I need a mill ? Manual or CNC??

[EtheAv8rParticipant @etheav8r]

Decision made. Sieg KX3 on order.

 

Now to fit another steep learning curve into an already overcrowded life…..

[SpurryParticipant @spurry]

Edmund

 

It must have been a very impressive demo…

 

Pete

[blowlampParticipant @blowlamp]

You had better start learning CAD/CAM then Edmund

 

 

Martin.

 

[adyParticipant @ady]

Can anyone comment on the BF20 Vario? … upside is backgear giving good low
speed (50 rpm) torque, lighter, 4th axis included and a lot less money.

———————-

 

Electronic infinitely variable driving gear, and no backgear according to the advert.

http://www.optimum-machines.com/products/milling-machines/bf-20-vario/index.html

 

Backgear is tremendously useful because you can munch through solid steel, aluminium etc non-stop for hours and hours and produce almost zero heat, but there’s no mention of backgear in the advertising blurb.

Or is it that “2 stage” thing?

Backgear usually drops things around 6-1 on a lathe and you can munch t-slots non-stop through solid steel with no coolant.

A vfd electric motor would be turned into a smoking buzzy thing within a week if it ever tried to copy what a proper backgear setup can do.

 

Good luck with your new purchase btw, hope your new pal works out.

Edited By ady on 10/07/2011 00:58:13

[John Stevenson 1Participant @johnstevenson1]

Read it again.

 

First line

 

“Two-stage gear pair for a powerful conduction of the motor power”

 

That’s the selector knob just above the quill spider handle.

High range is 1:1 and low is 2:1

 

Drive is usually via a brass gear on the motor to a plastic gear on the input shaft giving roughly a 2:1 reduction

There is a double cluster plastic gear inside the head on the input shaft driving a steel double cluster gear on the quill drive.

 

 

John S.

[Mark P.Participant @markp]

Hi John,I have a question for you regarding your mill,it appears to be very similar to my Warco WM16 how do you set up the motor drive pinion clearance when you replace the motor mount plate after removing and refitting the motor?

 

Regards Pailo.

[EtheAv8rParticipant @etheav8r]

Pete

 

It was impressive enough to demonstrate parts can be made quickly (once the job is prepared) and accurately – more so than I will be able to do so manually for quite some time… Also it is easy to drive it ‘manually’ via the keyboard or screen so lots of simple milling tasks can be done very quickly and accurately (positioning the cutter using the DRO) without using any drawing or G-Code, and this choosing a mill lark has gone on long enough! The KX3 will probably do anything I will ever want and more as it is not so small, and if I need something bigger for the odd one off I can go elsewhere…….

 

Martin

 

Yes… all part of the steep learing curve and new challenges to keep my mind on the learning trail.

 

ady

 

As per Johns kind clarification, two stage speed range with each range having a variable speed. My bad for calling it a back-gear because a) that is what the chap from Amadeal called it and b) I am a beginner and so get some terminology wrong.

 

Edmund

Edited By EtheAv8r on 10/07/2011 12:28:06

[John Stevenson 1Participant @johnstevenson1]

Pailo,

I can’t really answer this as I have never adjusted one.

The mill in the picture was a customer job that was in for a belt drive conversion up to 4,000 rpm to make the machine more suitable for using small cutters.

Seat of the pants experience would tell me to push it as hard into mesh as possible and then back off slightly.

You could also use a slice of baking foil as a spacer and fish it out thru the rev counter hole afterwards.

John s.

[Mark P.Participant @markp]

Hi John,thanks for the reply,I used a bit of A4 paper and trial and error until it ran quietly! I couldn’t pulled it out through the rev counter hole becauseof the oil / grease guard round the drive gear.Incidently the origional guard doesn’t keep the grease off the rev counter disc and pick up,so I fitted a plastic seal (a bit of cable sleeving) to the top and bottom of said guard,this seems to work.

 

Many thanks Pailo.

[Andrew EvansParticipant @andrewevans67134]

Edmund – I would be interested to read a post about your initial experiences with the KX3.

I personally think you have made the right decision to go with the Cnc option. I have a spg9525 manual mill -similar to the one in Johns photo (that main drive gear setup is very noisy) and have recently acquired a Boxford Cnc mill running on mach3. I find I now use the Cnc for all jobs I can fit onto it (it’s smaller than the manual mill). I find it’s much easier to get accurate results and much quieter in use. I am starting with cad and cam but doing most jobs initially with manually entered simple gcode which is easy to pick up. Think of it as a manual mill with power feed on all 3 axis and spindle speed that is fully controllable If that makes the transition to Cnc easier. It is just as quick to do a simple one off job to be honest. The one disadvantage compared to my manual mill is that the drive has a min sped of around 500Rpm

I did a job the other day involving drilling 75 accurately placed holes – it was a 10 minute job to design the job in cambam cam package ( thats as a newbie) and then a 60 minute job on the Cnc mill while I tidied up the workshop and kept a watch to make sure no glitches happened. The same job on the manual machine would have been repetitive and tedious and error prone. End result was 75 holes in exactly the right spot and exactly the right depth all nicely countersunk to the same degree.

[EtheAv8rParticipant @etheav8r]

Andrew – That is just what I had been thinking/hoping… I will post once I have it running and have a little experience with it.

 

The KX3 was delivered on Saturday morning (great service from Arc Euro) and is sitting on it’s pallet in my workshop at the moment. The Dell PC I got on ebay arrived Saturday as well, and I have reformatted the hard disk and installed XP, optimised services, disabled network and audio in BIOS, cleaned up Resgistey, installed proper defrag tool etc. then installed Mach3 and Sieg KX3 5000 configuration files, and will add Cut2D, but driver test returned the required results. I still need a monitor for the PC in the workshop…. and hope to fine a second-hand touch screen jobbie.

 

I was concerned about the minimum speed of 500RPM, but am informed that with small cutters it will not be an issue?????

[blowlampParticipant @blowlamp]

CamBam is vastly more adaptable than Cut2D for similar money – not as pretty to look at maybe, but capable of doing much, much more.

 

Martin.

[John Stevenson 1Participant @johnstevenson1]

Cut2D comes with the machine.

 

John S.

[Andrew EvansParticipant @andrewevans67134]

Very exciting Saturday

[EtheAv8rParticipant @etheav8r]

Had my new Sieg KX3 and stand and other necessary bits all delivered from Arc Euro two weeks ago (only a week after ordering). I initially removed all the outside casing and installed the stand and built the PC the next weekend weekend, but left the mill sat on its pallet. This Sunday I borrowed an engine hoist and got the mill up onto the stand and bolted down, cleaned up (not a lot of shipping gunge to remove actually), connected up PC and got ready for initial setup.

I was ready to test it out late Sunday night. Had a quick try using the Jog function using the Up/Down, Left/Right and Page Up/Page Down keys on the keyboard and the Z axis goes up and down, and faster with the Shift key held down, Y Axis moved back and forward and faster with the Shift key held down, but the X axis does not move (but there was a change in the ‘hissing’ sound from the controller and the DRO displayed it as moving), but it did move OK at full speed with the Shift key pressed, but the spindle did not spin up at all when started, so there was a bit of setup to go through. It was now 23:20 and time to retire.

Next step was to go through the setup FACs made available by John Stevenson on the smallcncsupport site, and hopefully get it all sorted and ready to run!

I managed to get out to the workshop last night for an hour and went throught the FAQs re machine setup. All the issues now resolved, everything working, table and head all now move in correct direction (all three needed reversing) and all jog slow and fast with the shift key now the motor tuning numbers have been corrected and the step pulse width has been upped to 5 (some were 2). All three stop at limits and jog off after Reset hit (previously had to power off mill and wind the X axis off the switch and then power back on).

A quick distance move check looks OK but was not accurately done, I just wanted to see if it was close or way out, it is close and hopefully bang on!

I need to determine if spindle RPM is correct…. need to find a tach that will help here, but so far all is looking promising.

Thank you John for your FAQs and documented assistence here; without which initial setup would probably be a bit of a nighmare!

So far I think I have made a good decision to go with this set-up.

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