[Hirudin]

I am trying to get the most out of my Taig mill that I can so I picked up a rather small, used, granite surface plate to use as a base. It is 12" square and 2" thick. At the moment there aren't any holes in it. I assumed that it was natural granite, but now I'm not sure...

Will this make any difference with regard to reducing vibration/chatter? If I were able to drill holes through it to mount the mill, is it likely the granite will crack? An easier base plate might be a 1/2" thick piece of aluminum, would that work just as good/better? Is "natural" granite somehow better or worse than epoxy granite for this purpose?

[Oldboy]

You need to give information like; Speed/Feed, metal you are cutting ect.
With out knowing other info?
I would gess it won't solve your problem with vibration.

[LUCKY13]

I think it will help, but you do need to be careful. Others have drilled these blocks but I bet you need to take your time on that also. When mounting the mill you need to be careful that you don't introduce any stresses to the mill base. This may take shims to achieve this so you don't warp the mill and cause tramming problems.


How much it will help is hard to say. I doute it totally cures your problems but every little bit helps. Proper adjustments on the Gib's,backlash and tramming may help your vibration, plus the right cutters,feeds, & speeds can go a long way into helping. I don't know how the Taig column and base are built but poring epoxy into and empty part space helps stiffen and add vibration resistance on many other mills and if you can pull this off on the Taig I don't see why it would not help them to. Extra brackets on the column if possible can help also.


In the end your mainly limited because of no weight to absorb vibration, and flexing giving the room to vibrate. Any kinda reinforcing you can come up with on the column is a instant help in most cases. And any weight you can add is a instant vibration deadener. It all adds up and you might find some things don't help much until other mods are done also. One mod along might not do a whole lot in other words but when added together with other mods combine to give big results.



Jess

[Hirudin]

Thanks for the responses. It's looking like the granite might be better suited elsewhere, or maybe used as dead weight only. I'm not equipped to drill the holes myself, and if it's not going to offer much of an improvement I wont pay to have them done somewhere else.

Sorry, I didn't want to give the impression that I am already experiencing a vibration problem. I received the mill recently and have only ran it a couple times. Right now the mill is just sitting on a table (not bolted/attached by anything other than gravity and friction). Since it's only ~85 lbs it doesn't take a whole lot to move it at the moment. I'm just looking for ideas for a good place to start.

For instance, I'm assuming using a white 5 gallon bucket as a base would be cheap but wouldn't be very good, and a huge chunk of cast iron would be very good but expensive.

It sounds like of the 2 materials that I already own, the 1/2" aluminum would be better. The aluminum plate I have is bigger, maybe I could clamp the granite to the bottom of the aluminum or something.

[LUCKY13]

I was kinda in a hurry to post a while ago because people was waiting on me to come on. But,


I would use the Granite, a solid base does mean a lot and it is well worth doing. I didn't mean to imply its not going to do anything, but its not going to be a cure all either. A solid base is very important though, and its the beginning of your stability. Not only that it will make the mill easier to operate instead of it trying to move around on you when you go turning the axis cranks. A slab of cast iron would be better but your right that would cost a lot. The 1/2 aluminum is really a bit to light weight to help much, although if you can get it bolted down to a bench that could help.



Just starting out you will find in time just how important every little thing you can do to help will be. Surface finish and even the feeds & speeds you can run will be effected. Everything you do will add up, and some mods will not help as much if you have a week flimsy base. So with the better base other mods will show more return for your effort. Its kinda just like racing a race car, the weakest link will be the limiting factor.




Jess

[escott76]

I bolted my Sherline to a 1/2" steel 12x12 plate. The mass seemed to help things, and I put the plate on top of a piece of foam rubber on top of the bench I use. A bit of added damping at least from a noise perspective. The steel seems to have helped some.
Anything your mill rests on that an vibrate will have it's own resonant frequencies, which in turn will transfer back to the mill. A table can be fine, provided it's not a card table I've got mine on top of a heavily braced cheap cabinet base from one of the home stores. Cabinet underneath is nice to stow things.

[Oldboy]

I bolted my Sherline to a 1/2" steel 12x12 plate. The mass seemed to help things, and I put the plate on top of a piece of foam rubber on top of the bench I use. A bit of added damping at least from a noise perspective. The steel seems to have helped some.
Anything your mill rests on that an vibrate will have it's own resonant frequencies, which in turn will transfer back to the mill. A table can be fine, provided it's not a card table I've got mine on top of a heavily braced cheap cabinet base from one of the home stores. Cabinet underneath is nice to stow things.

I agree best to use something that won't vibrate or transfer the resonant Freq. Like the Cast Iron.
The granite might be to hard and able to transfer the freq. Depending on what Freq. Yes the larger the Mass the better. Since you have the granite just try it. As I said it won't remove all your vibration. But its better than nothing. One of my Mills i own for 11 yr's is a Shurline with the 1 inch thick Shurline Alum. Base plate.
When fly cutting it sucks with vibration.

[awerby]

Is that it's a bear to drill for mounting holes. I've never tried drilling epoxy/granite but I don't think it would be much easier. A surface plate is a handy thing to have, even if you just use it under sandpaper for making things flat. I'd look out for a piece of steel to mount the mill down to. It does appreciate the added mass; and you definitely have to mount it to something solid. Aluminum is more expensive, and it has less mass per volume. We built a Taig base using a scrap piece of 12" W x 4" D piece of steel channel as the main member, and welded it to a table frame; that worked pretty well. We kept the top open (covered with expanded metal) so that chips could fall into a hopper below.

Andrew Werby
www.computersculpture.com

I am trying to get the most out of my Taig mill that I can so I picked up a rather small, used, granite surface plate to use as a base. It is 12" square and 2" thick. At the moment there aren't any holes in it. I assumed that it was natural granite, but now I'm not sure...

Will this make any difference with regard to reducing vibration/chatter? If I were able to drill holes through it to mount the mill, is it likely the granite will crack? An easier base plate might be a 1/2" thick piece of aluminum, would that work just as good/better? Is "natural" granite somehow better or worse than epoxy granite for this purpose?

[Hirudin]

Since I have the aluminum and it'll be easy I think I'll just use it for now. With my luck, even if I was able to drill into the granite, it would probably crack apart or something at the end of the 3rd hole.

I saw some ~12 x ~4 steel tube a while ago and thought it looked good for a base, I'll keep it in mind. I would guess you could go crazy and fill it with sand or something if you wanted too.

[silentool]

Hi.

I've just bought a used Taig on eBay, and hopefully have it within short time. I will (the plan is) be using it also on steel, but understand that vibration is a challenge.
At work we have the Sandvik Silent Tools boring bars, and i plan to test on (borrow it from work) mounting one of this damped boring bars on the spindle. I guess it will damp the vibration of the spindle a bit when machine in steel.
Here is link to the bar I plan to mount on side of spindle: http://www.teeness.com/Products/Page...oringBars.aspx
If this works, the other challenge is that these tools are not for free, they cost close to a used Taig.

These tools have a damper inside, and here is the function: [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRzTg0_j0So&feature=PlayList&p=843C2A830C6 5E2EE&playnext=1&index=17"]YouTube - Sandvik Coromant Capto Silent Tools Milling Adapter[/ame]

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNut54ovOrc"]YouTube - Sandvik Coromant Silent Tools[/ame]

[martinw]

Dear Hirudin,

My humble guess is that a 2" thick granite plate would be far better than a thinner steel or aluminium one. Granite is nice and heavy, and extremely rigid. Both the weight and the strength should help damp down vibrations. Yes, there are more sophisticated composite sandwich layer approaches ( others can advise) but a stonking great lump of dense material should be a good start, IMVVHO.

As for drilling the stuff, I've never tried, but there are plenty of bathroom fitters who have. Google "drilling holes in granite". It looks like diamond core bits are the way to go, with quite high rpms. and with water or water/detergent coolant. Have a peek at this website...
http://www.ukam.com/core_drills_ston...FQ0vQgodjWu41g

I would not try to drill too close to the edge of the plate, and I would come up with same kind of backer board arrangement to stop the drill blowing out as it exits the workpiece.

BTW, for further advice, you could always try the people who make tombstones. Heaven knows, they must have a whole load of experience...

Best wishes,

Martin

[Hirudin]

Thanks martinw! I've finally got my mill mounted to the aluminum plate I mentioned. I still haven't milled anything on it though (I must have cold feet). I'll feel for vibrations when I finally do and report back here with my impressions so far...

The backer board is a good idea, I'll have to do that once I build up the nerve to try to drill this granite.

[kuhncw]

I have my Taig mill bolted to some half inch thick aluminum plate and the plate is c-clamped to a fairly heavy bench. I've not noticed any vibration problems.

I think you'll be fine with your Al plate.

Regards,

Chuck

[Hirudin]

I think I'll stick with the aluminum... I've now run the mill a little bit and I didn't see anything wrong with the aluminum.

Thanks for all the input everyone!

By the way, I started a thread for my enclosure too if you wanna check it out.