New member intro & first question

[JohnHaine]

Interesting thread that. But if you look at it in at least some of the pics he is machining parts on a large vertical mill. The table appears to be a billet of aluminium, machined all over, with a pocket in one face with ribs onto which are bolted machined steel strips to form tee slots, and the top surface is ground flat. Without access to certainly a mill, and a surface grinder as well, life would be quite hard building that. Also components like linear rails aren't that cheap, nor are large chunks of steel and ali. Apart from the time and potential frustration unless you really know what you are doing, it might well turn out cheaper to buy a mill, even a new one, and convert it rather than try to make your own.

I see your point about having rotational axes on the router head, sounds quite hard to make. Most people building routers seem to use off the shelf spindles, I guess one of those could be adapted by making a complex mounting for it. But does the rotation need to be computer controlled?

[faffable]

Hi John,

sorry for the slow reply; I've been looking at second hand mills online as well as totting up some inital costs. I'm definitely persuaded by your suggestion to start with an existing mill and convert; I hadn't considered that the ballscrews etc in the existing mill could be kept - for some reason i'd imagined replacing them. I think I can probably budget around £2000 for a used mill, which going by ebay looks like it may just be enough for something half decent, though maybe i'll need to splash a little more?

Re. the additional axes on the gantry the existing diy versions i've seen do look pretty complicated.. I think perhaps i'll treat this as a second project, i.e start out with a basic 3 axis and just bear it in mind when i'm doing the z axis that i'll probably want to build onto it at a later date. Manually setting the angle would certainly solve most of my issues for most of the parts I want to produce, so i think this could definitely be an ideal compromise.

Thank you for your guidance on this, it's very much appreciated! I'm working on putting together a proper spec of the components and some cad models, so will definitely be back on here for advice once i've got a more specified design.

Thanks again,

Alex