Hello All,

I have been a member of this forum for a while, but always lingering as i was not ready to make the plunge to buy a mill. I was about to convert one myself, but know of one that they guy is willing to sell. It has a full enclosure. treadmill motor mod, Hoss manual drawbar upgrade, coolant and the tool height puck that works with continuity. He wants 4K which is less then it would cost me to build. it also comes with the computer and possbly some tooling. My questions are more toward using the machine. I am a solidworks user and curious what the best program is to built tool paths from my models. A friend uses Mastercam and he can teach me. Cam works is integrated into solidworks, but I have never used it. I'd need to find a copy as well. I would liek to lean toward something free if possible.

I do intend to use this for light production work. I have a design I sell and the parts are made from a custom 6061 extrusion i designed. I will only run parts maybe for a week or so in my spare time until done, then not until they run out so its not an every day production. The parts are all in the 2" square range so travel is not an issue nor is extreme machining precision.. What is an issue is many tool changes needed to make the parts. I was looking at the Tormach tool changer system and it looks like a good way for me to have repeatable tool changes between ops. I am curious if I should consider building an automatic tool changer, or if I can just swap tools when needed using the manual drawbar mod it has. Its the one with the flip up bar and bellville washers. If I set my tools to have the same offset and the offset is saved in mach 3 can i just swap as needed without setting the tool height each time? How easy is it to learn the ins and outs of Mach 3? I know the guy who is selling it can help me, but curious how intuitive it is. Would an air actuated drawbar be worth adding?

Any advice and suggestions would be great as i am seriously considering this and have to decide soon.

Best regards,

Marc