[68rustang]

I recently (January 2007) purchased a PCNC-1100 and love it. SprutCAM has been a little sticky but I have been productive with SheetCAM from the start. I bought the machine as an experiment to see if CNC would really fit in our operations. Well it does, and my list of parts to program is getting longer by the hour. The Tormach is great for my smaller parts but I have quite a few that I would need a larger work envelope for. Are there any similar machines with an 24"-48"x X 18"-24"y work envelope. If Tormach made a bigger machine I would buy three of them. I wouldn't need it any faster. In my minds eye the perfect machine is the PCNC-1100 with more x and y travel.

95% of my parts are made of thermoplastics and acrylic, the remaining 5% are metals ranging from aluminum and brass to stainless and titanium. All the large parts I would need a bigger machine for are plastic.

[keithorr]

If you don't need to cut large metal, how about a router instead of a mill? I cut large 3d graphite on a router and use the tormach for metal parts

[BuilderJon]

To Keithorr -

in reply to:

'If you don't need to cut large metal, how about a router instead of a mill? I cut large 3d graphite on a router and use the tormach for metal parts'

I am about to mill some 3D graphite parts. I will be using them as molds for glass. If my small scale proof-of-concept works, I will be milling many of these molds so I can pour many small glass parts, all identical. So CNC seems the way to go.

I hadn't considered a router. Since my parts are not very large and not very deep, a router might make a lot of sense!

What parts are you routing from graphite? How do you suggest I start looking into routers for my parts? My final glass parts will be about 2" x 4" x 0.5"

I'll probably have to buy a router or mill ready-to-use rather than take the time to convert a manual machine to CNC (or build from scratch).

Thanks for your help and this great forum!

Jon

[MichaelHenry]

I'm no expert, but suspect that you are looking at really big bucks for a new mill with 24x48 (X x Y) work envelope and you'll get a much faster travel speed whether you want it or not. What sort of positional and feature accuracies do you need?

Mike

[keithorr]

To Keithorr -
What parts are you routing from graphite? How do you suggest I start looking into routers for my parts? My final glass parts will be about 2" x 4" x 0.5"
Jon

www.keithorrblowpipes.com/molds.htm The silver can in the top picture is one gallon. The big mold is 24" high with a 20" dia cavity. I don't think you need "many" molds. Casting glass isn't that fast, and the graphite will be cooling the glass fairly quick. Unless you have enough people to handle the molds and load the lehr, you won't need many molds. Production casting molds would be alloy, not graphite.