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

[Davek0974]

Oh well, not there yet

I spent a while assembling a fogless coolant thingy, plans as found all over the 'net, pretty easy build, seemed ok.

This was my setup - pre-drilled the cut-to-size plates so i had a fixed position, jig style setup.


First run was at FS calc speeds, new 5mm high helix carbide tool, that ended up in a right mess very rapidly, boy did it complain! The fact that it managed to carry on ripping through the metal with a fully loaded tool was quite impressive - tough little some-bitch this machine!

The tool did not break!

After the "what the f*** was that?" moment passed I hit the e-stop! On examining the aftermath, it appears the new coolant system stopped the coolant and was just on air only, this allowed the tool to load up and that was the end.

After an hour of messing i got most of the gunk off the cutter - that stuff was welded up!



Upon removing the plate from machine I could see the carnage below, the load-up had pulled the tool from the collet and happily chewed my nice new bed



I cleaned that up with a flat file and tried again. Same cutter but this time I altered the parameters from one ramped full depth roughing pass to stepped multiple passes of 0.81mm at 1500mm/min.

I also cranked up the coolant but it sucks big time and is the typical fogger system that i did not want - the whole room filled with oil/paraffin mist, I can still taste it! Totally unsuitable but i pressed on as i did not want to be beaten on this.

I got a video of it roughing out - https://youtu.be/A9ZqR9chMwg

Things seemed a bit happier, fingers were crossed.

Then came final pass on the 2mm tool - again nice new solid carbide, the small holes were run at 1000mm/min at 0.62 DOC, ramped - these worked perfectly and i was impressed here.

The pre-finish on the three loops at the bottom again worked perfectly.

The final pass on the outside edges was at full-depth and 0.1mm cut, 1000mm/min - this is where it all fell apart again - the corners of the cutouts where the larger rads were left made a bit of a squeal but first cuts worked ok, the left side of the main part cut ok on one side of one notch but the second broke the tool and that was it for the day.



I had ordered spare cutters but some were crap and had to go back, that left me with just one 5mm and one 2mm from another supplier - the 2mm is trash and the 5mm is still gummy after about 1mm depth.

The final part is above - onion skinning will not work as there is a slight variation in bed heights and the part cannot be removed fully. I think tabbing and a sacrificial sheet of hard card or something under the plate will work better.

I also have an odd issue where mach3 went into reset when on the line before a tool-change - it would stop the spindle, lift up to clearance height then sit there in reset, pressing reset again allowed the spindle to come to park position for tool-change and then carried on normally. This happened a few times. My only suggestion here is interference from the M05 spindle-stop triggering the reset and this stopping the code right before the M06 command. I have a filter for the VFD and will bung that in.

So, unless I can find some tooling in the Bridgeport cabinet, I'm stuffed for the weekend.

I also need a coolant system as paraffin mist must be bad for health, it certainly tastes like crap!