Questions on using a moving gantry style mini-mill...

[Davek0974]

Why do you want 24k on the mill surely you would be better having some lower end torque and going for maybe 6-10k, 6k bottom end seems to high for a mill, I may be completely wrong as a complete noob but I would have thought you are losing more than your gaining with a 24k with bottom end around 6k.

It's all about flexibility - the mill itself has 2Hp and 50-3000rpm range - no good for small cutters or engraving, great for hogging the crap out of steel etc with large tooling. The spindle has the speed for small cutters and engraving but no good for big tooling or steel work. The Base machine is simply a very heavy X/Y table - 300mm in Y and 1000mm in X - way bigger than my mini-mill.

I'd come of the quill to save grief. Chances are you'll only use small tooling anyway so no great stress.

That's my view too, I have 125mm of Z axis movement and losing 30-40mm for the clamp won't hurt as there is also a manual 300mm of table up/down - no engraving spindle is going to be diving more than 80mm into the work so travel seems adequate even allowing for clearance plane above clamps etc.

This is also the easy option to test out - only wastes a block of aluminium if it fails, my point of weakness would likely be vibration causing chatter marks, but time will tell here.