Mill / Drill recommendations / buying advice?

Tilting heads add a lot of flex in the system, so they are generally not good on CNC mills. They also will lose your predefined zero points once things start moving out of square. There are cutters that mill at 45 degrees, although drilling at 6 degrees is a little tougher to do. My guess is that through use of some slick tooling, nearly anything can be done.
 
Guys, I operate and manual program a Haas VF-2 every single day.

True, for intricate stuff, you need a CAD program, but for basic stuff, you can program the machine right from the keypad using Fanuc language, or, I can even do it right here on my Pc, load on a floppy, and take it and put the floppy in my machine, and thats it.

The CAD stuff we use is AutoCad, and it writes the program for you using the template for the style of programming your machine accepts. We have written our own templates depending on the machines, and it isn't difficult at all. Like anything, it takes patience and a bit of time to learn. We also use Mastercam for the actual programming of the machines

Here is a small example of a prrogram that will mill both ends of a part, and drill a couple of holes. I'm writing this completely from memory, in fanuc style, and if I load onto a floppy, my machine will read it and run it.

%01000

(mill ends and drill)

G00G40G54G80G90;
M6T1;
(1/4 DRILL);
G54G90X.5Y0M3S1500;
G43Z2.H1M8;
Z.1;
G83G98Z-.75R.1Q.1F20.;
X1.5;
G80M9;
M6T2;
(3/4 2 FL SKI CARBIDE MILL)
G54G90X11.Y.5M3S3500;
G43Z2.H2M8;
Z.1;
G01Z-.52F10.;
G41D1X10.
Y-1.375;
G00G40Z2.;
X-.5;
Z.1;
G01Z-.52F10.;
G41D1X0;
Y.5;
G00G40Z2.M9;
G28G91Y0Z0;
G90X0;
M30;
%

That program drilled 2 quarter inch holes, and milled the material to 10" long.

If anyone would like to know exactly what the codes are, you can email or PM me, and I'll be glad to explain.

As for the mills, you can't beat a Bridgeport style knee mill, but the Jet benchtop one works very well for small stuff.
 
It also makes it tough in that every machine has its own "dialect" even though they all speak G-Code. I've run a Haas before and have had 4 other controls on different machines. Each has its own way to do tool offsets, equations, comments, and other things.

The most complex stuff I wrote is some bicycle cranks that twist, curve, and taper simultaneously. I hand wrote a huge 4th axis parametric program that would accept input on how long to make the part, whether it was a right or a left crank and curving appropriately, and engrave the date and length on the crank. It figured out all the scaling factors, left or right hand threads, and roughing and finishing passes depending on the variables you input. It took a while to write, but once it was done, it saved truckloads of machine time to make some pretty crazy parts. I tend to hand write nearly all of my code.
 
Looks like I'm about to win a Bridgeport J head on Ebay with X&Y DRO. Not exactly what I wanted, but it's something good to learn on. It'll probably go into the warehouse here and stay put. :D

EDIT: spoke too soon, damn snipers :rolleyes:
 
How do you guys handle doing angled boring operations on a fixed column mill like the Tormach? Do you just do shims or do you use a titling bed?
 
Mike G said:
%01000

(mill ends and drill)

G00G40G54G80G90;
M6T1;
(1/4 DRILL);
G54G90X.5Y0M3S1500;
G43Z2.H1M8;
Z.1;
G83G98Z-.75R.1Q.1F20.;
X1.5;
G80M9;
M6T2;
(3/4 2 FL SKI CARBIDE MILL)
G54G90X11.Y.5M3S3500;
G43Z2.H2M8;
Z.1;
G01Z-.52F10.;
G41D1X10.
Y-1.375;
G00G40Z2.;
X-.5;
Z.1;
G01Z-.52F10.;
G41D1X0;
Y.5;
G00G40Z2.M9;
G28G91Y0Z0;
G90X0;
M30;
%
Click to expand...

Man, I bet you are the life of the party! :D (J/K)
 
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