[TiagoSantos]

I've only machined a couple of small pieces in Delrin, but it's fantastic to use fast, quiet, gigantic chips that are easy to clean and pick up. Love it!

[CS900]

Hi, great thread!

I just received my PM45 today, and am looking to convert it to CNC as well. Do you still have the CAD models? I'd love to get my hands on them, it would save me a ton of time measuring mine up

[David589]

Could be worth trying lower RPM as well, for hopefully less heat and tendency for chips to stick/weld themselves to the tool?

[Mad Welder]

Yeah as Jess said there earlier and rlockwood too, I too use flood coolant all the time in my BF20 which hasn't even half the capacity of your build and even yesterday I was using a four flute endmill to profile cut a part out of a larger stock piece (and also without widening the cut) so basically it was similar to an awfully long slot with curves and corners....and yes as was suggested earlier a two flute would definitely allow for easier chipload removal...in my humble experience with a smaller mill and lower capacity I can still achieve pretty good high end cutting speeds with flood coolant. .....

[Maglin]

Pretty sweet compressor man. I love how silent it is. For others with a traditional 5HP 2 stage compressor if you move the intake to say out side or even in the attic and put a large filter like the old school cheap ones on muscle cars it really drops the noise a lot. You would be surprised how much noise is actually coming from the inlet of the pump.

I love your expression after you hit the vise. I say the same stuff. I haven't hit the vise yet, but their are times it sure is close.

[diyengineer]

45 pages of goodness! haha this thread will give me something good to read tonight @ work. haha

DiyE

1st Post!

I'm not sure whether to thank all you guys for the great build threads and wealth of knowledge and data here.... or e-slap everyone for the amount of dollars which have left my possession in the past week :banana:

I'm a mechanical engineer who has been bumming machine time at friends and co-workers home shops for years now. Having a little machine shop in the garage is something I've wanted since I was in high school. But I didn't think I could do it in my two car garage while maintaining the "rule" that both cars come into the garage at the end of the day. Initially I felt any machine purchase would need to be a big ol' bridgeport style machine to do any real work. I also wanted the ability to build complex shapes because as an engineer I'm used to being able to "have" any shape I can design - and I don't turn wheels with both hands too well. So I had kinda given up.

I finally gave in to the idea of just finding a cheap mill drill on craigslist and sticking it in the corner. I went to buy one for $1000 and lost it to another guy by about 5 minutes - turned out that was the catalyst for all this. Started looking around more, found this place, and realized I could squeeze in a RF45 sized machine, make real parts, and do it CNC.

The PM-45 should be here this coming week. All the electronics are on order. First I have to do some mods to my current garage setup. Cutting up benches and moving stuff around.

With the help of all the other RF-45 threads these are the parts in-route to my house:

- PM-45 Milling Machine
- Antek 10N70R5R12 power supply
- Gecko 320X's
- C11T controller
- Smooth Stepper and BOB
- Kelig 850oz/in servo motors
- CUI encoders

I work at an electronics company, so I'm going to build the control system at work with some of the EE's. The guys at work are excited, should be fun. Plan is to get the control system up and running first. I'll get the machine setup in the garage, and take it apart to measure everything and create a CAD model of it. Then I'll design and layout the CNC conversion parts in the CAD model and create drawings. That should allow me to order the ballscrews with pre-finished ends. I just got a lathe, but don't feel like turning those. I might have some friends crank out the mounting brackets for all the CNC stuff at their shops so I don't have to do it all by hand. I don't have tons of spare time and thanks to you guys I want the CNC up and running soon. But who knows, I could end up building them all myself too.

[diyengineer]

Ugh! Amazing.. where to begin.. Awesome car, sweet mill and conversion, amazing gun (btw i'd love to get into that, sport shooting). Gotta give credit, where its due. Attention to detail and quality, very nice job. You mentioned where to go local for tooling. Right in Auburn, I've been numerous times to http://www.1asi.com/.
Application Specialties. They supply a lot of the Boeing suppliers and shops in the Puget Sound. Really nice guys. Be warned you will leave about 100 pounds heavier with free brochures, and tool magazines. Some of there stuff, is top quality and really out of the price range of the hobbyist. There economy endmills, are still probably better than anything youll find from little machine shop though. They are really well priced also for the little stuff. They also resharpen bit for cheap, and can pretty much get ahold of anything you need. Anyways, amazing job keep up the good work. I'm in the process of getting my little machine shop X3 going, so im sure in the future youll see me asking for help haha. Anything you need feel free to message me. Nice to know people locally!

Can't wait for more updates!

[rlockwood]

Ugh! Amazing.. where to begin.. Awesome car, sweet mill and conversion, amazing gun (btw i'd love to get into that, sport shooting). Gotta give credit, where its due. Attention to detail and quality, very nice job. You mentioned where to go local for tooling. Right in Auburn, I've been numerous times to http://www.1asi.com/.
Application Specialties. They supply a lot of the Boeing suppliers and shops in the Puget Sound. Really nice guys. Be warned you will leave about 100 pounds heavier with free brochures, and tool magazines. Some of there stuff, is top quality and really out of the price range of the hobbyist. There economy endmills, are still probably better than anything youll find from little machine shop though. They are really well priced also for the little stuff. They also resharpen bit for cheap, and can pretty much get ahold of anything you need. Anyways, amazing job keep up the good work. I'm in the process of getting my little machine shop X3 going, so im sure in the future youll see me asking for help haha. Anything you need feel free to message me. Nice to know people locally!

Can't wait for more updates!

Big thumbs up for Nick @ ASI, though he usually works down here in the portland area.

[jid2]

Haven't mounted the new vises, but I did make a little progress on my new gun I'm building. I did a poor job fitting the rails the first time, so I weld them back up with the TIG and programmed the toolpaths instead of doing it with MDI and no plan like before.

Welded up and ready to go.



Toolpaths



Cutting







STI 2011 Frame Fitting - CNC - YouTube

[Kevinj308]

Wow, great job on the machine and what you're doing. I found this thread from Straightup_OG's on the Bverse. Thanks a lot for all the detailed description and photos. Very helpful for a newb like me.
Kevin

[jid2]

Thanks. Heading out to build a barrel holding fixture and then profile cut the lower lugs.

[USPcompact]

Nice thread. 2011's are fun.

[jid2]

Fixture all machined. My spindle has the random dip in speed, who knows why, but you can hear it happen in the video. Did some slotting with a 1/2" 3 flute, went well until the very end of the operation where one flute starts to clog while ramping down into the 2nd level. I just let it go. I guess slotting is really a 2 flute deal. But it did run nice at .20" DOC, 6800 RPM and 42 IPM. Next time I slot I'll move to 2 flute and up the DOC to .25".

I bought a couple CAT40 ER20 holders and some pull studs for Haas and Hurco. That gives me a few of my own tools for testing machines!

Making a 1911 Barrel Holding Fixture - YouTube

[diyengineer]

VERY nice!!

[jid2]

I'll add some text later....












1911 CNC lower lug cutting - YouTube

[jid2]

Slide Work
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[jid2]

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Open Gun Slide Work Part 1 - CNC 1911 Slide Lightening - YouTube

[USPcompact]

Niiiiiice.

Which red dot are you putting on there?

[Leoo5van]

Anything you need feel free to message me. Nice to know people locally!

[jid2]

Niiiiiice.

Which red dot are you putting on there?

I'm actually designing one from scratch. But I want to shoot this gun at the MGM Ironman 3 Gun match first week in June, and it's going to be tight to design and test the new scope by then. So my back-up plan is to use a C-More RTS on a Matt Cheely mount.