[smallblock]

Your feed rates should be in inches per minute. On my machine I found the following to be reliable with no lost steps
Y axis 80 inches per minute
Z axis 12 inches per minute
X axis in the original configuration with 2-1 reduction it was 40 inches per minute, but I changed the motor pulley and belt and went 1-1 drive and now run 60 inches per minute.
These are the designations in the mill mode

My DRO has a plus and minus button to set the direction of the travel.

[Rocketman]

Your feed rates should be in inches per minute. On my machine I found the following to be reliable with no lost steps
Y axis 80 inches per minute
Z axis 12 inches per minute
X axis in the original configuration with 2-1 reduction it was 40 inches per minute, but I changed the motor pulley and belt and went 1-1 drive and now run 60 inches per minute.
These are the designations in the mill mode
My DRO has a plus and minus button to set the direction of the travel.

Your not going to help sell many machines by telling people the Z axis rapid rate is 12 inches per minute. I've been a fan of Gecko drives for years and I don't think I've ever heard of anyone getting such poor results. I've got gecko's running far older and slower steppers on a Terco Swiss mill at more than twice that speed and it's running with an under powered power supply. I also retrofit a D and M lathe with Gecko's and it too will out perform the speeds and feeds your getting. The Shopmaster machines have many faults but the steppers, power supplies and Gecko drives are not to blame.

My Patriot has so much slop I found when I tightened up the gibs to an acceptable level of play things were then almost too tight to move. There's not much you can do about it. Either loosen things up and live with the slop or run at slow speeds to maximize the torque of the steppers. Your going to need plenty of torque to run without the slop if yours is made anything like mine. Forget about the factory settings. Unless you have everything loose if will never run at those settings.

[BlackICE1]

My guess is Z is so slow since it has to move a hell of a lot of mass against gravity in the Z+ direction. Unless Z assembly is counter weighted it going to need butt load of power to move quickly.

BTW my 2014 Patriot slop in the X and Y isn't too bad and I can more rapids at 75"/min without losing steps. Working on improving Z it has issues.

[smallblock]

Yes, the older machines were only driving the quill, so the Z rapids were really fast, but the new Mill Turn Z axis is lifting the entire mill head casting which probably weighs 100#.

[Rocketman]

Nothing a pair of lift struts can't fix. They come in all sizes and a pair could be used to counter balance the weight you mentioned.

[mccafferty]

I too have only been able to get my z to run reliably at 12 ipm. It consistently is worse at the same spot about an inch above its lowest point. I couldn't get it to that speed until i loosened and then tightened the 6 vertical posts. This helped get things out of a bind. I have never been able to get my spindles to run at an accurate/stable rpm.

[BlackICE1]

I too have only been able to get my z to run reliably at 12 ipm. It consistently is worse at the same spot about an inch above its lowest point. I couldn't get it to that speed until i loosened and then tightened the 6 vertical posts. This helped get things out of a bind. I have never been able to get my spindles to run at an accurate/stable rpm.

Has anyone done this for the previous Patriot model? Taking some weight off would allow the A axis to move quicker.

[smallblock]

Keep in mind that stepper motors have a limited rpm range, and regardless of their power they will only go so fast. The Z axis ratio is 4-1, so you are not going to get much faster than 12 IPM due to the rpm limits. The only way to increase that would be to change the drive ratio. I could get about 20 IPM on the downstroke, but on the upstroke, lifting all that weight it would sometimes bind, so I went with a conservative setting to avoid any lost program steps. Lift struts could equalize the up and down motion if properly selected and perhaps get you 20 IPM both directions.

[Rocketman]

I thought you might have a gripe with the manufacturer and went and checked the specs for the new machines and found he was sly enough not to list any feed rates on any of the axis! It simply states the machine's feed is adjustable from 0 to Max. We now are finding out the max is about 12 inches a minute. That's crazy slow for a rapid rate and it's even so slow as a feed rate that your going to burn some materials rather than cut them. I can't think of another cnc being made today with a rapid anywhere close to as slow as this! Those long 3d cuts I like to do would be out of the question on one of those.

I'd suggest getting bigger motors and motor drives and reducing the reduction in the drive train to speed things along. Typical Shopmaster quality, it will work but to work right your going to have to dump more money and time into your machine. Even those huge stepper motors that Bridgeport used back decades ago would out perform the current setup on a mill turn.

Even the guy that developed the cnc drive system for the Shopmaster machines won't be able to help you get any more speed out of a bad design decision made by Shopmaster. The original system designer is selling his Shopmaster machine on E-bay. It's been listed and relisted for several weeks now for $3600.00 with no takers. Rather than buy a new one from Shopmaster that's full of bugs I'd rather buy a used one for half the money that's been fine tuned to run right! Here's the link: Shopmaster Eldorado Bridgemill CNC VFD | eBay

[BlackICE1]

At 12"/min peck drilling series of holes can be very tedious.

I have my old Patriot setup doing 50"/min for rapids. Even at that it would be nice if it went faster.

The Patriot's feed weren't specified either. As shipped it was set at a conservative 20"/min. I got it running rapids fine at 75"/min XY and 50 on Z. The A axis is a different story very inconsistent movement. I only jog it up and down during setup never moving it for cuts. IMO it is too floppy in movement to be worth much cutting. I hope the buyers of the mill turn find the newer design better in that area.

[smallblock]

I thought you might have a gripe with the manufacturer and went and checked the specs for the new machines and found he was sly enough not to list any feed rates on any of the axis!

]

To be fair, we seem to be talking about 3 different machines here- The thread is about the Mill Turn, but one guy has a Patriot and the other machine is a Bridgemill from 10 years ago. I have owned all 3 models and like everyone else, I sometimes wish for more power or more speed etc. but you accept what they offer for the price. As far as '" being sly" goes, perhaps you should be "sly" enough to read the specs or ask questions before buying if those feed rates are an important issue for you.

[Rocketman]

To be fair, we seem to be talking about 3 different machines here- The thread is about the Mill Turn, but one guy has a Patriot and the other machine is a Bridgemill from 10 years ago. I have owned all 3 models and like everyone else, I sometimes wish for more power or more speed etc. but you accept what they offer for the price. As far as '" being sly" goes, perhaps you should be "sly" enough to read the specs or ask questions before buying if those feed rates are an important issue for you.

Yes, 3 different versions of the machine but all are running the same drives, have ball screws and probably the same stepper motors. If anything most people would think a new model would be faster and improved specs or no specs. At the very least most would think it would at least be as fast as a model made by the same company a decade ago. Not slower! Also I'd like to point out the guy that's selling the old machine is the same guy that developed the cnc drive setup for my factory installed Patriot. I guess I could ask him if he worked on the drive setups for the new Mill Turn but what would be the point? The fact remains the new machine is proving to be the slowest cnc in production in the world. Please feel free to mention another cnc maker that can boast that they replaced "turbo" speed with "turtle" speed and are selling it as "new" and "improved". If I was selling drives for cnc machines I would not want my name attached to any machine with such poor performance. People might think the snail speed problem was related to my drives instead of the machine they are installed in. I'd walk away from any partnership until the hardware kinks were properly addressed.

As far as price goes let's be fair about that too! The Bridgemill you refer to had far more parts in it than today's offering from Shopmaster. With the huge parts reduction came a huge manufacturing price reduction yet the price for today's lower performing machine has not gone down.

In order to fix the problem at the source I'd suggest throwing out the round ways currently in use for the mill and going to vertical castings at each end of the lathe section. You could borrow current big boy cnc machine designs and attach precision rails to these castings for the head to ride up and down on. I'd suggest two rails per end. Mazak uses this system on their cnc's as do others. I've personally used these machines and they are accurate and fast. Even the robot loaders on the Mazak lathes use this system but they mount the rails on a long section of rectangular tubing instead of mounting it to castings. Even the robot system is far faster and more accurate than anything on any Shopmaster. The biggest expense increase would be the precision rails compared to the round rails currently being attempted with the Mill Turn. Mazak is a U.S.A. company and for what it's worth, their control system is built on Windows computers. Mach 3 was not the only one able to make a cnc controller out of a Windows platform!

[GITERDUN]

The great thing about being in the USA is that you can bundle up all your blueprints and ideas, hop a plane over to China and have them build machines for you. With all your improvements you'll be a millionaire in no time.

[Rocketman]

The great thing about being in the USA is that you can bundle up all your blueprints and ideas, hop a plane over to China and have them build machines for you. With all your improvements you'll be a millionaire in no time.

Shopmaster might have thought that at one time also. I don't think things quite worked out that way. You still have to have a good product and great customer support otherwise word of mouth will kill off any dreams of grandeur one might have.

[walters474]

I'd like to know as well, for my Mill Turn. I emailed Shopmaster and I got no reply.

[walters474]

With my Mill Turn, moving the Z axis manually seems to have about the same drag going up and down (to my surprise (compared to my Eldorado anyway ))

[smallblock]

JT has a file on how to tram the machine- maybe your e-mail didn't get through. Try him again, or send me a PM and I can forward the file to you.

[resilient]

So I never heard the question answered Mill Turn or Tormach? Regardless of price difference, which is a better machine?

[n1tr0]

If I had to do it again, I would definitely purchase the Tormach. The Mill Turn may eventually be a more capable machine for less money, but JT doesn't like to share any documentation so if you want to repair or maintain anything, you have to disassemble it and reverse engineer everything. I think Tormachs are worth the extra money for the support and documentation alone. Not one thing on my Mill Turn worked out of the box; none of it was overly difficult to fix, but most of it I had to either sort out myself or get suggestions from forum members here. I'm kind of dreading when the spindle bearings need replacing because unlike previous models JT doesn't list any replacement and wants the whole assembly sent back for service.

Check the Shopmaster website, you won't find a support section or a documentation section, and when you look under common parts, nothing about the Mill-Turn. If the documentation was open and there were drawings to better enable repairs and modifications, I think the Mill-turn could be an excellent starting platform for hobbyists and small businesses.

[smallblock]

I'm not sure what the issue is between you and JT, but I have been dealing with him for over 20 years and 4 different models of his machines. He has always been prompt in answering questions and supplying any necessary parts. The Mill Turn has a cartridge design that can be removed from the machine in minutes. Frankly, I can't imagine anyone not being able to repair it by simple intuitive thinking. I challenge you to find any other company that sold machines in 1981 and when you contact them you are still dealing with the same guy. As far as the question about choosing a Tormach or Mill Turn, it's really an odd one. If you want a Tormach Mill and Lathe, you are talking in the price range of 30K +.