Mini Mills and such...

probably the best type 2 anodizing linky on the net
http://www.focuser.com/atm/anodize/anodizeold.html


@ Neomoses....My last conversion was a RongFu45....servos of course. Great mill and a good recommendation,but not exactly cheap for the average hobbiest.

I still say that a small mill is the best investment for someone who wants to start out. And my Grizzly may have only cost me $500, but it is a very accurate POS......maybe I just lucked up and got one that was shipped out when the little 93 Yr. old lady thats usually on QC, was on her day off!
Some people have the patience, determination and can pick up machining quite easily. While others may not be able to get the gist of it. Saying that, as a hobby,I think it would be best to make a small purchase and see if its your bag, before you start investing thousands of dollars in a large mill/ tooling to begin with.
Youre right about spending all of you time machining.......once you finish that first peice, and marvel at its beauty that youve created,its all over with!
I was hooked when I did my first dry cut when testing the mill out, to see if I hooked it all up correctly.......Ive been looking at converting a Bridgeport clone myself, but my wife isnt too keen on the idea.

Hmmm........the wife or the big mill?? Hmmmmmm...........
Later fellas.........and good luck

hey Tyrex, I think we forgot to ask the first basic question. What do you plan to use it for (besides WB's)?

:evil: STUPID DIALUP! I got disconnected while sending... lost what I typed...

thanx liquidsquirt for all the info!
I did take apart my mill a little after I got it, I wasnt sure of what to do, worried I would screw something up, it was a few days, only used it once.
I did grease it and all that good stuff.

those delrin gibs, did you make those or buy those?

Im not sure if anything is warped, but Im gonna take it apart one of these next few days, and clean it up. check for warped stuff.
any thigns I should look at carefully?

oh the binding seems like its in 1 spot on each turn. and its more when i go fast than slow. Its almost like its just the little scale on the wheel thats binding, because that thing changes, gets pushed. so I made a mark where zero is on it, on the wheel.(back of my vice)

I dont have any money to spend on it, so I dont know what Ill do if I need to buy anything. do you have any pictures or anything of yours? I have wanted to see it ever cince I heard you talking about it.

what did you do about the Z axis? Mine isnt very acurate at all. I have to hold up the 3 pronged drillpress style wheel to get it pretty acurate, sometimes it doesnt lower when I tell it to, and sometimes it lowers more... If I dont hold it up, it seems like itll drop and stuff. any suggestions on that?

I have more questions, Ill let you know.
thanx
Jon

I picked the wrong thread to read this morning. Now I want a mill LOL!!!

LiquidSquirt said:

probably the best type 2 anodizing linky on the net
http://www.focuser.com/atm/anodize/anodizeold.html

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I've read that over and over again........Really good info on anodizing. I believe thats the same link neomoses used to get his setup up and running.

Broken003, I will mostly use it for waterblocks and custom aluminum automotive parts(another reason I'm trying to set up an anodizing station). I'm sure there are many more things to do with a mill, but at the moment those are the 2 major reasons.

What does everyone else enojy milling???

How about finding someone who has a CNC Mill that lives in your area? I'm near Cleveland and I've kinda been looking for some way of making my next water block.

PigGuy said:

How about finding someone who has a CNC Mill that lives in your area?

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where's the fun in that?

For me at least, when it comes to tools, you can never have too many. Plus, the thought of building my own CNC mill sounds like tons of fun.

You could look around for a mill in your area, but I know around here its tough to get access to one. Even when you go to a school that has an abundance of tools like CNC plasma cutters and plans of putting in an electron beam welder , like Purdue.

I would have to say its funner to crank it out by hand, but after a while, and after you have used a cnc, you kinda want one of your own(only human nature) Its fun, It will be fun for a long time, You might want a cnc later though.


Jon

This vice seems a little on the cheap side, but just curious as to what you guys thought of it..........
http://www.homier.com/itemdetail.asp?i=07003&browse=no

its only 19.99

thats a cross slide vice. really cheap buggers, not for milling. you want to make sure you dont skimp on the vice. I regret doing, Im saving money for a new one(dont have a job).

Jon

JFettig said:

thats a cross slide vice. really cheap buggers, not for milling. you want to make sure you dont skimp on the vice. I regret doing, Im saving money for a new one(dont have a job).

Jon

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thanx for the advice, any you rcommend getting???? or any specs/features i should look for????

Here's the general rule of buying machine tools. You pay for accuracy and rigidity. These 2 traits are not always found in inexpensive equipment.

With that being said, ask yourself, "what do I want to use this for?" If the answer is only "building waterblocks and playing with small stuff around the house" then any of these machines will do.

For the beginner who only wants to make small parts, such as waterblocks, the Homier or similar Mini Milling Machines (~ $500 shipped) paired with a decent 4" vise (~$100 shipped, Grizzly) will get you started. Add a collet set and a set of cheap parallels(~$100 shipped Grizzly or Enco), some endmills and drillbits (~$75, Enco) and you're ready to start machining. To build a waterblock you'll need metal (~$25 shipped, OnlineMetals) a couple of taps (~$30 shipped, Enco), and some screws and hose barbs (~$10, hardware store).

Unless you're experienced in machining, it'll take you a couple of days and some broken endmills before you figure out how to do something useful on your mill. Your first waterblock will probably take about 4-10 hours to make, depending on your design.

So, for only about $850 and a couple days of work, you can make you're very own waterblock! (kinda makes the $100 for a Whitewater seem cheap, huh?)

Sorry if that sounds pessimistic, but it seems that many people don't really think things through before they get started, and end up having a bad experience because of it. I'm trying to prepare you for the expenses so you'll know what's coming.

Having said that, if you enjoy getting you're hands dirty and playing around with mechanical stuff, you'll have hours and hours of entertainment as you build anything and everything you can.

For guys (and possibly gals, too) like me, who love being in the shop and working with our hands, it's easy to drop $5000-$8000 in a milling machine and tooling, and justify it by saying, "My machine will do everything that that $15,000 machine will do, so I really saved $7000."

Just remember: I warned you that it was addictive. I take no further responsibility for your actions.

JFettig said:

I would have to say its funner to crank it out by hand, but after a while, and after you have used a cnc, you kinda want one of your own(only human nature) Its fun, It will be fun for a long time, You might want a cnc later though.


Jon

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Ya that's the boat I'm in. I have been going to school on and off for the past 2 years and if I do my last two classes I will have my apprenticeship in tool making but my work is going to be doing some heavy lay off soon so no place for me to go in any of the tool rooms. Right now I run and repair electro pneumatic machines, but on the up side where I work they let me use the BPs and lathes ect. for the past 2 years (mostly grunt work /turning down electrodes) and they haven’t let me touch any of the nice CNC machines as I haven’t had any real training (yet), but to have one of my own, how sweet that would be

what neo forgot to add into his description is some hours of tuneup work. Youll want to pull apart the mill, degrease it, then grease it. tighten stuff up and figure out how to do all of that. Youll get really confused after you pull it apart, or even pulling it apart, but thats what Im here for after all those hours of trying to figure it out, I got it down decently. hopefully tomorow, or maybe today Ill have my mill apart, take some pics and whatnots.

your first time taking it apart will be weird, you wont be able to get things apart at first, and wont be able to get thigns together again, but then youll see things that arent meshing, and see how it does mesh, like when I pulled off the X axis of my mill for the first time. I could not get it off all the way, just past the screw, it took forever to figure out that i had to unscrew the tension thing on the front of the mill. then to put it back on, I couldnt get it past that part, Its because the little nut that the screw goes through fell down into the little slot it sits in. had to figure out how to hold that up.

but if your creative, youll figure it out in no time

Jon

I've been looking at mini mills for a while, but havent been able to bring myself to get one. Mainly for the reasons Neo mentioned, price of the mill only gets you half way there. Also I've looked at those cross slide vises at HarborFreight and they have quite a bit of play in them. They have something online that looks like it would be much better: Compound Sliding Table. They don't carry these at our local store so I can't say for sure how well built they are, but it looks like it would do a much better job.
Luckily I've changed jobs at work and now have access to everything, including the tool rooms. I'm glad I didn't rush out and buy a mill as I can now spend the money on tooling. The micro endmills and slit saws seem to be pricey enough. And I'm sure I'll be breaking a fair amount of them.
If anybody is interested, I can take some pics at work of the machines I now have access to.

peace.
unloaded

NeoMoses said:

So, for only about $850 and a couple days of work, you can make you're very own waterblock! (kinda makes the $100 for a Whitewater seem cheap, huh?)

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Thats why I've set a 1100 dollar budget for the whole thing

Things like this are always more expenisve than first throught.

Jfettig, I've been reading up on cleaning and initial prepping of mini mills. I've heard that the grizzly's come with a wierd grease on them anyways and they should be cleaned anyways right out of the box

yeah, they do, from homier and harbor freight. you should take them apart as much as possible to clean it. I have not taken the colum off of mine because Im thinking its pretty heavy, and dont have a place to set it... and I dont move it much very often.

the vice is the one at grizzly.com its a 4" milling vice, its about the largest vice you can fit on that mill.

Jon

UPDATE:

Just wanted to tell everyone thanx for that advice on this. I FINALLY bought my mill from homier's. I say "finally" because I did something pretty stupid.

here's the story..........

I had been searching for the mini for a couple months. The best price always came out to be from homeir.com. So i figured I'd go ahead and get it from them.

Then, come-to-find, shipping is a 113 dollars. I just cant imagine paying that much on shipping..........so I put it off for an agonizing 2 months. After a month or so, I went back to homier and checked shipping again. It was the same thing, but I noticed another little charge I didnt pay attention too.........sales tax.

When I saw that, I figured they must have a location here in indiana........I could just go pick it up. So I search the site for retail locations. Sure enough, they are located here...........and the first location i see is Huntington, IN.

I think to myself "heck, thats only an hour away. Sweetness!".

Then I scroll down some more......and I about fell out of my chair. There has been a location no more then 9 miles away from my house here in Lafayette.

So to sum it all up...........I put off buying one for months because of shipping when there was a Homier right here in town. : But I feel good now knowing I got a good mill for 424 dollars after taxes right out the door. So now, it's time to start selling body organs for metal and designing a cnc conversion for it.

Thanx again for your help guys.....and feel free to poke fun at me for being completely oblivious

TyRex said:

UPDATE:
...So now, it's time to start selling body organs for metal and designing a cnc conversion for it.

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Congratulations on you new toy! If you're looking into converting this bad boy to a CNC, you'll want to look at this site. You'll find everything you could ever imagine about CNC conversions there.

Man, I sure do miss my CNC. I'm trying to figure it out exactly how I can fit a CNC in my apartment now! Think the neighbors will notice?

Damn this thread is sticky material, anyway, if a cross slide vice is no good, what kind of vice would be useful for milling?