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Deckel Maho MH600W CNC milling machine, $4000, Goderich, ON

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Stuart Samuel said:
We keep talking about trying to get a CNC mill going at work…
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Tough call... I'd say no, but I think my voice would be lost beneath the din of all the others screaming yes.

To put the dead dog on the table, how much repetition do you do? Also, in a business like yours, would it pay for itself? In a business, the value has to be greater than the costs of acquisition, training, and lost opportunity.
 
Susquatch said:
Tough call... I'd say no, but I think my voice would be lost beneath the din of all the others screaming yes.

To put the dead dog on the table, how much repetition do you do? Also, in a business like yours, would it pay for itself? In a business, the value has to be greater than the costs of acquisition, training, and lost opportunity.
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Very little repetition (10-20 pieces at most), and no, it’d take ages to pay for itself, at face value.

This is purely out of personal interest, on my part, and on Gabe’s (the younger guy who was at the meet-up with his girlfriend). I’m not talking about asking my boss to buy it, just us buying it, if he’d let us install and use it, for work or hobby purposes, in the shop.

It’s a pipe dream, but I’d like to know more about running a CNC, and would rather be able to apply that, rather than, say, take a night school course.
 
Stuart Samuel said:
It’s a pipe dream, but I’d like to know more about running a CNC, and would rather be able to apply that, rather than, say, take a night school course.
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In that case, I'd say go for it! By nature I throw money away growing my knowledge and skills. At my age, I pay zero attention to pay back cuz I know where that calculation would go. I wanna die learning new things that will all die with me.
 
The offering presented is similar to what I went after (perhaps mine was a bit more capable and double your posted price). I knew nothing about CNC machines, but quite a bit of experience on manual machines. I picked up a sort of working VMC machine, there was really no official vendor support and certain parts were no longer available. I spent a fair number of hours, cleaning (pulled most of the guards), there were lots of little things to fix and most of the parts are some sort of an industry item. There are various web sites where I was able to get support and advice.

I’m now about 6+ years into the game and have been happy. Quite a few components have failed, but between the manuals, the internet and messing around have been able to keep it going. I have learned a lot and getting more confident that when something breaks, I can fix it. One day something critical will fail, it will be a sad day. Regardless, it has given me exposure on an industrial class machine that has now paid for itself several times over (and been a great excuse to purchase more tooling). It was a positive enough experience that I got a CNC lathe and it has worked out favourably as well (so far).

Of course it is a crap shoot (effort/cost to move, clean it, figure out the power, sort out operational issues, purchase more tooling) and no money coming back - could be total loss. However to get that level of functionality is a lot of cash in a new machine, even a 15 year old machine is well out of my price range (and that might start to be seeing age issues). The cash exposure starts out pretty small, you will learn stuff all the way along - and that is worth something too (basically “you can’t lose”).
 
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Stuart Samuel said:
Very little repetition (10-20 pieces at most), and no, it’d take ages to pay for itself, at face value.

This is purely out of personal interest, on my part, and on Gabe’s (the younger guy who was at the meet-up with his girlfriend). I’m not talking about asking my boss to buy it, just us buying it, if he’d let us install and use it, for work or hobby purposes, in the shop.

It’s a pipe dream, but I’d like to know more about running a CNC, and would rather be able to apply that, rather than, say, take a night school course.
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It is not just for the repetitive work. I was in a similar place to where you are, wanting to know more. I use the CNC mill for one off type stuff all the time. I don’t use a CAM program (one day I ought to get to that), I hard code directly from the terminal. Strictly speaking is in very similar to manual machining, except you send a line of code instead of cranking a handle. After that, doing a repeat is very easy, some features that are hard to reproduce on a manual mill (such as large radius arcs) as are tool changes, flood coolant, decent amount of table space etc. I also have three manual mills, all set up and reasonably well kitted out - about the only time the manual machines get used is if I don’t want to disturb something set up on the VMC.

I find I use the CNC mill in preference to the manual mills. Not so with the lathe. I have a good CNC lathe and 3 manual lathes. Most of the lathe work I still use the manual machines. For the CNC lathe I only have the 3J power chuck, on the manual machines I have a better range of work holding options (only use a 3J about half the time). Probably some personal preference, but this is what has been working for me.
 
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