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

[lucan07]

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.

If its about flexibility then why not keep the grunt and mount a spindle to one side might have to extend arm on right past the 24k spindle but looking at it should be possible, the you would probably still have 800x300 travel on the 24k and the ability to hog the crap out of steel when needed. I would be a fantastic base for a router for engraving and using small endmills but severely limited in the type of work it was designed to do

[Davek0974]

That is exactly my plan, should have explained better ;)

The 24k spindle is not going be full-time mounted, its an option and will be pulled off when not needed.

Due to the way the head swivels on the BP I can probably maintain near full X travel if needed just by moving the ram to the left when the spindle is in use, its a very flexible machine - that's why i like it so much.

[JAZZCNC]

If its about flexibility then why not keep the grunt and mount a spindle to one side

Maybe you need to read again because that's exactly what Dave's talking about doing.!!

[lucan07]

Obviously I missed something, somewhere in the posts.

[Davek0974]

The clamp block for holding the spindle to the mill, better made out of one big lump or two plates maybe 12mm thick spaced apart 10mm or so?

[Lee Roberts]

The clamp block for holding the spindle to the mill, better made out of one big lump or two plates maybe 12mm thick spaced apart 10mm or so?

My choice would be a single lump or to space them out more if it's for a typical water cooled spindle, 12's a bit thin in my book.

.Me

[Davek0974]

Just realised they would need to be firmly fixed to each other or it would allow twist. Single block it is ;)

[Davek0974]

Will be using two Mach3 profiles. Only one spindle will be in use at any time.

Looking for ways to switch all the control lines needed -

Vfd supplies
vfd control and fault lines
vfd speed lines
limit switches for Z axis in two positions
homing for z axis in two positions
cooling pump for 24k spindle
probably others....

The programming for the CSMIO plugin I gather will need to be the same for both profiles?

[Davek0974]

Odd programming?

I am cutting some plate for parts on my Bridgeport conversion project, had some good success and a couple of oddities. The most annoying one is my motor VFD has shut down twice now with an error that shows as short-circuit on motor phases, each time i reset and it carried on ok, there was a month between faults - the annoying part is i don't have the fault relay in my e-stop loop (yet) so the motor quits and the motion caries on - snap goes another £8 tool :(

The rest of my issues are experience, or lack of, related so in the end i worked them out, but I'm getting pretty good at re-homing and starting over with modified code ;)

[Davek0974]

7000rpm on a 8mm 2-flute cutter too much?

Just been trying to carve a lump of 18mm thick ally for my Bridgeport conversion, using a 2-flute 8mm HssCo tool at 7000rpm, 900mm/min and 1.6mm DOC

All the features went without hitch, the perimeter decided to bog-down after getting about 9mm deep and stalled the axis.

I have a feeling the height of the wall blocked the coolant/air and allowed the tip to build-up. I need to fit two coolant jets i think at 90deg to each other.

I have re-cammed the profile starting from 8mm down and increased rpm to 8000 and reduced step-over a little.

Will see what happens tomorrow.