[Dman65]

I have been hanging around here for right at 5 years contemplating a CNC mill and a CNC router.

I actually built a Solsylva 13x9 small router from poplar a couple of years ago. It wasn't a wasted effort because I did learn about linear motion, stepper motors and gcode, but the actual router has been of little use to me because I spent considerably more time calibrating it than I ever spent cutting with it.

I would like to get a small mill that would help me in making parts for other hobbies like photography, astronomy, drones, electronics projects, arduino things etc. I would also like to be able to use it to cut some motor mounts, gantry sides, and linear motion pieces to eventually build a larger router out of metal. I would think I would need to be able to mill .75"-1" aluminum or .25" cold rolled steel for some of the router pieces. I should also say that I am not looking to make money from this in any way. So this isn't a production operation and super speed is definitely not required. I make 3D printed parts on a regular basis that take 20 hours to print.

I don't have the budget or the space for a full sized mill and anything I get is something that I will have to be able to move around by myself.

It appears that in this space I am pretty much looking at the Sherline, Taig, and Seig series of mills. About once a year I come in and start looking at getting a mill and read through all of the posts and eventually come to the conclusion that there just isn't anything that seems like it really works so I spend the rest of the year in my other hobbies trying to do different things that come short of my vision because I have to try to make parts out of wood or epoxy or print them with a 3D printer. Making anything truly mechanical from wood, for me anyway, is always a failure. 3D printed stuff is fine for prototyping, but the lack of strength and precision in the parts leaves a lot to be desired.

Are any of these machines capable of machining the larger pieces of aluminum or steel that I am looking at? Reading through the various posts, it seems that the Sherline and Taig are not stiff enough without making a lot of changes to them and I don't have access to the other machine tools to make parts for them. The Seig units appear to be beefier but not usable out of the box. From what I have read you need to scrape all of their axes in order to get them to be usable. I looked into scraping and last year I read the book about machine tool reconditioning and it appears I would have to buy a lot of equipment to do the scraping and then spend a year or two practicing scraping before I would be competent to take that process up. I already have quite a few hobbies. I am not sure I want to add surface scraping to the list.

If anyone has some advice, I would really appreciate it.

Thank You

[LongRat]

Something the size of the Sieg X2 or G0704 might fit your bill. Those are up to the sort of parts you describe. As for the best compromise of mill quality and capability, the Taig is the best bet on your list. Just a little lighter duty than the bigger machines, but in my opinion superior to the Sherline and has very nice build quality.
All of these machines can be converted and will work. The stuff about scraping etc, can make a machine better, but often is done when people are looking for higher accuracy than the standard machine will deliver. If you want to make relatively small parts in aluminium mostly, to a tolerance of around ±0.2mm then a well-executed conversion should deliver that. That sounds like the sort of thing someone with your experience could do, and you should be in a position to be realistic about your requirements as you already make real-world parts. Some people are more 'dreamers' expecting to come from zero experience making 'things' to turning out parts within 10 microns on a $1000 machine. I say go for it, and concentrate on doing what you need to get the parts that you want. On my conversion I have not scraped anything, it's a Chinese BF-30 type mill with steppers and ball screws. Not a hugely modified machine. I have replaced the spindle motor and done a belt drive conversion. The machine has made hundreds or thousands of parts and has tens of thousands of hours of run time on it. I spend much more time making parts than I do tweaking and modding the machine. So it can be done and can achieve what you want. Remember - threads here are often about problems people have and issues they need to sort, and of course the process of CNC conversion. You don't see many threads saying 'hey, look at the run of 50 great parts I just made on my Chinese benchtop!' because the people that do that are making parts and not modding their machines and posting on the forum.

[awerby]

It sounds like a Taig should be able to do what you're talking about, as long as the parts fit in its work envelope. While there are people who modify them in one way or another, they work perfectly well right out of the box; they're actually quite rigid for their size. You can't take as heavy a cut or run as large a tool as with a full-sized mill, but on the other hand it doesn't sound like you're in a huge hurry; with a small CNC mill it's usually better to take multiple lighter cuts. When using smaller tools, the Taig's relatively high-speed spindle is a big advantage, and you can actually go faster than a bigger mill with a slower spindle. Don't spend another 5 years sitting on the fence; just get one and start making parts.

[RTP_Burnsville]

I have an X2 from ages ago but would not recommend it given the other models available today. I would look at an X3 or one of the similar style mills available, they are better suited for a CNC project in my view. Size, rigidity, and quality just appears to be better, at least for those I have looked at.

Robert

[amyers]

you want to cut steel then forget the taig or siegs, get a bf20 aka g0704, pm25mv, etc. if you've been reading surely you've seen all the threads here on them, many happy users myself included. has more travels than any of them and cuts steel pretty darn good and can be moved by yourself.