[Spartan1]

I own a business and developing a new product that needs molds.

*The molds are 2"x 4"x 120" Only the 4 inch face has a mould profile.

*I'm making them on a knee mill in 36" sections. I can only do aluminum on the knee mill.

*They can be made in sections 18" sections and then the sections bolted together.

*They are made from 6061-T6 now. 1018 is a step up from aluminum. but ideally, they should be made out of 316 SS or 4130.

Here is my problem. I can buy a Tormach NOW or a Haas TM2 ($40k) in the future. Only the Tormach will come with me in retirement.

So my questions are....

1.....Can the Tormach make them from aluminum? Does it have any hope in h*ll to do them from 1018 steel? Forget stainless and 4130.

2....anyone want to guess how long it will take to make it in aluminum from the sample photo?

3....can it make that in steel? How long? \

4... I want to make about 90 sections of 18" length with a variation of the profile in the picture. MORE in the future. Will I beat up the machines doing these moulds in aluminum? What about steel?

For years I wanted to buy a small CNC but retirement was always looming. Now, by accident or design, I do need to do this for a new product line. . Since I have no experience in CNC machines, I can't make any logical choices. Actually, I can buy a large machine in the future, but if I can get away with it, I rather buy a small machine NOW, before I sink a lot of money to make them outside. But not if it's not going to do the job.

HELP!

BTW...are there any Tormach owners in the Toronto or southern Ontario area?

[zamazz]

The Tormach would have no problem making those from aluminum. I estimate it taking about 35-45 minutes each with the correct tooling and finishing passes. It certainly can machine steel, I'd quadruple the machining time though. I certainly hope machining metal doesn't beat up the machine, our 1100 has been running 8 hours a day for over a year in aluminum and O1 tool steel.

However, a couple things to consider:
The Haas can probably cut the run time by a third. If you have the shop space and power, it would be far better suited. Keep in mind that tooling is also very expensive, at least 10% of the machine cost, more if you want to be well equipped. Don't forget about software costs either. Also, the Tormach control is spotty at best. It's very picky about your computer choice and has several bugs, some dangerous. For instance, I recently had the spindle start on its own with a $1500 probe in the spindle. If I were to purchase another machine, I'd look for a slightly used vmc with Fanuc control. If you're stuck in this price range, however, take a look at Novakon machines as well.

[SCzEngrgGroup]

The Haas can probably cut the run time by a third. If you have the shop space and power, it would be far better suited.

A Haas would not cut the run time by a third - it would do the job in a third the time, likely less, courtesy of the much greater spindle power, especially in steel or SS.

If I'm understanding the job correctly, it would be best handled by a horizontal mill, with a custom profile cutter - one (perhaps more) roughing pass, one finishing pass, and done.

Regards,
Ray L.

[zamazz]

A Haas would not cut the run time by a third - it would do the job in a third the time, likely less, courtesy of the much greater spindle power, especially in steel or SS.

If I'm understanding the job correctly, it would be best handled by a horizontal mill, with a custom profile cutter - one (perhaps more) roughing pass, one finishing pass, and done.

Regards,
Ray L.

Good point, I misworded that. It would cut the time TO a third, or by two thirds. Probably more for a part like this.

I agree that LinuxCNC is a far better alternative if you aren't using the ATC.

[SCzEngrgGroup]

There isn't a reason in the world even your knee mill could not make that in steel or stainless. Any decent CNC mill (Tormach, Novakon, etc.) could also easily make them in all three materials.

Regards,
Ray L.

[sansbury]

The Tormach 1100 compares pretty evenly to a typical knee mill in terms of what it can do. As Ray said, you should be able to cut 316 or 4130 on either. Full tooling cost if you have little or nothing is easily a few thousand. For a CAT40 machine you can double or triple that if you get into indexable tooling. You'll also need a CAD/CAM package, and if you need 3D, which I'm guessing you do, the price goes up. There's also a steep learning curve. All things bent equal I'd recommend Tormach for you because worst case you sell the machine in a year for half price and get a VMC. With a haas everything will cost more, especially mistakes, and you'll make plenty of those. My advice would be to select a CAM package and get real training in that, possibly paying for onsite. That is where the real gains are made. I've devoted a lot of time to really learning BobCAD over the past year and I'm making parts a LOT faster with many fewer errors as a result.

As for the control, there are two options, Mach and LinuxCNC. Mach is more turnkey, linuxcnc has a very devoted following (including me) because it is extremely customizable and very bulletproof. Both are relatively easy to use and set up if you're comfortable with software.

[Spartan1]

First of all, my drawing is misleading. Its' a lot more complex then the the opening post. See below.

The shops I have gone into are telling me that they have to use a 1/2 ball bit and run it in .015" step increments. After that, to make it smooth, I still have to either sand it in the case of aluminum or grind it in the steels. They are quoting upwards of 20 hours at $120 in a 10 foot CNC....and they tell me that's dirt cheap.

I can NOT design the mold to suit the CNC and end mills, I have to design an attractive product and then blow my money/mind on machining the mould.

With my knee mill, I had a custom made carbide head ($700) that had the entire 4" profile and ran it on aluminum. Of course, I was sweating bullets hoping it didn't crack the carbide. I was told a profile cutter to handle stainless would make me cry. Plus, I have zero ability to change the design.

Yes, in the future, I can buy a Haas, but right now, our sales are peanuts and $40K will hurt a bit. Plus there is no real need for it because we are NOT a machining company, we are in a completely different field. If we don't need moulds, the machine will sit idle.

I am NOT a machinist, I am an engineer that is competent around machines so I have to "dig" to get all the information. I'm hoping/praying/wishing that I can do this in house in order to have the flexibility and also be able to make smaller runs without massive costs for each mould.

THANK YOU to all who participated. I am grateful for any info and direction!

The mould face is 4" wide, 2" high and runs 120"...in sections......

Attachment 245748

[Steve Seebold]

First of all, my drawing is misleading. Its' a lot more complex then the the opening post. See below.

The shops I have gone into are telling me that they have to use a 1/2 ball bit and run it in .015" step increments. After that, to make it smooth, I still have to either sand it in the case of aluminum or grind it in the steels. They are quoting upwards of 20 hours at $120 in a 10 foot CNC....and they tell me that's dirt cheap.

I can NOT design the mold to suit the CNC and end mills, I have to design an attractive product and then blow my money/mind on machining the mould.

With my knee mill, I had a custom made carbide head ($700) that had the entire 4" profile and ran it on aluminum. Of course, I was sweating bullets hoping it didn't crack the carbide. I was told a profile cutter to handle stainless would make me cry. Plus, I have zero ability to change the design.

Yes, in the future, I can buy a Haas, but right now, our sales are peanuts and $40K will hurt a bit. Plus there is no real need for it because we are NOT a machining company, we are in a completely different field. If we don't need moulds, the machine will sit idle.

I am NOT a machinist, I am an engineer that is competent around machines so I have to "dig" to get all the information. I'm hoping/praying/wishing that I can do this in house in order to have the flexibility and also be able to make smaller runs without massive costs for each mould.

THANK YOU to all who participated. I am grateful for any info and direction!

The mould face is 4" wide, 2" high and runs 120"...in sections......

Attachment 245748

That's an easy part to do on a Tormach. Time consuming, but easy. I would do the heavy hogging with a 3/4 inch 2 or 3 flute insert end mill and finish the radii and the corners with something smaller. Yes, insert tooling is more expensive than solid carbide, but the straight flutes all but eliminate the cutter wanting to pull down during heavy cutting. I would probably make a program that takes most of the material out by plunge ruffing.

I would make them in 15 inch sections so you're not working against the limits of the machine.

The first thing I would do is screw and dowel the sections together on both sides, then number each section so you get them back in the same place after you're finished machining.

I would also look for an aluminum supplier who could provide you with finished blanks that are all the same size and square on the ends. You'll pay a little bit more for your material, but you won't have to be concerned about material consistency.

I don't have the ATC on my machine, but I do have the PDB. The ATC wasn't available when I bought my machine. It came about 3 months later.

The ATC would be nice for the job I'm running right now. This part takes 27 minutes and requires 9 tools. One of which runs for 13 minutes.

That's OK this time because while this part runs, I am packing boxes. I'm moving my machine to a new location in about 10 days.

Most of my jobs require 1 to 3 tools, and run fast so I have to stay right at the machine anyway.

[SCzEngrgGroup]

Is there a reason you could not simply extrude them in aluminum? Custom extrusions are ridiculously cheap these days.

I'd consider have them cast in iron, then just finish-machined. The machining time and cost would be reduced dramatically, and casting is also not terribly expensive. with a good casting, it might need only grinding, with a custom profiled wheel, to finish. Unlike a profiled cutter, a grinding wheel can be re-profiled if it gets damaged.

Overall, it seems to me milling in-house is close to the worst option you have.

Regards,
Ray L.

[Spartan1]

Is there a reason you could not simply extrude them in aluminum? Custom extrusions are ridiculously cheap these days.

I'd consider have them cast in iron, then just finish-machined. The machining time and cost would be reduced dramatically, and casting is also not terribly expensive. with a good casting, it might need only grinding, with a custom profiled wheel, to finish. Unlike a profiled cutter, a grinding wheel can be re-profiled if it gets damaged.

Overall, it seems to me milling in-house is close to the worst option you have.

Regards,
Ray L.

If I'm machining it afterwards, why not machine the entire thing. Plus if it is in one piece, I'm back to using the big boys.

[SCzEngrgGroup]

If I'm machining it afterwards, why not machine the entire thing. Plus if it is in one piece, I'm back to using the big boys.

Doing just finish machining will take a fraction of the time. All the heavy material removal takes a lot of time, especially on these smaller, lower-power machines. Machining time is FAR more expensive than casting or extruding, and the tooling is also expensive.

If it can be made in short sections as you indicated, it can be cast or extruded in short sections as well. If the goal is cost reduction, doing everything by machining is almost certainly the MOST expensive, most time-consuming way to get it done. I've had parts fabricated and plated by outside shops for less than my cost for the raw materials alone.

You indicated the shop you had quote the machining estimated 20 hours machining time on a 10-foot commercial VMC. If it takes 20 hours on a machine like that, it will take easily 60-80 hours, possibly much more, on a Tormach. And, you'll probably go through at least several hundred $ in tooling. You could probably get rough castings done for the equivalent of a very few hours of machining time, then spend a fraction of that 60-80 hours doing the finish machining.

With an extrusion, you'll pay a few hundred $ in tooling cost to make the extruder, then a few $/foot for the actual extrusions, and no machining will be required.

Try going to mfg.com, and create an RFQ. Specify the material and the tolerances you require - don't specify the machining process. Within a few days, you'll have several quotes, and I'd be willing to bet most of them will be a fraction of the cost you're expecting. If you specify milled parts, the quotes will ALL be high.

Regards,
Ray L.

[Spartan1]

Is there a reason you could not simply extrude them in aluminum? Custom extrusions are ridiculously cheap these days.

I'd consider have them cast in iron, then just finish-machined. The machining time and cost would be reduced dramatically, and casting is also not terribly expensive. with a good casting, it might need only grinding, with a custom profiled wheel, to finish. Unlike a profiled cutter, a grinding wheel can be re-profiled if it gets damaged.

Overall, it seems to me milling in-house is close to the worst option you have.

Regards,
Ray L.

The Tormach 1100 compares pretty evenly to a typical knee mill in terms of what it can do. As Ray said, you should be able to cut 316 or 4130 on either. Full tooling cost if you have little or nothing is easily a few thousand. For a CAT40 machine you can double or triple that if you get into indexable tooling. You'll also need a CAD/CAM package, and if you need 3D, which I'm guessing you do, the price goes up. There's also a steep learning curve. All things bent equal I'd recommend Tormach for you because worst case you sell the machine in a year for half price and get a VMC. With a haas everything will cost more, especially mistakes, and you'll make plenty of those. My advice would be to select a CAM package and get real training in that, possibly paying for onsite. That is where the real gains are made. I've devoted a lot of time to really learning BobCAD over the past year and I'm making parts a LOT faster with many fewer errors as a result.

As for the control, there are two options, Mach and LinuxCNC. Mach is more turnkey, linuxcnc has a very devoted following (including me) because it is extremely customizable and very bulletproof. Both are relatively easy to use and set up if you're comfortable with software.

Some npt40 but either machine will need money in tooling. Obviously prefer cat 40.

Pretty good with software but my learning curve will suck up time.

The thing I want to establish without any doubt that I'm not buying a $10k "almost capable" machine. From all the posts, it sounds like they are capable of doing what I need.....but substantially slower then the big machines.

[Spartan1]

Doing just finish machining will take a fraction of the time. All the heavy material removal takes a lot of time, especially on these smaller, lower-power machines. Machining time is FAR more expensive than casting or extruding, and the tooling is also expensive.

If it can be made in short sections as you indicated, it can be cast or extruded in short sections as well. If the goal is cost reduction, doing everything by machining is almost certainly the MOST expensive, most time-consuming way to get it done. I've had parts fabricated and plated by outside shops for less than my cost for the raw materials alone.

You indicated the shop you had quote the machining estimated 20 hours machining time on a 10-foot commercial VMC. If it takes 20 hours on a machine like that, it will take easily 60-80 hours, possibly much more, on a Tormach. And, you'll probably go through at least several hundred $ in tooling. You could probably get rough castings done for the equivalent of a very few hours of machining time, then spend a fraction of that 60-80 hours doing the finish machining.

With an extrusion, you'll pay a few hundred $ in tooling cost to make the extruder, then a few $/foot for the actual extrusions, and no machining will be required.

Try going to mfg.com, and create an RFQ. Specify the material and the tolerances you require - don't specify the machining process. Within a few days, you'll have several quotes, and I'd be willing to bet most of them will be a fraction of the cost you're expecting. If you specify milled parts, the quotes will ALL be high.

Regards,
Ray L.

Hogging through the aluminum was not much of a problem on the knee mill. I put the mold face up and ran 3/4 ball mill through it until I was close enough to the final design then put them sideways and finished it off with the custom cutter. Obviously that would be a heck of a lot slower in steel. Plus the finishing on all sides.

On Monday, I will contact Novakon because they are local and I will also look into extruding plus mag.com site. The product is production ready and all that is left is getting the full size molds done plus another piece of equipment. It's 5 designs and even if I have to go out and pay through the nose to get ONE mold of each, at least I'm making money and buying a bit of time to take it to the next level.

One other thing I didn't ask but I don't see why I can't do it. On the knee mill, I have three vices lined up. I machined a section then moved it along to get to another section. I don't see why I can't do the same thing with 36" inch sections on the smaller machines. Sure, no matter how well I position the piece, I'll have a few thousand step. Nothing a bit of grinding/sanding won't take out.

Ray.....thank you and everyone else for the advice/opinion.




BTW....The Haas salesman told me that I'm "playing" with small machines and even the TM2 He suggested I spend $100k buy a "real" machine. Apparently, trees really do grow money.....*sigh*

[tmarks11]

I don't see why I can't do the same thing with 36" inch sections on the smaller machines.

If you look at the Novakon Torus Pro, I suspect that you will find it is not really much smaller than you knee mill with a table of 40x12".

?????? I'm not casting anything. I'm machining a 4 inch wide and 120 inch long profile INTO steel or aluminum.

The confusion comes from your calling this a steel mold. Generally you pour something into the mold and cast it. Most people assume that a mold is a one-off creation, and a majority of the production work is done with casting the product. It sounds in your case that machining the extrusion IS all of the production work.

Is this a one time production, or do you foresee making a lot of these? If you are making these over and over, than you should probably think seriously about the Haas TM2, since the increased horsepower and increased X-travel will help over time. Used TM2s sell for about $22-24k for mid-2000's models (without tool changer).

One real advantage to doing these on a open bed mill (like the Haas TM2 or Torus Pro or Tormach) instead of your existing knee mill is that you could set it up with roller tables on both side, and machine the entire 10' section in one go, with just sliding it and re-clamping it on the table as you finished machining each 18-24-40" section (depending on what machine you ended up with). A well built jig would be needed to make sure you keep alignment between cutting sections.

As long as we are pouring time and money down a rabbit hole: cnc X-Y table with 15k spindle mounted on a moving gantry that can cut the extrusion all in one setup. Make the table 12" wide and 10' long, and it should be plenty rigid enough for machining aluminum. Down-side: can only make one type of thing.

[Spartan1]

The confusion comes from your calling this a steel mold. Generally you pour something into the mold and cast it. Most people assume that a mold is a one-off creation, and a majority of the production work is done with casting the product. It sounds in your case that machining the extrusion IS all of the production work.

ONE mould will makes ONE specific product at time multiplied by many cycles . In the case of hardened and chromed 4130, Short of an accidental damage, it should make hundreds of thousand...if not a million cycles.

The catch is...the moulds cost is completely irrelevant in a mature product range....but a new product range AND the amount of moulds makes it the "what do I do" head scratcher.

[Tkamsker]

Zamazz what exactely is the Problem on linuxcnc and atc i run a small atc for doing pcb and i now retrofitted an Bridgeport 412 with an 12 Tool atc ...

[Hirudin]

Can you tell us more about the product? For instance: what material is being cast? Seems like milling out 120" of that profile would be impractical. Less practical to mill 1620". It truly sounds like a perfect job for a custom extrusion.

[Spartan1]

Can you tell us more about the product? For instance: what material is being cast? Seems like milling out 120" of that profile would be impractical. Less practical to mill 1620". It truly sounds like a perfect job for a custom extrusion.

??????

I'm not casting anything. I'm machining a 4 inch wide and 120 inch long profile INTO steel or aluminum.

[Spartan1]

BTW....I'm going through all the pricing. It's NOT as cheap as I first thought. I'm hitting $14k without the tool changer or a power draw bar. Add a tool changer and a burger with fries and I'm looking at $20K. Plus I'm in Canada so there is "probably" import duties for Chinese mills.

*scratches head*

[hanermo]

Add minimum 3000$ in collets and vices and tools and inserts.
20k is about right.

The Tormach (never seen one in person) will have no problem doing it in any material mentioned.

If the goal is to get these made ..
find a hobby guy with a converted cnc mill. Shipping is cheap.
Have them rough it, and you finish them.

There is a reason work lke this costs 60$ an hour..
and the total package costs for running an efficient manufacturing operation is part of it.
A jobshop starts at 30-50k.
The mill is a small part.
You need metrology, materials handling, a proper saw, proper power, permits, and insurance.