For anyone interested, the Saunders Machine Works mod vice system is great for this machine. The Mini Mill only has 254mm Z travel, and once you add a standard 6" vice, clearance above the vice jaws may be an issue for you. There's around 70-80mm z-clearance above the vice jaws before the WIPS probe, for example, would contact the part unless you did a tool change with the table moved far to the right. The SMW system means this isn't a problem and you end up with more than enough space.
Nice setup. I have some of their smaller Hobby vises and fixture plates. Looking to get one for my mini mill too. Is this their 16"x10" fixture plate? Wish you went larger or happy with size?
guys command do I skip line? I have a 3.8 slot and the cutters sometimes come in the right size 3.8 but if they come smaller I put the second pass, I wanted a command to skip this second pass. help me please.
Looks great man👍👍 just one thing, torque wrenches are really only supposed to be used too tighten bolts and screws not loosen them. But then again they are you're tools, feel free to do things you're way. But those surface finishes look good, keep it up!
I don't agree as a practicing aerospace engineer. Why would it suddenly become ineffective, it doesn't, it just doesn't tell you anything if backing off. Are your tools calibrated anyway? It possesses the strength to torque a bolt but not break that torque? There's no logic and calibration isn't a big deal and small percentages on the clamping torques you deal with and small torque wrenches. Id assume you are only using it as gauge of pressure to avoid marking the piece realistically for youre unlikely overtorquing heavy steels. Also engineers only work on results and your end product was stunning quality for a simple piece. Love the finish.
@@DigitalArtisan77 Yeah good point also. This torque wrench doesn't torque or *click* in the anti-clockwise direction, so I don't know if it could cause any damage / calibration issues anyway?! and yes only using it to avoid marking the workpiece.
@@GeorgeLaight haha click it may not, but its reversible and that would be a mistake otherwise on their part, and false marketing 😅. They're just inconvenient vs a standard wrench/ratchet given length and clunkiness at the end of the day. You should back them off tension after use and more important id say but really and realistically what you are torquing and then even if wholly abused, the error in the torque wrenches would be minimal and you'd end up just finding the number that clamps but doesn't mark too bad. I probably wouldn't use one if solo I.e. not passing instructions, feeling the clamping force via hands, it won't take many goes to dial in your hand skills
Sorry to ask. I was looking at used haas mini mills in and around UK and it seems £15k is the minimum ball park entry, would there be much more to add to that price do you know please? Obviously consumables and I guess 3 phase needed, but I'd never have made a workshop before lol, always been provided.
Looks good. Subscribed. I like your in cycle probing but it has some downsides that I’ve found. 1. Added cycle time. 2. If it ever probes a chip, everything shifts by that amount… first thing I’d do is set up a work stop or soft jaws for your 2nd op. This will eliminate need for probing. 2nd thing I’d do is increase rpm to max on all your tools and run the feed as high as you can except for finishing. I have the 10k spindle option in my mini mill 2 and run all my carbide tools at 10k for aluminum. Even the face mill. Aluminum doesn’t care about SFM (SMM in your case?). Even following what I just said, I’ve accidentally left my machine on 200% feed and ran good parts. Keep up the good work! Good luck.
Cheers! Yeah work stop is a good idea to save a bit of time. I wish I had the 10k option, but I'm at the UK base 4k. At some point I'll buy the 'software unlock' to get 6k and also to some testing to see what stepovers / feeds I can achieve!
In-process probing isn't so much of a risk if it's at the beginning of the cycle and you have the option to blast off the parts and probe tip before running. That said when possible, repeatable fixturing enerally will be the way to go for stuff like this from what I've seen. Probes do come in handy tho if certain order of operations can leave some variability in a part. I have a lot of castings I machine and in some ops the only way to guarantee good fit is to lock the part into a machined fixture for the casting geometry, then have a probe routine that finds the previously machined features to set an origin. (Of course for bigger parts I usually don't even trust the probe for that and use a co-ax.) Even with castings though I've often tried to just have fixtures that will index off previously machined features when possible vs relying on grabbing just the cast external geometry.
@@scottwatrous true. I had the issue happen where I roughed 2nd setup, exposing a bore machined in the first setup, then I probed that bore mid cycle, adjusting the offset. It worked great for quite a few parts, then picked up a chip on one and shifted everything by 0.015”.
I literally just came across your channel, and love this video! Although I do have a question. Have you thought about adding quick change vises, and adding more vises? It looks like you have room for another pair of vises on the SMW fixture plate. Also have you thought about getting a fiber laser? Once your tray of parts that needs to be engraved, can all be done at once with the laser.
Yes absolutely - all those things crossed my mind. However these were pretty low volume, and just one batch - so investing in more vices and a fibre laser wouldn't have been viable.
That's a nice setup and work. If I might make a recommendation, for Op2 - using a face mill is risky from a process reliability standpoint. The overhanging material has a tendency to bend up, causing a collision with inserts, leading to pull-out of the part. Especially as you aren't gripping a whole lot of it and it is thin/bendy. If it were me, I would use that 10mm mill and Adaptive Clear that material off in two steps - one with a moderate width of cut and chip load for just the material on the overhang, then a full-speed/load for the remainder. Leave a little bit of stock and kiss it off with the face mill - you'll have a faster process that is more reliable.
Thanks! Yeah this is a fair point and I did actually experiment doing this initially! My conclusion at that time was the overhang wasn't big enough to cause that kind of issue
@@GeorgeLaight Horses for courses, right? We all sorta develop "standard" practices because we've been bit in the ass! I've seen more than one Speedio owner be paying the overnight freight on a new spindle because a face mill pulled their work out. Not as big a risk on a beefy CAT-40. I do wonder if Adaptive would be faster for you though... Interesting to cycle time test.
@@LumaLabs It may well be - unfortunately this run of parts is long done and dusted, but any future runs I'll definitely do some cycle time comparisons. Appreciate the advice!
I disagree. A facemill is going to use less cutting pressure. There is only looks like .125 or less to face off. Why would you adaptive clear that off? The best strategy is facemill rough one pass then a finish pass of .025 depending on corner radius. This part is taking too long to make as it is. You are only going to add another 20 seconds onto run time
@@drivenauthority916 Like I said, this is a matter of process reliability. The unsupported "hat" of material can start to pull up at the cutting boundary, leading to weird hammering resonance in the part (at best), or curling over the incoming cutting edges of the inserts and colliding with the cutter body (worst). It is the sort of thing that isn't a problem 99.9% of the time, but it'll really bite you in the ass that .1%. Adaptive is just a safer way, and would probably be faster than the multiple face mill passes in Z. And yea, I'm a cycle time fetishist myself (hence Speedios), but the cycle time here is plenty good for a 4k RPM mill on his first parts.
guys command do I skip line? I have a 3.8 slot and the cutters sometimes come in the right size 3.8 but if they come smaller I put the second pass, I wanted a command to skip this second pass. help me please.
I hope they look after you when the machine plays up, My machine cost half of its value in downtime but seems pot luck with where your are in UK as to whether you get an engineer in a day or 2 or like me a week after breakdown and a month to change spindle
Pricing is all very transparent for the Mini Mill on Haas's UK website: www.haas.co.uk/modular-mini-mill/ We got the Convenience Module, and WIPS which includes some elements of the Software Module for free. Will likely get the Production Module to get the full 6,000rpm and 15.2m/min rapids in the future - but surprisingly it really hasn't been a problem without so far!
@@ipadize Yeah that's right - the UK version of the mini mill, called the "Modular Mini Mill" comes super bare bones to make it more attractive. 4,000rpm is standard, 6,000rpm is one of the "modules" you can add on. Just a software unlock though, still the same spindle in the machine.
If this is for hobby, you are doing ok. If you’re making a business, you need to atleast double all the feed rates. You are running pretty slow. It’s aluminum, you can run it as fast as the machine can handle for the most part.
Agreed. As I mention it's simply a learning project and the parts are mostly just for marketing, not a major source of income! Interested to hear which tools you would run faster and by how much.
