[matttargett4]

Hi,

Ive been a hobby cnc person for a while, ive built a couple of cnc plasma and oxy fuel tables but im looking to try something a bit different so i have been looking at mills, i have a basic grounding in machining but i dont know loads so excuse my ignorance and feel free to straighten me out, basically i have been thinking of a project and have a bunch of questions.

I want to make a machining centre that will do as much as possible, to me it appears that a 5 axis mill could do basically everything that a mill or a lathe can do?? My only question is internal boring, grooving etc?? I watched a video of a machine holding a lathe tool in the spindle and then using one of the rotary axes to turn the part like a lathe chuck, surely that requires loads of power in your rotary axis as well as position control through an encoder or stepper?? Is that neccisary? For instance if i want to make a wheel hub i can do the external turning by turning the part in the chuck and using an end mill to do the cutting, is the internal turning possible in that way??

On the power subject, obviously it depends on what you are doing but to work in steel what sort of spindle power will i need and what sort of magnitude are the cutting forces going to be??

Im imagining a gantry style machine like a plasma machine with the 2 rotary axes at one end of the bed and a table at the other end to work as a normal 3 axis mill, does that sound sensible??

i hope you can point me in the right direction

thanks

matt

[will gilmore]

Managing cutting forces is everything in cnc machining. Plasma and oxy have basicly zero cutting force. Look at existing machines and see how they are designed and why.

[jsheerin]

Iscar's Machining Power - V5.0

Here's a machining power/force calculator you can play with. The other thing that's important is the stiffness of the structure (how much deflection you get for a given load).