Hi - I have a reasonable amount of experience with common wood working tools, and just enough with metal cutting mills to be dangerous.
I am toying with buying a fully ready to go, off the shelf, 3925 with all of the rigidity upgrades and their recommended routers, etc. I mostly work with 7000 series Al, some wood, and some polycarbonate. This is for hobby use, not heavy use, but when it is running, I would like to be able to set it up and walk away while it makes several parts.
One of the parts I want to make includes 2 holes approx 20mm dia bored 200mm deep in 7000 series Al. I don't need perfection, but +/- 0.1mm would be nice for roundness and alignment of the holes through the piece.
Since the Z axis max is 8 in, I was wondering if there is a way to have a router mount which would allow the router to be boring horizontally instead of vertically ? This would make it sort of a horizontal boring machine for making these longer holes, which can be helpful for chip removal.
Drilling speed is not an issue, as this is a hobby / proto machine, not for production, but the drill holder must be large enough to hold the bit, which is slightly larger than 3/4 inch. I already have a bit like this which was used in my brothers manual vertical mill. (He lives 2000 miles away, so no, I am not considering upgrading his with cnc controls)
Any comments on the sense / non sense of this idea ?