Ok so I've been running the wheels... er... servo's off my little taig 4 axis machine for about 9 months now and I'm seeing the need for an upgrade. So far I've only run about 75 different species of wood thought it as the is the primary thing I work with in my business. And I can tell that it's just really not stout enough for a production environment. Just milling super hard woods will cause the machine to loose steps and trigger the limit switch reset in Mach 3.
So here's what I'm looking for. First I need something bigger and better for doing my wood work. Requirement would be somewhere around 80 - 120 inches per minute feed speed. Rapid move doesn't matter as I don't do many rapid moves. I'd like a machine with true limit switches and a home switches. Since the Taig does not have these and it make re zeroing the machine a pita after you inevitably run in to something hard which usually occurs when we set up for new jigs and fixtures between part runs. I'd like to stay in the desktop size range as I really don't need a 4 axis mill the size of car. We work on small scale intricate stuff. Pricing would be nice to stay under 10 - 15 grand. And I DO NOT want to build it myself.
Second we are looking at starting to do small runs of parts in metals. Alumnium, brass, bronse, copper, iron and steel. But we'd like to expand into other metals later like nickle and titanium. So I'm looking for a machine that will do small production runs in metal, preferably around desktop size maybe a tad larger, with built in enclosure to make coolant flood easier. This would also need to be at least 4 axis, though i'm not opposed to a 5th axis machine. Would also like to keep this machine under say 20 grand.
can anyone point me in the right direction?
So here's what I'm looking for. First I need something bigger and better for doing my wood work. Requirement would be somewhere around 80 - 120 inches per minute feed speed. Rapid move doesn't matter as I don't do many rapid moves. I'd like a machine with true limit switches and a home switches. Since the Taig does not have these and it make re zeroing the machine a pita after you inevitably run in to something hard which usually occurs when we set up for new jigs and fixtures between part runs. I'd like to stay in the desktop size range as I really don't need a 4 axis mill the size of car. We work on small scale intricate stuff. Pricing would be nice to stay under 10 - 15 grand. And I DO NOT want to build it myself.
Second we are looking at starting to do small runs of parts in metals. Alumnium, brass, bronse, copper, iron and steel. But we'd like to expand into other metals later like nickle and titanium. So I'm looking for a machine that will do small production runs in metal, preferably around desktop size maybe a tad larger, with built in enclosure to make coolant flood easier. This would also need to be at least 4 axis, though i'm not opposed to a 5th axis machine. Would also like to keep this machine under say 20 grand.
can anyone point me in the right direction?