Need help, buy or build to cut steel, stainless steel, titanium etc

[JAZZCNC]

Irvings correct when it comes to milling Titamium and even SS your into a massively differant machine to any router based machine you'll see on here.
To Mill SS or and Ti to any sort of acceptable standard you will need massive flood coolant and machine twice the ridgidty of Jonathans best effort.

Considering you have no experience of building or designing a machine then I strongly suggest you Forget the Idea for cutting this type of material because your on a hiding to nothing. Even if you gave someone like me the Challenge I'd have to sit think long and hard the best way achieve the strength you'd require and I can 100% guarantee it wouldn't be a moving Gantry router based machine.

Much better would be to buy some "Old Iron" Milling machine and retro fit it for Cnc. Still a challenge in it's self for a first timer to CNC but do-able.

If you do still want to go down the DIY build route then compleltely Forget moving Gantry style machine and look to Fixed Gantry machine. Keep the size to an absolute minimum required and build it MASSIVE strong. The larger the machine the hard that is to achive and very quickly becomes expensive has every thing has to scale up to match Ie, Motors, drives, Psu etc. It will need very good flood cooling so you will want it fully enclosed or get your self a good Mac and weelies.!!

It can be done but the machine required will be need to be several times stronger than you'll find around here and it will need someone with good engineering experience to build it accurately. You will also need Machinery to help achieve building it.

Don't think me being Negative here I'm being Honest and realistic with you.!!. . . . . . I could easily Blow smoke up your arse and say "Ye it's easy get on wi it" but I'd be a complete liar because it will be far from it.

Wish you Good luck if you do carry.

[fatguyslim]

Irvings correct when it comes to milling Titamium and even SS your into a massively differant machine to any router based machine you'll see on here.
To Mill SS or and Ti to any sort of acceptable standard you will need massive flood coolant and machine twice the ridgidty of Jonathans best effort.

Considering you have no experience of building or designing a machine then I strongly suggest you Forget the Idea for cutting this type of material because your on a hiding to nothing. Even if you gave someone like me the Challenge I'd have to sit think long and hard the best way achieve the strength you'd require and I can 100% guarantee it wouldn't be a moving Gantry router based machine.

Much better would be to buy some "Old Iron" Milling machine and retro fit it for Cnc. Still a challenge in it's self for a first timer to CNC but do-able.

If you do still want to go down the DIY build route then compleltely Forget moving Gantry style machine and look to Fixed Gantry machine. Keep the size to an absolute minimum required and build it MASSIVE strong. The larger the machine the hard that is to achive and very quickly becomes expensive has every thing has to scale up to match Ie, Motors, drives, Psu etc. It will need very good flood cooling so you will want it fully enclosed or get your self a good Mac and weelies.!!

It can be done but the machine required will be need to be several times stronger than you'll find around here and it will need someone with good engineering experience to build it accurately. You will also need Machinery to help achieve building it.

Don't think me being Negative here I'm being Honest and realistic with you.!!. . . . . . I could easily Blow smoke up your arse and say "Ye it's easy get on wi it" but I'd be a complete liar because it will be far from it.

Wish you Good luck if you do carry.

Fantastic reply man. I like the fact you are being honest straight up with me so I am dropping this fantasy. I guess for now I might just stick to what I know and will revisit this idea in the future perhaps. Thanks guys you have all been very helpful

[EddyCurrent]

Fantastic reply man. I like the fact you are being honest straight up with me so I am dropping this fantasy. I guess for now I might just stick to what I know and will revisit this idea in the future perhaps. Thanks guys you have all been very helpful

Jazz, the OP said this, so go with this comment and forget the other, it's just easier.

[Jonathan]

Cutting stainless steel and titanium with a 500x500mm machining area is definitely challenging, especially if you need to do a lot of it on a limited budget. However, if we're only talking about a few parts a week (so speed is not an issue), then I wouldn't rule it out altogether. The machine mentioned earlier is about the size you need and was designed to be 'sufficiently strong' to cut mild steel (not stainless). Although I've not tested it much, at least from a stiffness point of view it does appear to meet that specification. I measured the stiffness of that machine (parallel to the X and Y axes) and it's comparable to my milling machine - i.e stiffer in one axis and a bit weaker in the other. Stainless steel and titanium both require a (relatively) low speed spindle, so for me to try cutting these at any reasonable rate would require a different spindle. However, since the stiffness is similar to my milling machine and I know that my milling machine tolerates cutting stainless steel, I can be reasonably confident in predicting that the 'sufficiently strong' machine would be able to cut stainless steel with the right spindle. Just to emphasize - I don't mean it would cut at a high rate but quick enough to be useful for the occasional part. Looking for a big enough milling machine would still be you best bet, but you'll need a lot of space for it.

Perhaps the main difficulty with cutting titanium and stainless steel, compared to aluminum, is that in addition to being much harder materials they also work harden. This limits the extent to which you can get away with just taking smaller cuts, so the machine must meet a certain level of stiffness before you can do anything useful (except perhaps engraving).

[JAZZCNC]

Jazz, the OP said this, so go with this comment and forget the other, it's just easier.

Eddy it's hard when I get Folks who only 6weeks ago didn't know the differance between nema23 & nema 24 motors and pointing someone to Bloody Pin routers to Mill Titanium telling me I'm being negative just because I give somebody who freely commented they have no experience with CNC a very realistic idea of what there about to get into.!

Helping hisn't always about helping to build.? Sometimes it's in peoples best interests not to build and look at alternative solutions and in this case I feel it's in OP best interest not to build.

I'm just starting to get slightly pissed off that my words are being taken out of context and twisted into something completely differant.!!

[george uk]

can i also add, dont get to discouraged about cutting hard material with cnc machine.

It just means slow spindle speeds/cooling and long job times, but for what your doing, that would not be a problem, you may be able to pull off what you need for around £ 1000, £ 3000 would be easyer, £ 4000/5000 you could do it without worry

Wadkin LS Router - damaged | eBay
WADKIN LS OVERHEAD PIN ROUTER 3 PHASE WORK HORSE LOTS OF PINS AND COLLETS | eBay

a good example of a cheap starting frames you could retrofit. look around, you might find one that you can gear the spindle to the right speed for you.

Then fix XY to that solid table top,

[george uk]

WTF wrong with how I put it.? . . . It tells it the way it is.! . . .

Nothing Jazz, your just not very encouraging, but i, like most, prefare people to be direct like you, thats not in anyway a criticism.

in his first post he says

I am a bicycle frame builder by trade and I am looking to up my game

.
Thats a skill set what is directly would lend itself to building a decent CNC machine, he is a buisness trying to solve a problem with a machine, that means he will commited to doing it

Originally Posted by JAZZCNCIrvings correct when it comes to milling Titamium and even SS your into a massively differant machine to any router based machine you'll see on here.

To Mill SS or and Ti to any sort of acceptable standard you will need massive flood coolant and machine twice the ridgidty of Jonathans best effort.

i suggested jonathans machine early on when he said he wanted a general cnc machine, and thats a great machine for anyone to start with. Its after that, when he showed what parts and what material, i would not have suggested that because clearly, a milling machine is more appropriate.