buy the biggest mill you can afford. I want to be able to run a small production line with this thing and I dont think the Taig would be up to this.

Any suggestions would be appreciated. Is this a machine I can learn on?

Shane

Shane, I was in your exact same situation before buying the PCNC 1100. Self taught in solidworks, very mechanical but nearly no mill or cnc experience. I wanted to build parts for the cars I have built.

I would say, yes the Tormach is the perfect mill for you. I'd consider the 1100 though for the work envelope.

It's taken me some time to get pretty proficient on the mill, but I've enjoyed every minute of it... Well almost every minute

What kind of parts do you want to make?

David

[philbur]

If you've built and used your own CNC plasma table and also used CAD and CAM then your are 7/8ths the way up the learning curve. All you really need now is a bit on speed/feeds and workholding.

What's to think about, you should have already placed your order.(chair)

Phil

[rowbare]

What Phil said. You already have a firm grasp of what beginners struggle the most with.

The only thing that might trip you up is the actual mechanics of cutting but you will get a feel for that quickly. Get a good feed and speed calculator (GWizard is excellent), a fist full of medium priced end mills and a hundred bucks worth of stock and play. Once you have broken all of those end mills and reduced that stock to chips, you will be doing pretty well.

I would also suggest that you get a couple of books on work holding and fixturing since that will take up a lot of your time. Tormach sells a couple of decent ones and if you can find any of Edward G. Hoffman's books on the subject for a reasonable price, jump on them.

If you live near Wisconsin, Tormach has a couple of their fully equipped showroom models listed for sale in the Outlet Store section...

Good luck!

bob

[riabma]

z28,

I was in the same boat, except I never used a CNC before or have any CAM experience. The Tormach is a great machine for learning that can open the doors for light production machining. In top of that, Tormach offers an excellent technical support. I am even considering to buy another Tormach!

For practicing I would begin making chips with inexpensive plastics like PVC or Delrin. Probably you will save some money breaking cutting tools...

Ricardo

[Steve Seebold]

z28,

I was in the same boat, except I never used a CNC before or have any CAM experience. The Tormach is a great machine for learning that can open the doors for light production machining. In top of that, Tormach offers an excellent technical support. I am even considering to buy another Tormach!

For practicing I would begin making chips with inexpensive plastics like PVC or Delrin. Probably you will save some money breaking cutting tools...

Ricardo

It has always been my contention that to be good on a CNC milling machine, you need 10 years experience on a conventional machine.

BUT, that being said, there are plenty of guys (myself included) who will be more than happy to help you get started.

[riabma]

It has always been my contention that to be good on a CNC milling machine, you need 10 years experience on a conventional machine.

BUT, that being said, there are plenty of guys (myself included) who will be more than happy to help you get started.

Good point Steve, but what do you think is better, 10 years learning in a CNC machine, or 10 years in a conventional machine?

I think sooner or later conventional milling machines will be obsoletes, and affordable CNC machines like the Tormach will open the museum door to conventional machines. Personally, I would not change my PCNC for a conv. machine for learning purposes.

Ricardo

[David Bord]

It has always been my contention that to be good on a CNC milling machine, you need 10 years experience on a conventional machine

...

Steve, I was told the same thing, so lacked that experience. I agree that manual mill experience would be a bit help. My biggest problem was speeds and feeds. Until I got G-Wizard, I didnt realize I had been rubbing my cutters to death. Once I had a tool that helped me get that right, I made huge improvements in the quality of my machining.

What Phil said. You already have a firm grasp of what beginners struggle the most with.

The only thing that might trip you up is the actual mechanics of cutting but you will get a feel for that quickly. Get a good feed and speed calculator (GWizard is excellent), a fist full of medium priced end mills and a hundred bucks worth of stock and play. Once you have broken all of those end mills and reduced that stock to chips, you will be doing pretty well.

I would also suggest that you get a couple of books on work holding and fixturing since that will take up a lot of your time. Tormach sells a couple of decent ones and if you can find any of Edward G. Hoffman's books on the subject for a reasonable price, jump on them.

If you live near Wisconsin, Tormach has a couple of their fully equipped showroom models listed for sale in the Outlet Store section...

Good luck!

I think this is very good advice... Pretty much what I did.

David

[proengines]

Buy one. I have around 20 years experience with manual machines which probably helped and I'm also pretty good with CAD. I had never programmed a mill or used CAM software but I produced my first $1200 part within a week of getting the machine using basic $80 downloaded CAM software and cutting a lot of air and wood to work it all out.

The machine paid for itself in 6-8 months doing work that I wasn't able to do before and was sending out and making almost no money from. If you have something to make that you can sell and the time to do it you can't go wrong. It's a steep learning curve at the start but very rewarding.

My best advice is that you can't break a cutter cutting air. I run a lot of programs 100mm above the true Z zero before I cut anything and it has saved a lot of grief and damage.

[z28]

Thanks for all of the replys. I think I will go for it.

Shane

[philbur]

I have to say I have never understood the logic of this statement.

Machinist no 1: 15 year on CNC
Machinist no 2: 10 years on manual + 5 year on CNC

All other things being equal who would you pick to be the better CNC machinist.

Substitute other numbers, I think the implications are the same.

You actually (need to) learn and understand much more as a CNC machinist than you do as a manual machinist, because it's a lot less forgiving.

Phil

It has always been my contention that to be good on a CNC milling machine, you need 10 years experience on a conventional machine.

[Sp-4renegade]

I am thinking about pulling the trigger on a new Tormach 770. I have never used a mill. I have built my own cnc plasma table so i understand the basics of cnc. I use solidworks, sheetcam, and I have messed around with meshcam. I want to machine my own billet parts out of T6 6061 Alloy. I have the knowledge to create them in solidworks. Im pretty mechanical I am self taught in solidworks and sheetcam and I seem to get around pretty well. I guess im just looking for a little insparation not sure if I will be getting in over my head. I dont mind spending the 12000.00-15000.00 on a tormach if its somthing a beginner can figure out. I have thought about buying a Taig desktop to learn on but I dont think I would be happy with it after I figured everything out. Everything I have read says buy the biggest mill you can afford. I want to be able to run a small production line with this thing and I dont think the Taig would be up to this.

Any suggestions would be appreciated. Is this a machine I can learn on?

Shane

I bought my 1100 series 3 in march of 2012. Zero cad/cam knowlage. 30 years of manuals, some cnc lathe with MDI. The Tormachs wizards and All the great support from everyone made it a great investment. I want to pay off my investment in 1 year, $1250 a month. Well for the most part it has been holding down the floor. Now that I got it set up the way I want and can use flood coolant, learned some programing. Now I am doing more and more work with it. Now I have short run production orders for it. I may be slow getting that 1st part done, but so cool to load the next and hit start. Ka ching. I just wished I bought it in Sept 2011, Instead of waiting. I was hard core manual shop. Both have there place, but all in all the Tormach is even for doing just one part, the Tormach is doing the work now.

[Spinnetti]

Only thing I'll add is that without any milling experience, mistakes will be painful and costly. Do lots of dry runs/z inhibit before you try to cut parts...

[tbaker2500]

Sound like the voice of experience. :-)

[Steve Seebold]

I am thinking about pulling the trigger on a new Tormach 770. I have never used a mill. I have built my own cnc plasma table so i understand the basics of cnc. I use solidworks, sheetcam, and I have messed around with meshcam. I want to machine my own billet parts out of T6 6061 Alloy. I have the knowledge to create them in solidworks. Im pretty mechanical I am self taught in solidworks and sheetcam and I seem to get around pretty well. I guess im just looking for a little insparation not sure if I will be getting in over my head. I dont mind spending the 12000.00-15000.00 on a tormach if its somthing a beginner can figure out. I have thought about buying a Taig desktop to learn on but I dont think I would be happy with it after I figured everything out. Everything I have read says buy the biggest mill you can afford. I want to be able to run a small production line with this thing and I dont think the Taig would be up to this.

Any suggestions would be appreciated. Is this a machine I can learn on?

Shane

If you're even remotely considering the Tormach, DO NOT buy the Taig.

I made the same mistake 4 years ago. I bought 2 Dyna-Mite 2400's with the idea I was going to make a killing in the micro machining industry. I paid $3,500.00 for one machine and $2,500 for the second one.

These are nice LITTLE machines. The operative word here being LITTLE They both had 10,000 RPM spindles, and they rapid at a rip snortin' 30 IPM. That was OK though. They only had 6.2 inches of X travel, 5 inches of Y and 4 inches of Z.

Oh yeah, and you couldn't change tools with the Dyna-Mites. I had to run all the parts with one tool, then make another program to run the next tool. There were quick change tools available, but they were unbieveably expensive.

Then 3 years later, I bought my Tormach.

Since the Tormach got here, the Dyna-Mites are have become dust collectors. All they are doing now is taking up valuable real estate.

The same thing will happen with your Taig if you choose to go that way.

[Spinnetti]

Sound like the voice of experience. :-)

I can't complain too much. Did my first CNC mill conversion in 2002, and in 10 years, put one dimple in the table, and chewed the end of a vise and broke some tools, but thats about it. One thing my old mill (servos) did that Tormach does not is "kick out" if it overloads - kind of a built in safety net.

[adamvs]

Thumbs up from me. I recently bought a one year old used 1100 with a bunch of tooling and so far am completely happy with it. It's a sturdy accurate machine. I use autoCAD Inventor and SprutCam, which came with the sale. There is a lot of support in the Tormach community, and Tormach itself is committed to upgrade paths. For the money, I don't see a better alternative.

[tosatool1]

For the money, the capability is there with the Tormach. The most valuable thing about the Tormach is the support, the instant shipping, and the availability of parts and know how. I have been a PCNC consultant for almost 8 years now and I am proud to tell my customers "Tormach will back up their product" when they have problems.

They have excitement for their product like Apple engineers or Microsoft employees, its amazing. No "factory" attitude over there. I foresee many new and amazing products from this company for years to come.

[adamvs]

10 years experience is certainly good, but I don't think it's necessary. Manual is a good basis, but CNC is different animal. For one you are not limited to X,Y,Z in the linear, so you can go literally from art-to-part. I strongly recommend you get some good CAM software, e.g., waterline roughing is highly productive. That said, I also strongly recommend you learn basic gcode. I recently was making some parts that I put on a fixture at an angle to preserve material, and I spent the good part of a day trying to get my CAM software to carve simple channel at an angle. I couldn't get it to generate anything but these convoluted tool paths, so I ended up hand coding the operation; coding took about an hour.

I also have to add that until I got my own machine, I was using the Tormach at TechShop in San Francisco. Anyone who had 3 hours of basic safety and use training on this tool could use it and believe me it has had more that it's fair share of abuse and crashes. It still holds as new tolerances. That really impressed me.

The only criticism I have about the Tormach is the tooling, and specifically the ER-20 tooling, which by nature can induce deflection because it's R8 to 3/4 shank to collet holder. So I try to do all my roughing in the solid tool holders and leave the smallest amount for finishing.

I also had a need for some small short length lathe parts for a racing project. I put some 1/2 inch Ti bar into the solid tool holder, lathe tool in the vise, and used it as a simple CNC lathe. Great machine!