Looking for a Mill

[trumpy81]

Congratulations on you new lathe and mill Rod.

Mark, how's it going with the mill hunting?

Have you been busy with that tape measure yet?

 

[rodw]

Thanks Trumpy, the DRO won't be far away. CTC shipped my QCTP and replacement ER32 collets and some more milling tooling today so I should have by next weekend I hope. That's why I have not done much in the shed and have played with software instead.

I get the whole 3d drawing shape thing, seems pretty easy to draw a shape and then extrude and cut holes etc. I just fought with Alibre with not being able to set guide lines or being able to select the centre of a shape or the ability to key in dimensions to put a hole where i wanted sometimes. I watched some Inventor tutorials today and it works more like I would have expected so fingers crossed. Pretty generous of Autocad to give software away for education for free. Glad I have a .edu.au email address at work

 

[rodw]

Mark, how's it going with the mill hunting?

Have you been busy with that tape measure yet?

Mark, If it helps you, in my small space, I put my mill diagonally near the door and because I have a high shelf behind it, there is plenty of room for the cross slide to go under the shelf and out the door if it has to. The shorter table of the Seig in comparison to the Titan is an advantage for me I think!

 

[trumpy81]

Thanks Trumpy, the DRO won't be far away. CTC shipped my QCTP and replacement ER32 collets and some more milling tooling today so I should have by next weekend I hope. That's why I have not done much in the shed and have played with software instead.

I get the whole 3d drawing shape thing, seems pretty easy to draw a shape and then extrude and cut holes etc. I just fought with Alibre with not being able to set guide lines or being able to select the centre of a shape or the ability to key in dimensions to put a hole where i wanted sometimes. I watched some Inventor tutorials today and it works more like I would have expected so fingers crossed. Pretty generous of Autocad to give software away for education for free. Glad I have a .edu.au email address at work

Rod, my DRO should arrive Wed 06/02/2013, Fedex emailed me yesterday

It's been a while since I used Alibre, but I remember that it has a similar work flow to Inventor. I did find it a little frustrating because it does things differently to Inventor, but if I had to, I'm sure I could adapt to it.

Solidworks on the other hand, is a completely different kettle of fish. Very powerful program, but I was never comfortable with it's work flow. Everything felt a bit alien to me ... lol

Many folks use it and produce some amazing stuff with it, but I just never really took to it in the same way I took to Inventor.

Autodesk seem to be pretty savvy. By giving away the software they get free beta testers and reporters. Of course, they mostly ignore our cry's to fix things but hey, we can't complain really ... lol

If I can figure out how, I will send you an invite to join our Google+ Inventor community. We have quite a few members ranging from beginners to full time professionals. It's a great place to ask Inventor related questions and get professional help with it.

I've been using Inventor for over ten years now, still far from being an expert though ... lol

I've added a pic of my Whittle V8 done in Inventor Pro 2013. This is the spark ignition version

 

[rodw]

Rod, my DRO should arrive Wed 06/02/2013, Fedex emailed me yesterday

Which one did you get?

STOP PRESS: I made my longitudinal stop today! Inventor never installed so i gave up on it and tried a demo of Solidworks which I found better than Alibre.

Stuff the software, I just got in and did it after carefully calibrating the eyeometer to the plans and just reverted to the drawing for the important stuff. Still got to get the right bolt for fine adjustment. This was my first part made on a mill!

I took some pics but still have to get them up on photobucket.

 

[trumpy81]

I got the Meister BOLTS3 mostly because I already have a Meister ARC2 on the lathe. All the controls are very similar so I shouldn't have too steep a learning curve on the new DRO. I also found that the advertised scale sizes were slightly smaller than the other brand I was looking at.

Congrats on getting the stop done!

Sometimes it's quicker to get in and get 'er done ... lol

How did the mill perform? Up to your expectations or ?

 

[rodw]

I got the Meister BOLTS3 mostly because I already have a Meister ARC2 on the lathe. All the controls are very similar so I shouldn't have too steep a learning curve on the new DRO. I also found that the advertised scale sizes were slightly smaller than the other brand I was looking at.

Congrats on getting the stop done!

Sometimes it's quicker to get in and get 'er done ... lol

How did the mill perform? Up to your expectations or ?

Trumpy, thanks, the lathe DRO is getting closer, maybe in a month or so. The Meister is another option.

I thought the Seig did a pretty good job considering I was using a chuck to hold the tools. I cut the full length of the end mill (30mm) and the finish was not great, but that was probably a bit ambitious. I think it will easily cut slots 5mm at a time, 1 mm was a walk in the park but 2mm made it work a bit more. My finishing cuts were about 0.5mm. It certainly is a big step up from the milling head on my old lathe.

I like the digital readout on the quill, it was very handy. Also the constant variable speed is great too. I probably could have saved time by using the bandsaw a bit more but I did a trial of the V cut along the way in the piece I milled out for practice. It only takes 1-2 jobs to build confidence now I have had machines for a while. The prospect of fitting a DRO scared the day lights out of me a year ago!

 

[trumpy81]

Yeah, it's funny how the confidence builds. You've done a nice job on the stop.