[Gamble]

About ready to start doing something very soon and came across this conversion of the harbor freight cnc mill, with the cnc fusion kit.
http://www.diymachining.com/mini-mil...n-for-5-a-day/

Just shy of $1350 without software.

Would this be a decent setup to start out with ? Or better to buy one already converted?

I know I can spend a little money on tooling, vice etc. But really just looking to get my feet wet here.
I'd probably use fusion 360 for design because it's free and maybe could get by with doing the free mach3 until I need to upgrade.

[Kenny Duval]

Doesn't matter which one you start with as the operation of the machines is largely the same. What is not the same is the motor power, rigidity and most importantly, the size of the work envelope. If you only plan to make a lot of small stuff and have plenty of spare time than the little HF mill will do fine. If you haven't done any machining at all or have no CNC experience then starting with something smaller and less expensive would be the right choice in case you find out that the hobby is just not for you. That's kind of what I did. I bought a small BF20 mill that had already been converted and began reading, researching and working my way through understanding the mountain of stuff related to this hobby. That way the dollar investment was small and I could walk away if I could not manage to climb the mountain.

So ask yourself if you are willing to just walk away from $1350+ a little more by the time you buy end mills and a clamp kit and a few other odds and ends. Do you want to make items larger than that machine can accommodate? If the answer is yes to both of those then jump in head first. If this idiot can learn how to do it then so can you.

[metalfixer]

I did a conversion on the Little Machine Shop 3990, it cost a little more, but it is a well
made mill with a solid column. The HF mill looks like it has the tilting column.
I also used the CNC fusion kit.
Larry
HiTorque Mini Mill 3990 - LittleMachineShop.com

[Gamble]

soooooo this taig just popped up for sale.
guy wants a solid $900. what do you think about it? I'm supposed to see it today. anything i should look for since I have never looked at one before?

I know the arduino is a little cheap and most people use a gecko540 controller but it seems easy enough to upgrade later. I'm still curious what I would gain by changing out the controller for a gecko or similar vs what is on there.

[__Britt]

I think you will be much happier with the taig than the hf machine. I have had my hands on both, and own the bigger brother to the hf mill (hf version of the sieg x3, with a cncfusion kit on it). The taig is smoother, more rigid, and overall better than the hf import.

The one weak spot that I noticed on the taig is the belt for the spindle... you might want to swap that out for a cog belt. I also have a maxNC 10 that has a taig spindle on it, and I am in the process of doing a motor swap on it (it came with a tiny sewing machine motor on it), including replacing the belt drive (I'm going to a brushless motor and a cog belt drive). The spindle itself is 5/8th of an inch, iirc.

On the nc10 I'm also running a diy version of the grblshield shown in the photos, but on a arduino due with tinyg g2 firmware. It's ok... but I've had trouble with chillipeppr so I ended up writing my own UI for it (I'm on a mac, so if your shop machine is windows based, you might not have any trouble).

Mach with Geckos will provide more features, though.




Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Gamble]

Well that's good to hear! You think it's a deal for $900?
It doesn't come with a computer so I have to download the mach3 sample and play around. Never used it before. Is it hard to setup and figure out how many turns per inch and whatever else I need to know? My cnc plasma stuff was all setup when I got it. I didn't have to adjust anything really.

Any place you recommend buying the cog belt and other accessories at? The taig site is so cryptic it hurts my head

[GreatNorthGnome]

Artsoft has a great manual for setting up a new machine in mach3, and then anything you're still confused on you can find with an easy google search. Maybe check out automationtechnologies for the belts/pulleys.

[__Britt]

Well, if it's in good condition (no divots on the table, no binding in the travels, everything feels smooth, bearings feel good, etc) then yeah... it probably is.

The way it's setup now, you won't be able to run Mach on it - it's got a grblShield on it, which takes different software to drive it (chillipeppr is most common). However, if you either did some hackery with veroboard (to connect the grblSheld's step & direction pins to a parallel port) or swapped out the grblShield for a gecko g540 or something like it, you could run Mach.

The thing about going with Mach and a parallel port is, these days getting a PC that a) has one, and b) can do the timing right can be something of a pain. This is why grbl (and tinyG, and smoothieware, etc), was created - it does the timing all on the arduino, which has dedicated hardware for doing this. You just send the g-code to it's USB serial port, and the arduino does the heavy lifting.

Likewise, there are similar cards for use with Mach, that offloads the timing responsibility to the card... allowing you to use just about any old PC with a USB port to run the machine (well... it's gotta be a clean install of windows, with no malware or bloated AV packages, but, basically any PC in good shape will do).
See https://warp9td.com/index.php/products for one such card (note: I don't own that card, nor do I have any experience with it - the only machine I have still running Mach is on an old Windows 2000 box with a parallel port... I'm just relaying what I've read over the years).

Re: belts and pulleys. Also check eBay; there's lots of parts there (and not all of it is shipped out of China, either). Automation Technologies has an eBay presence also.

:cheers:

[Gamble]

Well, if it's in good condition (no divots on the table, no binding in the travels, everything feels smooth, bearings feel good, etc) then yeah... it probably is.

The way it's setup now, you won't be able to run Mach on it - it's got a grblShield on it, which takes different software to drive it (chillipeppr is most common). However, if you either did some hackery with veroboard (to connect the grblSheld's step & direction pins to a parallel port) or swapped out the grblShield for a gecko g540 or something like it, you could run Mach.

owner says it runs right now with a demo of mach4

The thing about going with Mach and a parallel port is, these days getting a PC that a) has one, and b) can do the timing right can be something of a pain. This is why grbl (and tinyG, and smoothieware, etc), was created - it does the timing all on the arduino, which has dedicated hardware for doing this. You just send the g-code to it's USB serial port, and the arduino does the heavy lifting.

Likewise, there are similar cards for use with Mach, that offloads the timing responsibility to the card... allowing you to use just about any old PC with a USB port to run the machine (well... it's gotta be a clean install of windows, with no malware or bloated AV packages, but, basically any PC in good shape will do).
See https://warp9td.com/index.php/products for one such card (note: I don't own that card, nor do I have any experience with it - the only machine I have still running Mach is on an old Windows 2000 box with a parallel port... I'm just relaying what I've read over the years).

Re: belts and pulleys. Also check eBay; there's lots of parts there (and not all of it is shipped out of China, either). Automation Technologies has an eBay presence also.

:cheers:

I did noticed that. I was wondering who still uses parallel stuff lol.
I looked on eBay and didn't find any belts but I'm searching for taig specific parts. I'm sure it's there in more of a general search if i knew exactly what I was looking for.


so IF i get it, these are options i'm looking at
1) leave it and run it on mach3/4 demo (if it works)
2) gecko drive (I see a lot of people using a super PID? what is that and is it needed?
3) I could change the motors to larger ones and convert it to flashcut cnc controls. I do have a spare control box. Just need software and plugs

[awerby]

Yes, the Taig mill is a much better machine than a retrofitted HF mill would ever be, plus it's ready to go without having to do more work. But $900 for that one is not exactly a screaming deal. It's a 2018 (short bed) model that's used, so it probably won't be under warranty. It may have one of the newer ER spindles, but it may not. (The older Taig mills took a different style of collet that they made, which weren't as good; they switched over about 5 years ago.) These mills, new, with the ER spindle, list for $1125; we sell them for $1012. That one might work fine, but it might be damaged or worn out. The steppers included are not great; they have 10 mH inductance if you run them bi-polar, which is usually what you want to do to get best performance. That switching power supply from a PC isn't something you'd want to keep, and the arduino setup is underpowered. You might be able to get the motors to work for you if you ran them unipolar, but the rest of that control system is pretty worthless. So the risk-reward ratio on that deal is not looking great.

As for your other questions:

1) leave it and run it on mach3/4 demo (if it works)

[If it doesn't work, leave it there. The Mach3 demo is free, but it will only run 500 lines of code before stopping. Those go by pretty quick on a modern program; you'll want to purchase Mach3 if you get into this.]

2) gecko drive (I see a lot of people using a super PID? what is that and is it needed?

[A Gecko G-540 would be a much better choice to run the mill than the current setup. They cost more than the cheap crappy drives on Ebay, but they work a lot better and come with support. The "super PID", though, doesn't do the same thing. It's a way someone figured out to run a router as a spindle and get better performance from it than would normally be expected.]

3) I could change the motors to larger ones and convert it to flashcut cnc controls. I do have a spare control box. Just need software and plugs

[Larger is not always better. People tend to pay more attention to the holding torque number, which measures how well it holds position when not moving, than to inductance, which determines how much voltage it will require to go at top speed. Since torque falls off rapidly with speed in stepper motors, the inductance is a more important number. Flashcut makes good controls; if you've got their box and software already, that would be a good thing to use, but get good motors to go with it. ]

[Gamble]

I doubt it's a 2018 model, this guy said he bought it in 2015.
If i get new motors I would go to flashcut. There stuff is working great on my torchmate table.

Thanks for all the help. The guy canceled on me so it will have to be another day.
How much better is the grizzly g0704 setup?

This place is actually local to me so if I can't get the one above i may go this route
http://www.automationtechnologiesinc...graver-router/

the grizzly already converted is about $4k. that's a big jump, is it really that much nicer?

[Kenny Duval]

The G0704 is a good bit larger than the Taig. I don't know about nicer but it is a larger and more rigid.

[__Britt]

For clarity: (and Andrew, correct me if I'm wrong), but that new price of $1125 list, $1012 discounted is for the new Taig 2018CR-ER; which is the short bed model, with the ER spindle, stepper motor mounts and the 1/4HP spindle motor. However, it does not include any motors or controls... just the mill itself. It also does not include ball screws.

List on a G0704, in manual configuration is at the moment $1,250.00, with $109 for shipping. It's roughly comparable to my X3 (but, different manufacturer). The CNCFusion kit for it is $989, and then he wants another $24 for helical zero backlash couplings. Plus, you need motors and controls for that.

You could make your own conversion kit on the G0704 (or an X3, or... well, you get the idea), and save some money that way if you wanted to... I've been surprised by how good some of the cheap ball screws on eBay are; while they are not great (I wouldn't use them on a high-quality VMC), you usually do get more than what you pay for with them. The stepper motor mounts are not difficult to make; just study some of the other conversions documented on the internet, and do something similar. Note that you will probably want either a rotary table or a boring head if you do go this route.

However - like Kenny Duval stated - the G0704 is a much larger machine. If you do go for that, be sure to plan accordingly.

[ninefinger]

Just to put it out there as nobody else has yet. LinuxCNC is free ($0) and can do what Mach3 can and much more (although if you have a Smoothstepper that is not LinuxCNC compatible)
The big caveat is the Linux part. However if you are in this to learn why not learn that too? At the end of the day the Linux part doesn't have to be that bad, you can find step by step instructions and if you get a free / cheap PC it will work off the parallel port for the most part.

Mike

[Gamble]

Eh this has me second thinking it. So the guy wants $900. I have no limit switches, small controller and who knows if anything else is up with it.
Or for $1780 I can get one from automation technology. So that extra $880 gets me a 1 year warranty, gecko controller. Still no limit switches and no mach3.
I do believe a g540, power supply, enclosure and motors would set me back about $700 ish anyway, right?

[109jb]

soooooo this taig just popped up for sale.
guy wants a solid $900. what do you think about it? I'm supposed to see it today. anything i should look for since I have never looked at one before?

I know the arduino is a little cheap and most people use a gecko540 controller but it seems easy enough to upgrade later. I'm still curious what I would gain by changing out the controller for a gecko or similar vs what is on there.

A note on this. The arduino would work fine on a little mill like that. Grbl running on an arduino is very stable, which is one of the most important things in my opinion. Don't discount it because it is running on a microcontroller and not on a full blown PC. I have my G0704 mill set up to run from LinuxCNC or from Grbl on the Arduino. The Arduino is every bit as stable and as fast as the LinuxCNC. The linuxCNC has the advantage of having a more fully implemented G-code set, but Grbl has the basics, and what it doesn't have can mostly be compensated for using CAM software or an interface that implements more. Certainly for a newbie to CNC, you would take quite a while before you would "need" anything else.

Grbl also has the advantage of being able to use any old PC, laptop, netbook, Raspberry Pi, or even another arduino as the user interface. This is because the arduino running Grbl is doing the realtime stuff and the interface just has to feed g-code via a serial stream.

In case you are interested, here is a video of my G0704 running on both Grbl and LinuxCNC. In the video Grbl actually was faster, but the video was done with LinuxCNC v2.6, and the newer LinuxCNC 2.7+ runs much faster at almost identical cycle times as Grbl.

https://youtu.be/c1mxS7WI-tg

[Kenny Duval]

Just to feed you some more useful info. The video below that Hoss did of his 1/4 scale models of the different mills will give you idea of relative size.

[Gamble]

I think i like the taig due to the size and my small shop.
Sadly the guy doesn't want to sell it now, so i found it new but tax & shipping makes it over $2k
so now I don't know.

[Gamble]

Are ball screws a must have? How far/hard can I go with out them?

Also are ball screws only for X & Y or is there a ballscrew for a Z axis too?

Taig has this on sale with no motors and no controller for $1211 with free shipping
Taig Tools - Desktop Milling Machines and Lathes.

[109jb]

Are ball screws a must have? How far/hard can I go with out them?

Also are ball screws only for X & Y or is there a ballscrew for a Z axis too?

Taig has this on sale with no motors and no controller for $1211 with free shipping
Taig Tools - Desktop Milling Machines and Lathes.

Ballscrews are not a must have but are close to it in my opinion. Many/most control software programs have backlash compensation but even with that, excessive backlash can be problematic. Ballscrews also have backlash but it is usually small, and doesn't get worse real fast. Bronze nuts wear and especially with CNC can wear somewhat rapidly, especially if there is any roughness on the screw, or if any dirt/grit gets in there. If you plan infrequent use then you may be OK with stock screws, but if you plan frequent use you will likely want to upgrade to ball screws within a short time.

Another issue is that ball screws have less friction, so the travel seed at which you can operate increases with ball screws. A ball screw can let you go roughly 3 to 4 times faster. For a taig, this may not be an issue and for your application may not be an issue, but it is what it is.

That said, there is no reason that you can't do CNC with stock lead screws if you are willing to put up with these issues. You could always CNC it with stock screws and later on down the road convert to ball screws.