[MambaDesigns]

I do like the idea of replacing the bed with some thick aluminium plate, it would make the machine much more sturdy. For now I'm going to go with the slots cut into the spoilboard. I've ground down my t-bolts so they are now drop-in style. That's better anyway because I usually forget to slide the bolts on from the end until after I've partially fixed the workpiece down!
I have a Trend 37/12x1/2tc cutter on order for surfacing which should get it done in no time.

[extent]

I do the same. I have a 19mm 6061 fixture plate that I made that is permanently mounted to the tslot. Then I also have slabs of MDF that bolt through to the fixture plate when I need a spoilboard. If I can use a vice or toe clamps I use the fixture plate, when cutting sheet stock I use the MDF and just screw directly into it with short wood screws. I use a plane to knock down the nubbins from the screws in between surfacings, which is really quick and easy.

[MambaDesigns]

"Nubbin" now that's a word I've never heard before!

[MambaDesigns]

I've priced up replacing the bed with 12mm 6082 T6 alloy and it comes in at around £160 which I think would be a worthwhile investment.

[Mmpie]

That sounds like aluminium warehouse prices. A tenner more got me a 20mm thick slab of tooling plate.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[dharmic]

That sounds like aluminium warehouse prices. A tenner more got me a 20mm thick slab of tooling plate.

Sometimes being in Oz totally sucks. Even worse, I'm within a two hour drive of three bauxite mines and two alumina refineries. But tooling plate? Hahaha nope, not for less than a kidney and a lung.

Don't forget machine time on top of materials. I made it harder for myself by replacing the bed rather than bolting my plate down, but the idea was to use it as a reference to square up the machine frame. So parallel ends, sides and 50mm strips along the short ends on the bottom parallel to the top, all fly cut down to about a thou. Then the dowel holes and M8 holes, about 300 all up, that needed spotting, drilling, reaming or tapping, chamfering. Then peening the bottom of the dowel holes so the dowels don't drop through.

Took about a day and a half on a mate's old bridgeport (didn't have quite enough room to do the whole thing at once so it took some mucking around to keep things lined up).

[MambaDesigns]

[QUOTE=Mmpie;2206958]That sounds like aluminium warehouse prices. A tenner more got me a 20mm thick slab of tooling plate.


Yes, it was AW, where did you get yours from?

[Mmpie]

Depends where you are in the country. I used a local merchant for that but also use smiths and next day metals a fair bit.

Dharmic - yeah I had mine done in a machine shop, was done on a hurco vmc. That was the expensive bit, just shy of £300... but worth it.

I ordered a skyfire svm-2vmc some months ago which just arrived recently, by virtue of it being the very biggest machine we could find a space for. I will share some vids and stuff if you lot are interested, but after being used to the router taking real whimpy cuts, sending a 63mm face mill full width through a chunk of aluminium is a sight to behold And being able to go from CAD to finished part in under an hour instead of half a day or more is invaluable.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Sterob]

I ordered a skyfire svm-2vmc some months ago which just arrived recently, by virtue of it being the very biggest machine we could find a space for. I will share some vids and stuff if you lot are interested, but after being used to the router taking real whimpy cuts, sending a 63mm face mill full width through a chunk of aluminium is a sight to behold And being able to go from CAD to finished part in under an hour instead of half a day or more is invaluable.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I'd like to see that.

[Mmpie]

I'd like to see that.

Seems I can't upload videos direct to this site so will have to sit down and stick some stuff on YouTube when I get chance. But here's a pic of the (5 insert) face mill and a 2.5" square block done full width at 1mm DOC, 2000 rpm, 450mm/min.

I've been pushing it up to 1850mm/min but the finish suffers a bit.





Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[dharmic]

Nice - not quite the same work area I'm guessing, but a little more Z height and a lot more grunt for working metal than the Omio.

I'm waiting for my Swissmak to get made at the moment. Still a light machine but 7 axes of entertainment, look forward to crashing it around Christmas

[Mmpie]

Nice - not quite the same work area I'm guessing, but a little more Z height and a lot more grunt for working metal than the Omio.

I'm waiting for my Swissmak to get made at the moment. Still a light machine but 7 axes of entertainment, look forward to crashing it around Christmas

Yep, and all the goodies, BT30 spindle, ATC, encoded servo motors all around (so rigid tapping capable), and 5 axis capable all available in a neat little size and affordable price. We have need for a load of custom one off and small run parts at work which has always been farmed out to a guy we know, but his customer base and lead times have grown coincidentally at the same time demand for these sort of parts has grown, to a point we needed to start doing this stuff ourselves in order to turn stuff round in a reasonable timescale so a repeatable mill and lathe were required to fit what little floorspace we could generate from reshuffling stuff around.

The OMIO will still have its place though doing any acrylic or polycarbonate sheet work, foam inserts for kit boxes etc and probably most likely wood carvings and stuff for around the house I want to bring it home now but I've nowhere to put it til I get round to building a new shed, so it's currently living in a little corner in my 'office'.

Here's a pic of our squeezed together arrangement, the lathe is a little Emco Turn 120 which I must say is a bloody brilliant bit of kit we got for a steal of a price really, industrial quality machine in a teeny tiny little package, I've turned all sorts on it from hardened tool steels to stainless, aluminium etc. and its cut everything I've thrown at it with no fuss at all and holds +/-0.01mm tolerances all day easily.



Those swissmak machines look absolutely great, if I'd have seen the kickstarter before it ended I would absolutely have had one for myself. Really looking forward to seeing you get up and running with that and seeing what it can do


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[MambaDesigns]

That sounds like aluminium warehouse prices. A tenner more got me a 20mm thick slab of tooling plate.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Just going back to the tooling plate, I've been looking around at different suppliers and have asked for some quotes. I know AW seems to have a bad rep on the UK forum and I've only used them once a few years back for some ecocast to make some equipment for my foundry, I had no complaints then. The difficulty I'm having is comparing products. Ecocast is cast (duh!) and milled both sides whereas a lot of other products are unfinished. Maybe ecocast is a little over-specified for a router bed but it would make things easier as I would be starting of with a "level playing field" to use an appropriate cliché! Also I can't find what grade alloy ecocast is.

[Mmpie]

Just going back to the tooling plate, I've been looking around at different suppliers and have asked for some quotes. I know AW seems to have a bad rep on the UK forum and I've only used them once a few years back for some ecocast to make some equipment for my foundry, I had no complaints then. The difficulty I'm having is comparing products. Ecocast is cast (duh!) and milled both sides whereas a lot of other products are unfinished. Maybe ecocast is a little over-specified for a router bed but it would make things easier as I would be starting of with a "level playing field" to use an appropriate cliché! Also I can't find what grade alloy ecocast is.

Ecocast is just normal tooling plate, AW just give it a fancy name. If you ask for tooling plate from anyone it will be cast 5083 and flycut on both sides. Worth using it IMO for the little extra cost, it's flat and stable, it's a much better surface to work off.

I have used AW 3 times, every time was painfully slow. 2 times they sent the wrong stuff, one of those they didn't even send some of it at all and I ended up just getting a refund. Not to mention they are quite literally almost double the price of proper places. As you're seemingly a business you should have no trouble dealing with the better places. They have a bad rep for a reason

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[daacha]

So guys, some of you have been using omio for quite some time now. Do you think a newbie can get this machine and use it without any huge hassle?

[Mmpie]

So guys, some of you have been using omio for quite some time now. Do you think a newbie can get this machine and use it without any huge hassle?

It's perfect for a newbie. Reason being you can crash it and bash it and it doesn't really have the power to damage itself. Learning to use it will be much the same as learning to use any CNC machine. Being bottom of the line they have their quirks and require creative thinking and work arounds sometimes to make it do what you want, it's all good learning.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[dharmic]

Yep, it's a bit of a crap shoot regarding quality control, but no more so than anything else direct out of China. Most people on here have had a good experience with them. And whilst they're not powerful enough to self destruct (unless you plow a spinning tool through the bed), they have sufficiently beefy frames and running gear to be a massive improvement over the super cheapy eBay specials. They're quite happy playing with aluminium all day, making some surprisingly decent speeds too.

[daacha]

Thank you for the response, I only want to work with wood and the 4th axis is important. So that ruled out shapeoko 3 and xcarve, the other machine I looked at was stepcraft 420 verrsion 2. Stepcraft though looked better but works from belt which is quite a downer. One of the guys using omio cnc said to me that "stepcraft is a bicycle and omio is a motorcycle", That comment changed my mind totally but still i want to get as many views as possible.

[dharmic]

Heads up: the 4th on the omio is utter ****e. You’ll be wanting something much heftier unless you’re doing super light cuts in softwood under about 40mm diameter.

[daacha]

So the one omio sells is of no use or any 4th axis wont work well with omio?