[Sandiapaul]

Not much talk about this machine here. Anyone own one who can comment?

Thanks!

[awerby]

And I've got one, which I use for my own projects as well as to demonstrate it. Do you own one of these mills, or are you thinking about getting one? I got into it as an alternative for customers who wanted a small high-precision mill capable of cutting metals. It's solidly built, mostly from steel, with large square-section linear rails and ballscrews, and has a capacious table that's made of cast iron. It uses a "bridge" design instead of a gantry, so the Y axis is fixed while the table moves, which helps with rigidity. I've cut all sorts of metals and plastics with it, up to and including mild steel. The stock spindle motor (it can also be ordered with a high-speed NSK spindle) is relatively small, but it's powerful for its size and runs at up to 12,000 RPM. It has an ER-16 spindle which takes tooling up to 3/8" diameter. I've had good luck using it for designs where I needed fine detail or parts that needed to fit in specific spaces where a little backlash would be an issue. What else would you like to know about it?

Andrew Werby
www.computersculpture.com

[Sandiapaul]

Andrew,

Thanks for the response! I don't have one but am considering it. I want to make very small highly and finely detailed parts for the model and miniatures world. The parts would be used as masters for castings. I'd also like to make molds for injection molding. THese would be tiny, but highly detailed parts, think N scale model trains where a rivet would be about.005" in diam and about as tall. I would mill in plastics, brass and alum and wax as well. 12,000 RPM would be OK, to start with anyway. I am a total newbie to full 3 and 4 axis machining.

THe above is hobby/business. I'd also use it in my primary business where I do prototypes and mechanisms. I have a Prototrak Bridgeport and this would be for the stuff that is too small and to supplement it.

Can I use Onecnc which I own to bring CAM into it? From what I read they use a modified version of Mach.

How would you compare it(if you know) to the Neo and the Minitech machines?



Thanks again,

Paul

[awerby]

Andrew,

Thanks for the response! I don't have one but am considering it. I want to make very small highly and finely detailed parts for the model and miniatures world. The parts would be used as masters for castings. I'd also like to make molds for injection molding. THese would be tiny, but highly detailed parts, think N scale model trains where a rivet would be about.005" in diam and about as tall. I would mill in plastics, brass and alum and wax as well. 12,000 RPM would be OK, to start with anyway. I am a total newbie to full 3 and 4 axis machining.

[For features that small, you might want the faster spindle option. Running very small tools requires very fast speeds, if you want to maintain reasonable feedrates.]

THe above is hobby/business. I'd also use it in my primary business where I do prototypes and mechanisms. I have a Prototrak Bridgeport and this would be for the stuff that is too small and to supplement it.

[That makes sense. It won't take a cut as heavy as the Bridgeport can, but it will do finer work.]

Can I use Onecnc which I own to bring CAM into it? From what I read they use a modified version of Mach.

[If OneCNC has a Mach3 postprocessor, then it should work well right out of the box. If they don't, then you might have to fiddle with a generic Fanuc post to get all the G-code functions working right.]

How would you compare it(if you know) to the Neo and the Minitech machines?

[I don't know much about those machines; the Neo is made in the UK, and would probably cost a lot to import. Minitech has a number of different options, and the ACT would be comparable to the ones in the middle to upper range. But I'm pretty sure it's less expensive.]



Thanks again,

Paul

No problem, Paul.

Andrew Werby
www.computersculpture.com