[ChipMagnet]

Hi there,

I'm 20 years old and have been machining anodizing paintball guns and small automotive parts for about 4 years now on my little harbor freight special mini-mill and mini lathe. Now I know what you guys are thinking. What a piece of crap. Well it gets the job done....sometimes haha.

I've been doing a little research on a cheap CNC kit. Well as you may be thinking I started at ebay. Found out quickly that most if not all of those are trash. So I found these kits. They seem to be pretty nice. And EZ

HobbyCNC EZ Driver Board Packages | HobbyCNC

I was planing on buying the one with the 305oz motors. Now I know that should be enough for my mini mill, but when the time is right I plan on picking up a small to medium knee mill. Will this run that mill ok?

Here is what I'm doing now if you guys are interested.









The mill and a Project I did a while back.



Feel free to poke around my photobucket to see some of my finished projects if it intrigues you.


Also any suggestions on software would be incredible. I have little to no experience with cad. I do have less than legit copy of the newest autocad that I acquired to mess around with to see if I can learn it. I can follow the tutorials on youtube (making a tea cup) as of now. As I understand it you also need a program to create tool paths? What should I start out with their? Anything with free is the best. For now.

Thanks! Stephen

[rowbare]

I think you will find it underpowered. Those motors at 3.2 mh inductance want about 57 volts for best performance (using the formula voltage = 32 * sqrt(inductance) to determine operating voltage). As well they are a 4.2 A motor and the board is only capable of 3 amps, so you are effectively derating the motor to ~220 oz-in to begin with.

The 205 they list seem to be a better match for that controller. At 2.2 mh induction, they are a 47 v motor so you will be running them closer to their rated voltage and they are a 3A motor so will develop their rated power. They would really sing with a Gecko G540 though...

Please don't take my word for it. There are a lot of people here who have converted mini-mills so check out their build threads and see what they have done. There is a lot of information available here, so take your time, do a lot of searches and read a lot. You will find some conflicting information so you will need to decide which you choose to accept or reject. Also be aware of when information was posted. The landscape has changed considerably over the past few years. 4 years ago a lot of people were converting X2s and using Xylotek drivers. Since then Gecko released the G540, Grizzly the G0704 and several companies like Keling have started selling well regarded stepper drives from the middle kingdom.

Also check out Hossmachine Homepage. Hoss did some amazing stuff with an X2 though he has since move on to a G0704.

good luck!

bob

[ChipMagnet]

Arg. Seems to be not worth the time and money to convert this machine. I feel quite overwhelmed when I try to pick the product I want.

Any full cnc machines you can guys can recommend?

I like the tormach 770. This is the size I'm looking for.

I don't care if the machine is used or new. I prefer used simply for the price break.

Any ideas guys? My ideal price is 5,000, but I realize this might be a bit unrealistic.

Thanks for the help!

[Robin Taylor]

Let me add a X2 to wanting info on the Tormach 770/1100. I've got a mini-Grizzly that I use for some rough prototyping, but would very much like to have something that could accept programs and do lightweight production in aluminum, brass, and Delrin.

[Cartel, LLC]

first off... im pretty impressed that youre making that **** on a harbor freight deal! good for you man. ive been in business for 7 years and still dont have a nice vertical band saw. but i gotta *****in angle grinder with a cutting wheel!

back to you... ill give you my advice and this may be a little winded so grab that cup of tea you drew up on AUTOcad!

when i was vmc hunting 3 years ago i looked at several machines all for different reasons. i looked at hurco because i could get a cheaper machine to learn on etc... then i looked at fadal because my neighbor is jfr and they have fadal guys out here all the time. then i looked at haas because there are a **** ton of them out there. well, bill miller (bill miller engineering look him if youd like on google and see what all he does!) told me to get a haas as i had about $20k to play with. now, ill tell you to maybe look at a hurco and heres why...

you obviously are ok with the mess because youre talking about a tormach machine and your harbor freight deal is like that now so you dont probably dont mind cleaning up chips.

you can pick up a decent machine fairly inexpensively. a guy i know here in indy started with a hurco in his garage and used it for 3 years and then when he bought himself a new haas he sold his hurco with tooling for $3500. now, it doesnt have all the bells and whistles but you can drip feed programs to them and use bobcad to do your programming etc...

they usually use standard bridgeport parts so theyre easy to get parts for (hurco is basically a bridgeport knee mill tuned up a bit)

or... do what i did and buy a mid 90's haas to get started and then upgrade when you can afford it. mines a vf-3 and i paid $19,500. now... ive put 4000+ hours on in it the last 2 years and my dealer that i bought it off of has offered to buy it back for $27k now as machine prices have gone up a bit since 2009 when i bought it and im looking at upgrading a bit...

just my $.02

[LouF]

first off... im pretty impressed that youre making that **** on a harbor freight deal! good for you man. ive been in business for 7 years and still dont have a nice vertical band saw. but i gotta *****in angle grinder with a cutting wheel!

back to you... ill give you my advice and this may be a little winded so grab that cup of tea you drew up on AUTOcad!

when i was vmc hunting 3 years ago i looked at several machines all for different reasons. i looked at hurco because i could get a cheaper machine to learn on etc... then i looked at fadal because my neighbor is jfr and they have fadal guys out here all the time. then i looked at haas because there are a **** ton of them out there. well, bill miller (bill miller engineering look him if youd like on google and see what all he does!) told me to get a haas as i had about $20k to play with. now, ill tell you to maybe look at a hurco and heres why...

you obviously are ok with the mess because youre talking about a tormach machine and your harbor freight deal is like that now so you dont probably dont mind cleaning up chips.

you can pick up a decent machine fairly inexpensively. a guy i know here in indy started with a hurco in his garage and used it for 3 years and then when he bought himself a new haas he sold his hurco with tooling for $3500. now, it doesnt have all the bells and whistles but you can drip feed programs to them and use bobcad to do your programming etc...

they usually use standard bridgeport parts so theyre easy to get parts for (hurco is basically a bridgeport knee mill tuned up a bit)

or... do what i did and buy a mid 90's haas to get started and then upgrade when you can afford it. mines a vf-3 and i paid $19,500. now... ive put 4000+ hours on in it the last 2 years and my dealer that i bought it off of has offered to buy it back for $27k now as machine prices have gone up a bit since 2009 when i bought it and im looking at upgrading a bit...

just my $.02

I have seen bill miller's T/F at Pomona he has made some good runs with Troy Buff driver he does great for a small one car team one of the good guys..

Lou