[sallystrothers]

Anyone have good suggestions for a single company who can provide a good price for a table top (12" long, 6" wide, 6" deep minimum cut volume) CNC mill, a 3d laser scanner (low tolerance) and software to finish the design and submit it to the CNC mill to process? The materials I will be cutting will be 80% of the time wood and 20% aluminum. I am looking to spend less than $5000. I am mostly tarded when it comes to machining but need to learn ASAP.

[awerby]

wanting a laser scanner as well as the mill and software gets it out of your price range. If you'd settle for a touch-probe scanner, it would almost work. A Taig CNC mill has 12" travel in X, 5" in Y, and 6" in Z. They cost as little as $2245 for the 2027ER (with our discount). I could sell you VisualMill for $800, and a Roland Pix-4 (piezo-electric touchprobe) scanner for $1800. With shipping, this would still fit into your budget.

If having a laser scanner is really important to you, the best suggestion I can make is to look at the David DIY laser scanner system, which comes from Germany (although they seem to have switched over to a "structured light" system lately). They'll sell you a kit containing their software, a laser line pointer, and a webcam; it's up to you to make it work. Some people seem to have had decent results with it, but your mileage may vary: DAVID 3D Scanner

Andrew Werby
ComputerSculpture.com — Home Page for Discount Hardware & Software

[Fixittt]

Im going to hate to be the bearer of bad news here but Im not going to try and sell you something. Realistically the cnc mill itself out of the crate is very limited as far as usage goes.
Say you get the taig package, which is a great little mill (All small desktop mills have their capability limits due to design and spindle) Any mill out of the box is very crippled. Mainly because you do not have the tooling to accomplish what you want to do. So the price now goes up by at least half of the mill price to outfit the machine with the right tooling and indicators. Now for more bad news..... you said your new to all of this......... This is going to cost even more (sadly its very real) In your quest to learn a new skill set you ARE AND WILL destroy tooling. There is NO WAY around this! You are going to scrap material as well! So now our tooling alone has at least equaled the price of the machine itself. Now you are going to need other shop tools to compliment the machine. What good is that cool aluminum part that took you years to learn how to do (Ohhh btw, you will not be able to cad/cam machine and finish parts over night) What good is this new part that you just finished with all these burrs on it? A belt sander, air compressor, and some sort of saw to cut your material will all be needed as well.

Im not trying to scare you, not at all. I all to often see someone with drive and ambition jump 2 feet into this world and then realize "This crap aint easy!" The machine ends up in a store room/basement or EBAY

Just yesterday I cut 2 block off plates. Think 1.5 inch long oval with a hole on each end. just under 1/2 inch thick. I cut it with a 1/8th end mill only doing a step down profile pass. Which means is that the endmill did nothing more then trace the outside shape of the plate, step down a tiny bit and do it all over again. The 2 plates took 6 hours to complete With a small desktop cnc mill which is more stout and a stronger spindle then the taig mill. So the machine time with the taig would have been longer.

My suggestion to you is this........
Rethink what you really want to do with your setup.
Take it one step at a time.
Forget the scanner right now..... Its useless if you cannot do anything with the machine.
If your still hell bent, then get the software to design (CAD) first
Learn the software............. Once you get descent with it then maybe its time to invest in a machine. Get the machine, some machinable wax and some tooling. Machinable wax is very forgiving and allows some of the learning mistakes.

Take it one step at a time!!!

[Fixittt]

Man, I hope my last comment did not sound in any way derogatory to
Andrew or the products he sells. That was not my intention in any way!

The Taig machines are very capable and I have seen amazing things from them. If I was to recommend a started mill to anyone it would be the taig.

[awerby]

But I didn't take your remarks that way. While it's true that any actual part you might want to make will take some extra tooling and materials to complete, I wouldn't say that this inevitably adds up to a big amount of money right away - it can, but it really depends on what exactly you're trying to accomplish. While a CNC machine is an amazingly versatile tool, it's not a whole factory in itself - you'll always have to spend money on auxilliary tools, materials, overhead, etc. if you're seriously trying to turn out products.

On the other hand, that project you're describing, profiling a couple of little plates in aluminum, sounds incredibly slow to me. What feedrate were you running at? Maybe you were so afraid of breaking your cutter that you slowed things down to a crawl, but it's not strictly necessary to do that. I can't imagine it taking more than an hour or so on the Taig. How fast is that strong spindle of yours? If you're severely limited in RPMs, then that will also limit feedrates, if you're using a small tool. The Taig spindle runs at up to 11,000 RPM, which gives it some advantages over larger machines with slower spindles.

Andrew Werby
ComputerSculpture.com — Home Page for Discount Hardware & Software

[Fixittt]

No doubt that I approached my plates wrong. I used a nsk e3000 spindle (capable of 60K rpm) my problem was that I profiled it deep. No place for the chips to go but in the channel. So I had to run her slow so that I could keep up with chip removal and wd-40

[awerby]

I wish I had one of those NSK spindles; they're perfect for jewelry work. But yes, if you're working in a slot, then everything's more difficult. I'd suggest removing the exterior material first with a series of facing cuts, then doing the profiling when you've got it out of the way, and only have to cut on one side of the material at a time. That would likely go a lot quicker.

Andrew Werby
ComputerSculpture.com — Home Page for Discount Hardware & Software

[sallystrothers]

How long would it take a tiag mill to cut a 6"x3"x3" dome shaped object out of wood? Based on my non-existent experience in machining I would expect wood to cut very fast. How many hours should I plan to learn CAD software line Visual Mill? Does anyone know why Roland is discontinuing their Pix-4? Does anyone have any comparison with another scanner?

[awerby]

since there are a lot of variables. Assuming the 6" dimension is along the X axis, it would be possible to cut this part on the Taig, but how long it would take depends on what kind of wood it is, how smooth you want it, and what model of Taig you bought (the DSLS 3000 goes faster than the 2027). Figure anywhere from 20 minutes to a couple of hours. Wood should be cut fast, but the Taig mills, while they can cut wood, were designed primarily with metal-cutting in mind.

It's also hard to quantify your learning curve. VisualMill isn't that difficult to use compared to some CAM (not CAD) software, but it does take some time and effort, and a bit of trial and error, to master. CAD (design) software is another matter entirely. You can spend years at it and still not be a master, and of course different programs will be more or less difficult, depending on how your mind works.

Roland discontinued the Pix-4 several years ago; they didn't say why. I happen to have a couple of them still in stock, though. They make very accurate scans which don't need touch-up afterwards, but they are slow in operation, have certain size limitations, and only capture one side of an object at a time, compared with the Roland turntable laser scanners which can scan all around an object.

Andrew Werby
ComputerSculpture.com — Home Page for Discount Hardware & Software