Finally Making Chips!!!

[Ross Shafer]

my first "from scratch" steel is finally underway, still a big pile of parts to make, but I'm excited to finally make some chips.

Bent and you other guys making this kind of stuff on your manual machines, have my deepest respect....holy sh_t these end plates would be a lot of work on a manual mill!!

I love my manual machines to bits and couldn't live without 'em, but I'm sure glad I finally took the plunge into CNC!!!

thanks for the inspiration Bent, Dave and all y'all!

[maxi19]

Looks good Ross.

Ron Mc

[dgalloway]

Sweet! Do you take requests?

[Bent]

Wow. Wow. Wow. I immediately see the difference between manual and CNC. Great work Ross. I am very envious.

[Storm Rosson]

Bent, can your mill be retrofitted with cnc control?

[Ross Shafer]

Thanks guys,

D Galloway: as soon as my request for another 20 hours in each day is granted, I'll consider requests. Until then, I'm afraid my dance card is full.

FYI: Bent's mill could almost certainly be retrofitted to use a CNC control....that's the easy part. Learning the programming software and how to use whatever control one ends up with is where the brain twisting comes in. Oh yeah, then of course there's the money part....not insignificant!

[Bent]

Ross is correct on all points! I'll struggle on with the manual. But hey, I got automatic feed! How's that for modern?

[Paul Lafountaine]

Hi Ross,

Those are some pretty sweet endplates you have milled. If you don't mind me asking, what make and model of cnc mill did you sell the farm for? What program or programs are you using to create your designs? Are you using a CAD program, then another to create the g-code for the cnc or is it an all in one program?

Keep us posted on your work, maybe even a video of you milling an endplate or bridge would be nice to see.

Paul

[Ross Shafer]

Thanks for the compliment Paul. I have a 1986....(or is it 88...sheesh, damn geezerhood!) Matsuura MC510. I do live on a farm, but thanks to the fact that I paid a bit less than 10% of its original price (around $90k when it was new) the farm still belongs to my wife and I. The price I paid for the machine is about 1/3 of what the total came to by the time it was tooled up and running in the shop....even when you get a screamin' deal on one of these older machines like I did, they still represent a pretty big $ commitment. We had some real fun getting it into the shop....the sucker weighs over 4 tons, just as we got the machine itself past the threshold of the shop, the forklift (which was still outside the shop door on my dirt driveway) sank and high centered....we had a fun (NOT!) 2 hours getting the forklift unstuck.

For CAD I use Solidworks and for programming I use Mastercam.

I'll definitely update my progress from time to time. I made a video of my changer testing machine a while back and tried posting it here with no luck...I spent waaay too much time trying different things to allow it to post, but never had any luck. So, its doubtful I'll try that rabbit hole again. Also, there's so much coolant spraying and covering the action when the machine is running, it wouldn't be all that exciting to watch.

[Blacksb21]

Wow Ross nice Endplates, is CNC smoother looking than manual or should I say more accurate than manual? Steve B.