[Ben]

i'm looking for a turnkey CNC mini mill for prototyping small parts, mostly from aluminum. so far, i have eyeballed the maxnc and sherline systems. any comments on these? any other good options to consider? thanks.

[Swede]

The first thing everyone will want to know is, how much are you willing to spend? CNC mini-mills run from $2k or so right on up to a "Light machines" Benchman for $50k +, among other high-end mills.

The next thing would be speed and accuracy requirements. Can you provide more information?

[Ben]

budget is around 2-5K. speed is not much of an issue. accuracy does not have to be extreme, but at least decent. this will be used to produce prototype parts for remote control helicopters. hope that's enough info.

[july_favre]

I have a maxnc and the machine is pretty nice but the company is so horrible that I would not suggest you get one, unless you want to hope you never have to deal with them. That includes buying some upgrades unless you want to wait an unreasonable amount of time(im guessing you would eventually get them, I havent waited that long to find out).

[qsacracer]

check out the taig..I too have been doing alot of research and the Taig seems to fill the bill .....good luck

[Swami]

I am using a Sherline 5410 CNC (supplied my own computer). It seems to work fine. I didn't think you could do large cuts with it, but then learned I just had crappy cutters. 4-flute Solid Carbide is working great. This might be partly due to the fact that the RPM is low compared to some other mills (2800rpm). I am compensating for the low RPM by having more cuts per rev.

For aluminum it seems great. Working with Delrin is really nice for prototypes, although the cost is high.

I got rolling for under $2000.

Swami