[mountaindew]

Work area has changed a little from the 1st picture.

Attachment 219788

Fun picture
Attachment 219790

And a close up of some work
Attachment 219792


Lane

[mountaindew]

Another small project to help learn cam software and mill operations.
A vise milled out of scrap acrylic.
The design is based on drawings on Dean Williams web site. I modeled each part and run tool paths for each.
I have not found easy ways to flip parts in same program and not make it a little confusing using the g55. No big deal it works, but kind of kludged so far.
I found separate programs for each side of parts a little more natural for me at this point.
Anyway a couple pictures.

Attachment 220748


Attachment 220750


Thanks for Looking
Lane

[WOTDesigns]

Seperate programs are the simplest way for me too. If I need to change one feature on one side I only have to output that side/program after changing it.

Brian
WOT Designs

[WOTDesigns]

Neat idea btw N the acrylic vise as a fun learning project

Brian
WOT Designs

[SCzEngrgGroup]

Most low-end CAM programs don't handle re-orienting a part at all, making separate programs, and drawings, the only practical way to handled it. Surprisingly, even some higher-end ones do not handle it well. I just ditched AlibreCAM/VisualMill because it handles fixtures very poorly. I now use HSMXpress, which handles fixtures really beautifully, allowing you to define a new fixture, oriented any way you like, and with the origin placed anywhere you like. If you have, or can afforrd, either Solidworks ($4K), or Inventor ($1K), HSMXpress is a fabulous CAM tool! Best part is it's free! The Solidworks version is, currently, more feature-complete.

Regards,
Ray L.

[Steve Seebold]

Another small project to help learn cam software and mill operations.
A vise milled out of scrap acrylic.
The design is based on drawings on Dean Williams web site. I modeled each part and run tool paths for each.
I have not found easy ways to flip parts in same program and not make it a little confusing using the g55. No big deal it works, but kind of kludged so far.
I found separate programs for each side of parts a little more natural for me at this point.
Anyway a couple pictures.

Attachment 220748


Attachment 220750


Thanks for Looking
Lane

That is a cool project. You can see everything you do as you do it. A really cool busy work project as well. When I bought my first mill in 2001 ( a FADAL 3016 ) I made business card holder that looked like a machine vise. It was a really good way for me to get acquainted with the machine.

[mountaindew]

Seperate programs are the simplest way for me too. If I need to change one feature on one side I only have to output that side/program after changing it.

Brian
WOT Designs

Neat idea btw N the acrylic vise as a fun learning project

Brian
WOT Designs

Hi Brian,
Thanks for kind words and reassurance that just running separate programs is fine. I'm not big fan of so many files to make one part but I like the overall control I have.

Lane

[mountaindew]

Most low-end CAM programs don't handle re-orienting a part at all, making separate programs, and drawings, the only practical way to handled it. Surprisingly, even some higher-end ones do not handle it well. I just ditched AlibreCAM/VisualMill because it handles fixtures very poorly. I now use HSMXpress, which handles fixtures really beautifully, allowing you to define a new fixture, oriented any way you like, and with the origin placed anywhere you like. If you have, or can afforrd, either Solidworks ($4K), or Inventor ($1K), HSMXpress is a fabulous CAM tool! Best part is it's free! The Solidworks version is, currently, more feature-complete.

Regards,
Ray L.

Hey Ray,
Thanks for comment, I wondered if I was fighting a battle that was already lost.
I get such great advise here! Helps me move on and only struggle with stuff if I want too or have a need .
Lane

[mountaindew]

Thanks Steve,
I like to learn this way. It was lots of fun to build it and it works for business cards anyway .
The experience you get in one project is amazing. You get to see all the traps, pitfalls and errors in your design, cam operations, reference points, mills, tools, fixtures and g-code to shorten the very long list of things that spoil your work.
Still when it comes together it is so rewarding.

I would like to also mention and I will post some pictures of the apprentice work I did for first couple weeks.
I made a pile of acrylic blocks in a bunch of different sizes. Spending hours mounting rough material in vise and milling all 6 sides square.
I used and practiced different methods for doing this and figured one thing out.
I'm not real fond of squaring up material for a project or in this case a pile of it for all kinds of future projects.
Still it has to be done and another skill to master.

Thanks again for kind words and looking
Lane

[Steve Seebold]

Machining square and rectangular blocks is easy on the Tormach. If your material is tall enough, you can machine 5 sides of the block, then flip it over and cut the back side off.

You can even do that if you are working on a part that has a shape. You only need to cut the shape, when machine some soft jaws to hold the other side of your part. I do that all the time.

My PCNC 1100 will be 3 years old in July, and I love it as much today as I did on the first day I ran it. Would I rather have a machine like a Haas? Sure I would, but my Tormach didn't cost $75,000.00

It will do anything a Haas will do, it just takes a little longer. I can cut profiles and surfaces. I can even cut threads with it.

Here's some pictures of the parts I made to learn to run my FADAL.

[mountaindew]

Machining square and rectangular blocks is easy on the Tormach. If your material is tall enough, you can machine 5 sides of the block, then flip it over and cut the back side off.

You can even do that if you are working on a part that has a shape. You only need to cut the shape, when machine some soft jaws to hold the other side of your part. I do that all the time.

My PCNC 1100 will be 3 years old in July, and I love it as much today as I did on the first day I ran it. Would I rather have a machine like a Haas? Sure I would, but my Tormach didn't cost $75,000.00

It will do anything a Haas will do, it just takes a little longer. I can cut profiles and surfaces. I can even cut threads with it.

Here's some pictures of the parts I made to learn to run my FADAL.

Cool looking card holder! bet that fadal could just ram that out in no time.
These days don't know if I would want to pay power bill on such powerful tools yet alone buy one.
I see you live in cal. so I know your electrons are no cheaper.

I agree 100%, I don't have cnc or mill experience but I have been around tools all my life and this is some tool!!!!!!!!!!!!.
The entire system with software , computers, mill, power, vise, cutters..... is pretty high. In contrast I know people that spend much more on a car that just sets outside.
Anyway moving on from blocks to more complex fun stuff

Attachment 221178


Attachment 221180

I know new powerful computers and software makes this much more straight forward compared to just even a few years ago!
I love this mill also!
Learning more every time I use it!

Lane

[Jabs1542]

Lane,

Will this part be for coolant nozzles? And where are you getting your stock acrylic? I found Yarde Metals to be a great source for metal stock but they don't carry plastics.

Thanks,
Jay

[daniel28]

You have a very neat working station mountaindew.

[mountaindew]

Lane,

Will this part be for coolant nozzles? And where are you getting your stock acrylic? I found Yarde Metals to be a great source for metal stock but they don't carry plastics.

Thanks,
Jay

Yes, building this to lightly blow plastic chips off the work surface while milling.
Going to model and mill little nozzles I think also. the rest will be normal npt connection.
It could be used for coolant I guess. would need to be filtered and or bigger nozzles.

The material come from professional plastics a long time ago. Most of it is scratched and has other problems like you get in old used material.
Works good as practice milling material. Not much dust and you can machine it at different speeds. I take flat sheet material and cut up and bond into thicker material. I use different color material also just for fun. It takes a weld-on 3 or 4 bonding agent to laminate the stuff up.
I have new cyro cast material that machines and bonds much better it can be expensive when cost of oil is high so I use it only on good projects.

Thanks for reading and looking
Lane

[mountaindew]

Double post

[Steve Seebold]

Cool looking card holder! bet that fadal could just ram that out in no time.
These days don't know if I would want to pay power bill on such powerful tools yet alone buy one.
I see you live in cal. so I know your electrons are no cheaper.

I agree 100%, I don't have cnc or mill experience but I have been around tools all my life and this is some tool!!!!!!!!!!!!.
The entire system with software , computers, mill, power, vise, cutters..... is pretty high. In contrast I know people that spend much more on a car that just sets outside.
Anyway moving on from blocks to more complex fun stuff

Attachment 221178


Attachment 221180

I know new powerful computers and software makes this much more straight forward compared to just even a few years ago!
I love this mill also!
Learning more every time I use it!

Lane

Lane, If you have any questions or need any help with your machine or the parts you are making, PLEASE don't hesitate to ask. I am a Tormach consultant and I'm here to help.

[mountaindew]

Hi Steve.
Thanks, You have been helping!
I know I will have plenty of questions over the years, Thanks again for offer.
This machine and associated tooling has been nothing short of a joy to use. A little spooky at times because of no experience and not wanting to damage the machine$ and accessories. All things considered, Imho this is a well thought out system. You can see from looking at pictures of older machines how Tormach has looked at and addressed issues or added features that made the machine work and perform better. They designed the system so 1 person could more or less with time and decent skills, set one up with no help. Running conduit and power was just as much work as setting up the mill and installing accessories. In my case I had very few issues with the process and found it to be fun.
Steve don't hesitate pointing out that I am a very happy owner of one!

Thanks again for all the help!
Lane

[nitewatchman]

These days don't know if I would want to pay power bill on such powerful tools yet alone buy one.

Lane

The issue of power consumption has been broached by my wife and our business accountant. They are both insistant that the Tormach 1100 was using a significant amount of electrical power and that since we invoiced about $60,000 across the Tormach last year the power should be expensed against our company SynerTech, LLC. My response was dismissal which really didn't help the issue.

So after a lot of pressure, I agreed to install a "Billable" vampire type passive meter on the machine subpanel.Total cost, "which we can expense", was about $500.00. After puting the meter on line, we ran a half dozen parts and reported the power usage to my wife, the Comptroller. The invoice value of the parts was $62.00 each which is all labor on customer supplied material. After she looked at the number of Kilowatt-Hours used, she said "see I told you it was using a lot of power". I then asked her how much it cost. Not knowing the answer, she got out the electrical bill and took our total usage of KWH divided by the dollars and the multiplied by the average KWH's per part. After muttering and doing this several times, she said that something was wrong with the numbers. Asking her to explain, she said the electrical use was $0.04 each and that could not be correct. I told her that this seemed about right and I haven't heard anymore about expensing electricity from her or the accountant.

Cost $500 to put this to bed, which we will never recover based upon expensing electricity. But the peace in the house is worth it.

nitewatchman

[tbaker2500]

I've always wondered. Thanks for the info. About how much on-time does the machine have?

[flatsix66]

Cool thread! Inspiring.