Re: Looking for Advice on Purchasing a Taig based CNC
It's worth a few more pointers here ...
The Taig mill is as has been said ... available with short or long table, but that is essentially the only mechanical difference these days. The manual machine is identical to the CNC ready machine. All one does is remove the collars protecting the stepper mount ... and the handles ... and fit the stepper motor mounts. The 'cheaper' manual machine is fitted with a lower power motor, but if the plan is to upgrade the motor system anyway, then there is little point in buying the CNC ready package, just buy the manual mill and a set of stepper motor mounts. This can then be used with any existing CNC kit you have, or be fitted with one of the USB bundles as an alternative to the parallel port controllers.
The spindle motor as supplied is fix six speed, with the two motor options providing different speed ranges in addition to the different powers, but replacing the motor with a variable speed unit will still benefit from changes of pulley settings to get the best power at higher or lower speeds. Just as stepper motor performance has improved over the years, so has conventional motors, and I have a nice 1/2Hp unit sitting on the bench at the moment with a matching inverter which is the same footprint as the 1/4Hp unit I used to provide. Only question is if it is too much power for the standard belt, and perhaps a bigger one should be fitted?
The mechanics of the mill have little to fault them and replacement parts are readily available to bring older machines up to the modern standard so that is something of a no-brainer. It is just the control side which offers a vast range of options at various prices, each with their own plus and minus decisions.
Lester Caine - G8HFL
http://medw.co.uk - Home of electronics for the Model Engineer