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IndustryArena Forum > MetalWorking Machines > Tormach Personal CNC Mill > A Tormach 24r showed up unexpectedly today...
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  1. #1
    Join Date
    Dec 2010
    Posts
    1230

    A Tormach 24r showed up unexpectedly today...

    Well, sort of. I did buy one last Tuesday but hadn’t gotten a shipping notice, tracking or call from the shipping company. Nice surprise new machine day.

    Wasn’t sure if this should be elsewhere or if no one else has posted but I can’t find any info on the table logic. My primary use will be an attachment i’ll make to run 3 diamond drag engravers to engrave 3 identical parts simultaneously, but plan to machine some polycarb first for a CNC Blast cabinet I’m building. The engraving fixtures are small and need no hold down so I plan to just press pins into MDF that stays semi permanent. Should I remove their plastic grid system all together? Or throw the MDF on top and drill holes to match their tiny fixture pins?

    Pretty excited to check out Path Pilot. I sold my 1100 long before it existed.

    Haven’t finished setting up yet but i gotta say this thing looks very well thought out and designed.

  2. #2
    Join Date
    May 2008
    Posts
    666

    Re: A Tormach 24r showed up unexpectedly today...

    Not really good place to post this kind of info, make everybody jealous

    Nice machine, good luck with it and have fun

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Nov 2007
    Posts
    2151

    Re: A Tormach 24r showed up unexpectedly today...

    Nice machine, I purchased one last November. Crate was to tall to fit in garage door not a problem for you!
    Easy to setup and took me less then a couple hours total and I was running code and making stuff.
    It ships designed to be used with a vac pump and a spoil board bolted to surface. Spoil boards are easy to make and can serve a number of functions.
    I use the machine to make the spoil boards with very exact hole location and sizes. "grab cad" Then the spoil boards can be placed in same location each time and bolted down with supplied bolts "only". I mostly use one with t-track embeds to hold all types of materials on pinned surface plates and small vises of different profiles.
    I dont have the vac pump it was an option out of my budget range at the time and it was not clear how it would perform at high altitude.
    But might buy one later this year just for drag knife decal stuff and holding larger material.
    e.t.s. and e- probe all work great with PP
    At higher milling speeds the machine will move / jerk around and require extra weight in base like a tool box. Also thin hard rubber pads under feet would help.
    Tormach has a wheel option and those have a hard rubber pad on them.

    Not much else to say but it can be an incredibly loud tool depending on cutter, tool stick out and material.
    Thinking about hanging some some 2ft by 12 ft carpet strips from ceiling down center of shop to mitigate some of the sound reflection. or maybe some flags. anything that can be taken down and cleaned now and then but will slow or trap sound waves.

    I have #9
    Enjoy you new tool
    Looks small compared to your other stuff

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Nov 2007
    Posts
    2151

    Re: A Tormach 24r showed up unexpectedly today...

    Need to ask
    What is a cnc blast cabinet?

  5. #5
    Join Date
    Dec 2010
    Posts
    1230

    Re: A Tormach 24r showed up unexpectedly today...

    Quote Originally Posted by mountaindew View Post
    Need to ask
    What is a cnc blast cabinet?
    I'll let you know when I'm finished inventing it Basically just a huge steel cabinet with X axis table and Y axis hanging from V shaped rails (all made in house) with 4 sandblast guns pointed towards a single spot. We blast ~1,000 parts a day in racks. Right now I have an UR3e sandblasting the most common size for me, but she (her name is Sandy) is slow because she is a co-bot and can only efficiently do one side, and one size of each part. Changing her fingers, the fixtures, and program makes it not worth the time to do it. This cabinet will be under Mach4 control and will able to blast literally anything that fits into a 14x20" space. Less than $6,000 total investment, but 'should' free up one of my guys for 5 hours a day to work on less mind numbing tasks.

    Hope to get the router set up this week, but the blast cabinet is priority #1. Planning on half the router table being a fixture for our engraving plates, then can pop the triple engraver head off and use it as a router as well. The pins on the table confuse me. I'm guessing I have to put a spoil board down, then put future fixture blank on top to drill the holes to correspond to the pin locations? Guess it just seems weird that I can't pop them out to machine the corresponding holes. Maybe I should just buy the vac pump and give that a whirl. Our fixtures only need XY locating, not hold down, but the plate the fixtures go on obviously need repeatable locating so I can take them off to use as a router.


    Attachment 447028

  6. #6
    Join Date
    Nov 2007
    Posts
    2151

    Re: A Tormach 24r showed up unexpectedly today...

    What I did was found a couple 1x6x4ft scraps of wood drilled holes about where pins and bolt hole locations for supplied bolts. counter sunk bolt holes to correct depth and used supplied "exact length" bolts to hold the 1x6x4 on each side of vacuum table top. Cut mdf 4x8 sheet down to 2x4 sheets and set on router in a position and used a couple screws to hold to 1x6 then run code to create all the holes for the spoil board pin and bolt locations and other features. Remove 1x6 scraps and set spoil board direct on table and bolted down. Then use whatever holding system you want from vacuum pods, full vacuum table, t-tracks or whatever. Or go big and replace the table with a custom metal 2x4 + fixture plate.

  7. #7
    Join Date
    Dec 2010
    Posts
    1230

    Re: A Tormach 24r showed up unexpectedly today...

    Quote Originally Posted by mountaindew View Post
    What I did was found a couple 1x6x4ft scraps of wood drilled holes about where pins and bolt hole locations for supplied bolts. counter sunk bolt holes to correct depth and used supplied "exact length" bolts to hold the 1x6x4 on each side of vacuum table top. Cut mdf 4x8 sheet down to 2x4 sheets and set on router in a position and used a couple screws to hold to 1x6 then run code to create all the holes for the spoil board pin and bolt locations and other features. Remove 1x6 scraps and set spoil board direct on table and bolted down. Then use whatever holding system you want from vacuum pods, full vacuum table, t-tracks or whatever. Or go big and replace the table with a custom metal 2x4 + fixture plate.
    Brilliant and simple. I ordered a couple t slot tracks from Amazon to test out. Should be able to just make a fixture that uses those on MDF to hold our engraving fixtures and removes easily to be able to throw anything else on there. Ordered the vacuum from Tormach but it's backordered unfortunately.

  8. #8
    Join Date
    Nov 2007
    Posts
    2151

    Re: A Tormach 24r showed up unexpectedly today...

    Quote Originally Posted by WOTDesigns View Post
    Brilliant and simple. I ordered a couple t slot tracks from Amazon to test out. Should be able to just make a fixture that uses those on MDF to hold our engraving fixtures and removes easily to be able to throw anything else on there. Ordered the vacuum from Tormach but it's backordered unfortunately.
    Im working my way to one. The small stuff im doing right now, mostly would not benefit or even be held well by vacuum table, even with the un-used table covered in plastic. The unit they sell appears to be sized correctly according to information and math found on the zone, they just have limits. Also altitude effects performance along with porosity of material. Cutters moving 130 ipm all day long will move stuff if its not held down . The other thing I consider is power. Hard to run and pay for a vac pump for hours and hours while your tiny tapered ball end mill carves out a masterpiece in your desired material.
    Anyway I have stuff on the drawing board that will almost require a vac table to hold. So it will be good tool addition later this year.

  9. #9
    Join Date
    Dec 2010
    Posts
    1230

    Re: A Tormach 24r showed up unexpectedly today...

    Quote Originally Posted by mountaindew View Post
    Im working my way to one. The small stuff im doing right now, mostly would not benefit or even be held well by vacuum table, even with the un-used table covered in plastic. The unit they sell appears to be sized correctly according to information and math found on the zone, they just have limits. Also altitude effects performance along with porosity of material. Cutters moving 130 ipm all day long will move stuff if its not held down . The other thing I consider is power. Hard to run and pay for a vac pump for hours and hours while your tiny tapered ball end mill carves out a masterpiece in your desired material.
    Anyway I have stuff on the drawing board that will almost require a vac table to hold. So it will be good tool addition later this year.
    Definitely kind of silly to run a vac that costs 3x or more than the machine itself does to operate when it's not needed. I'm super weird about set up times on things since it's a business and the biggest limiting factor for me is the number of hours in the day. I'm thinking it might make the most sense for me and my usage to put a full sized stack of MDF (each one skimmed) then have aluminum T slots in the top layer. I think, based on very little research, that I could then vacuum through the sheets to the MDF, or alternatively clamp a spoil board with the T slots and screw to that, or even vacuum through the clamped smaller spoil board. It honestly blew my mind watching people throw a 1x2' onto a HUGE vacuum table and it just stuck. My brain cant comprehend why the air around the 1'x2' wouldn't increase it's air flow to make up for the restriction nearly zeroing out the vacuum, but since it's done all over it must just be something magic about the MDF or fluid dynamics pertaining to vacuum that I don't understand... yet. Hoping to get it commissioned this weekend. I'm at 157' elevation so I guess that's a win for me for testing the vacuum

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