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New mini mill

Morris

Member
Hi. I just picked up this sweet little syil X4 mini. I havent been able to do much with it yet. But looking forward to making some parts. I think ill be asking around for help with the Mach 3 operating system. This is alot smaller machine then I am used to .
 

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Alexander

Ultra Member
Administrator
That thing is sweet. Did you make any chips with it yet? When I get home tonight I will post a list of hot keys for mach3 mill.
 

Morris

Member
no chips yet. working through the wizards to see what is of any use. I am having trouble with the single block and the spindle speed. i dont know if im clicking buttons to fast. or just not using it right yet.
 

Alexander

Ultra Member
Administrator
Spindle controll in the program should be easy. Just punch in S1000 m3 or m4 is reverse. Calculate your surface feet if you want but for what you are doing I would just listen to what it what it sounds like in the cut and go from there. I find in milling the chip load per tooth is much more important than surface feet per min. And on a small hobby machine you may not have the ability to push the surface feet rate into the ideal range with that given healthy chip load. The material removal rate will simply be to high for the machine to handle in many cases. The single block on my machine works ok. If i hit it mid program it may take 2 or 3 lines to take affect. After it is active i just click cycle start to execute each line. With a small 1/4 -.5 endmill start out at .002 chipload per tooth.
 

Morris

Member
Made some chips! Ran a one inch face mill over about five inches of aluminium and played around with the engraving wizard. works great. still lots to learn about the control, tool touch off, and setting up my work position (G54) . But as for simple use like you would a manual milling machine it is great. I will upload some pictures and videos soon.
 

Alexander

Ultra Member
Administrator
It was great to see your mini mill in action on Friday. Thanks for engraving my lock-out lock for me. 20160227_104200.jpg
 

Morris

Member
no problem thanks for the help with the machine. I finished up my pocket pry bar. was a fun little project.
 

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Jwest7788

Joshua West
Administrator
Hey Morris, How is your machine working out for you now that some time has passed?

Learning all the code etc?
 

Morris

Member
Long time no post. I have been having some fun with the mini mill and recently downloaded Fusion 360 and was able to draw some pockets and post some code. As a bit of a nerd first program was the Rebel symbol from star wars. I also used some of the wizards built into mac 3 and did some custom engraving that some one is selling at a craft market(not me!)
 

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Jwest7788

Joshua West
Administrator
Thats awesome, but why not, right?

How is the learning curve so far? Picking it all up pretty quick?
 

Morris

Member
Ya its going well. the control is very user friendly and with a little help and the new cad/cam system its going great.
 

Morris

Member
Hello. I have been doing some more engraving with my mini mill. using fushion 360 to lay out the original picture then just drawing lines over it and posting out the code it has been pretty easy. first part with lots of detail took about ten minutes to machine and im not sure how long to draw out but it took some time. if i worked on the program a little more i am sure i could get the time down to a minute or two. I used a 0 centre drill running about 3000 rpm and feeding at about 24inch a minute. I have included the original picture as well as one while i was running the part and the finished part after i machined the out side to about the size of a belt buckle.
 

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PeterT

Ultra Member
Premium Member
Interesting. So is the source file for those specific examples basically 2D sketch lines & then you somehow define a constant depth for the cutter?
 

Morris

Member
That is rights all i did was draw lines on top of the imported picture then delete the picture. If you use the trace function when picking tool paths you can choose axial depth. i went with -.001 but because of the tool and the amount of detail i tried to put in there some of it didn't turn out.
 
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