CNC milling aluminum

[Cue Crazy]

Well after quite some time It's looking like I may finally be able afford to buy or build a cnc in the near future. I know It's gonna be a long road, and learning curve. I also would like to use it for other stuff besides cue work, thus the reason for my questions here.

Over the years I have thought of many other uses that would be nice, but as of lately I have been accessorizing some of my firearms. While recently acquiring stuff for an AR, I have found several parts out there that I like, but some of them I feel could be improved upon, or I just have a different style in mind that is not currently out there in the market.

My question is for those that have been at It for a while. I'm caught between starting out with a taig plug in play, building My own, or purchasing a gantry.

How rigid would It have to be to mill aluminum. I know It's important to be rigid. I'm assuming steel is out of the question with out heavy expensive equipment, but what about aluminum?. Am I better off with a milling machine style conversion, or is It possible to mill aluminum with a solid built gantry, and not have to change worn parts out every other day?

I know the little taigs have their issues, but can they handle this kind of work if I decide to start out with something Like that until I gain more knowledge then move into building My own machine?

 

[LGSM3]

i used to talk alot of shit about the taig mills but my perspective has changed a bit. I think its quite possibly the wisest choice one could make when considering knowledge and return on investment. You can learn on it, build alot of the parts for a bigger machine and then you can sell it for close to what you have in it.

Kind of a no brainer

 

[Cue Crazy]

i used to talk alot of shit about the taig mills but my perspective has changed a bit. I think its quite possibly the wisest choice one could make when considering knowledge and return on investment. You can learn on it, build alot of the parts for a bigger machine and then you can sell it for close to what you have in it.

Kind of a no brainer

Thanks for the input. That's what I had in mind, and another reason I'm kind of swinging that way. I thought it may be a better way to make some of the parts for a larger machine as opposed to milling them all by hand with My manual machine. Getting older and my joints are starting to give me a lot of problems. I don't even have a power feed on My current mill, I keep the gibs on the tight side, and It really works my joints over.


It's been a while since researching this stuff before, but I assume a controller with the gecko g540 is still an acceptable to way to go with these little mills. What about ballscrews/leadscrews... is there anything that I should be paying attention in that area when looking for a ready to go package. Are the deep grooves still around, and are they acceptable?

 

[Travis Niklich]

If I had it all to do over again I would go to tech school first. The School I now work at allows current and past students to work on personal projects in the time slots that are not used for class so long as you provide materials and tooling.

I would at the same time find a used American made engine lathe and a manual Bridgeport mill ( teachers at the school can provide leads on tools ) after tearing them down, cleaning and painting these machines you will have a good idea of how to work on them. With these 2 machines and some knowledge you can make just about everything a cue shop could ever need.

 

[conetip]

The way around the rigidity for cutting Aluminium, is to use small diameter cutters and shallow depth of cuts.Meaning cutters 1/4 inch diameter or less, and use Ali specific geometry cutters. This may seem a negative initially, but the latest in high speed machining is to use a shallow cut depth, but with very high feed rates.The other way is to use the max depth of the cuter and take shallow width cuts.
I made a handle for flying control line model planes out of 7075 on a friends wood router that he made. It worked very well. I used a 6mm cutter and took only 0.5mm depth of cuts. It seemed small, but it did not really take that long to make, about 25 mins per side from memory, the whole job was less than 1 hour. The 7075 is harder to cut than free cutting Mild steel.
The question will be the depth of total cut required and that put into a cutter diameter to length ratio. So if pockets etc are not needed to be more that 30 mm deep, the 1/4 inch -6mm capacity will be fine.( quite a few wood routers can use this size cutter) But if it needs to use 10mm cutters and cutting depths of 50mm, then a lot more rigid machine will need to be considered. ( an industrial wood router or milling machine).
Just my thoughts for you.
Neil

 

[cueman]

The Taig mill can mill mild steel, brass and aluminum. As mentioned keeping the milling bit down to about 1/4" helps. If there was a way of shooting coolant like the large enclosed mills do you could do things better with it. I found the power of the motor they send with it to be a little under powered, so I put one of my variable speed Mid Size motors on mine for milling metal and put a laminate trimmer on it for cutting points and inlays.

 

[Cue Crazy]

Thank You for the helpful comments. The main purpose of this is to give me something to learn on, and there seems to be a lot of tutorials on the Taig out there that may be of some help getting started. I'll probably start out with woods and composites, but nice to know I can do aluminum too. The parts I would have in mind for that would probably be well under 30mm deep. Not sure that I would get into mild steel but if I did, It would be very small parts.

I'm thinking of just going with the bare bones deep groove for under 2K. It has the 12"s of travel, g540 drives in the controller. 4 axis system, so If I want to upgrade later, and add a rotary table I suppose I would have that option. I thought these came with 270oz motors, but the specs say (3) 280oz. I would still have to buy software, but that's about the cheapest I can find to get started with.

I'm sure over time I will upgrade, and the motor & spindle I had already planned on, but for now I'm just trying to break in, and gain some more knowledge to get through the initial learning curve. I'm sure I will make all kinds of modifications up to the point where I feel confident enough to build my own. I found a lot of useful info through My research on here, and from that I'm confident that I can handle the mechanical side of the build, Using the software, and learning to run the thing may be a huge learning curve for me, so that's why I want to start out with the taig and gain some experience through It.. Also the footprint is small which will be a benefit for me in the near future. I have a larger work space now, but after selling the houses I now have 2 houses of stuff clogging up the work space. I'm working on storage buildings to clear that clutter out. After that I should have more space to set up some of the new equipment that I have already bought, and enough room to start building a larger cnc. I'm also working on bringing in a new service, so that I can boost the power to the shop.