[Bearhawk LSA]

Hello All,

I have been following this group for some time and had planned to convert a machine myself, but found one already built locally. Its pretty well made in that it also has a full enclosure with coolant setup. It has chinese ebay C7 ballscrews and the treadmill motor upgrade with belt drive. He has a set of updated bearings to take full advantage of the treadmill motor, but has not installed them yet. I will likely do that as I set it up. It also comes with the continuity edge finders for both holes/edges and Z height for tools.

I know these machines are not geared for production, but I do plan to use it for that but on a light duty, but only for my own products. The parts I have are all about 1.5" square 6061 and start out with most of the features being from a custom extrusion. I then do some supplemental machining on a few sides. My question is to do this, I am curious if it makes sense to run all operations one at a time on all parts then proceed to the next op/tool change. Or does it make sense to just do one setup, and run all tools on that face one each part. It seems with center drills, drills and endmills that I am unsure how accurately I can swap tools between ops. I know this can be done with each tool having an offset value but I have a lot to learn before i get there. I suppose my question lies with what is the best way to do this, and what should I buy to be able too. I have seen the tormach R8 tooling setup and curious if that is a good way to go. Chances are I will have my one group of tools I have set up and that's it. I am also willing to modify my design to reuse as much as I can. Also I use solidworks and curious if there is a good program that integrates well with parts designed in Solidworks. Something graphical like mastercam? I have a freind who is very proficient in mastercam that can teach me and it may make sense to have him teach me rather than learn on my own a new program. How does mastercam work with Mach3... I am driving distance from the little machine shop in Pasadena so can buy stuff there if that is a good place.

I am open to any suggestions or help offered.

Best regards,

Marc

[SCzEngrgGroup]

If you have Solidworks, download HSMXpress CAM from HSMWorks.com or the Autodesk website. It's free, and FAR better than many expensive for-pay CAM programs as long as you only need 2.5D, and not full 3D.

As for your fixturing question, that is impossible to answer, without knowing what the part is, how it's fixtured, what the machining sequence is, and what kind of tolerance you need. Every part is different.

Regards,
Ray L.

[Bearhawk LSA]

Hello Ray,

Thank you for the quick reply. I will have a look at that software.

As for tolerance any of the critical stuff is already in the extrusion so any supplemental machining can have large tolerances. Only close tolerance operation is a fairly deep hole, but in general its all more for function than any precision.
The product can be seen here: STRUT CAMERA MOUNT FOR CESSNA from Aircraft Spruce
and here: Cloudbase Carbon Cub camera mount

I am thinking it would work well for me to have 2ea 4" vices on the table and do 2 at a time since they are small.

Marc