I know nothing about CNC, so I bought a 25 year old Milling Machine 

" believe it or not I don't just awake from a deep slumber and upload a video"... I'm immediately reminded of those videos of dogs running in their sleep who wake up, and continue running... straight into a wall 😅 "Wesley Dreams of Fabrication?" Awesome to see you back here, I'm excited to see your instagram teasers converted into video form here!!

Soooo if you want someone to bounce ideas off and ask questions too, I’d be willing to offer my 15+ years of 5axis cnc prototyping experience. I’ve done inspection and CMM work as well as manual and cnc lathe, including live tooling. If you’re interested, I can give you my Google voice number.

id love to see a video of you upgreading this to a masso g3 touch cnc controller, i hate these old controllers on 90' machines and this would lauch the cnc into the 21. century i dint know if you would need that , but it would be really 😎

The ads are good because i learnt something.

@@Basement_CNC Honeslty though, those old fadal controls are kinda fine. But I get what you mean, you could have so much more storage and be able to have a conversational mode.

That’s where I’m at- I’d like 1 video a month, but I’m at the point I’m only going to post stuff that I’m happy with.

You owe us nothing. Work at a sustainable peace. 😇

Exactly this ❤

yeah, id rather have it random, than get some wack video once a week

All my favorite channels don’t upload on a schedule, just upload stuff when it’s ready. Doesn’t matter if it’s a minute or an hour

I can order 90% of this machine from McMaster Carr, it’s really nice.

And a lot of homebrew software is around for modding old gear too.

Our hackspace recently acquired a 1980s Bridgeport Interact 2, all the power systems are your typical industrial fare, but the control system is utterly bizarre. There's a big Heidenhain HMI with a beautiful orange CRT and horrible UI that communicates with a black box semi-custom PLC which controls three weird, esoteric DC servo drives via a 0-10V analogue control scheme that no other drive seems to support, and naturally one blew up. I keep joking we should replace the whole lot with an Arduino Uno running GRBL...

@@joeofloath Literally do it (though use some Linux CNC Mesa Boards) I'm going to be doing that to my Bridgeport Series 1 Interact :P

Fadal is kind of unique in this respect actually. They were a parts bin machine to begin with, and there were so many of them sold that it created a strong aftermarket for parts. Ten years ago you could still easily order pretty much anything likely to need replacing, not sure if that's still true now. If you blow a drive or control board on Matsuura or something, salvage spares can cost $$$ if you can find them and if not you're stuck trying to repair yours. Doing a LinuxCNC conversion is an option but is a pretty complex and time-intensive operation on a VMC with ATC versus a CNC knee mill.

I’ll take some heavy built American tooling any day.

Yeah its fun seeing the town you live in in a video like this

That hand bandsaw was for the birds. Floor band saw is where it is at.

My first real job as a kid was in a machine shop, and i swear this might be the exact machine the CNC guys had lol. Brings back memories, we would make all kinds of parts.... i would help debur parts until 12 oclock then take off in the work van and delivery parts the rest of the day. Roll up a few joints put on the rock station and hit the road lol, man time really does fly.

if you follow enough channels that post sporadically, youll eventually have a new video every day from at least someone 😄

Dude he would take months between uploads at times lol I followed it for years and eventually gave up

There are fans of project blinky? Wonders never cease. Drawing comparison from those clowns to this guy is insulting to this guy.

​@@fredio54what's your issue with BOM? Theyre great guys and a wealth of knowledge

@@fredio54 what are you talking about? The guys in blinky are insanely talented fabricators. Man, really showing your ignorance with that comment

Thanks for this Rule of Thumb....... really nice one to have in mind

This guys full of shit

Good point- could’ve used alignment dowels instead. I’m kinda curious now on if the misalignment would come from the hole being twist drilled and not reamed, or the bolt itself. Either way, on a critical part, I completely agree.

@@WesleyKagan Most of the misalignment will come from the loose fit of the bolt in the hole and the non-precision of a threaded surface. Never rely on a thread for accurate positioning.

Expanding arbor pins are good too. You can align and hold the part in many cases

@@WesleyKagan the misalignment comes from the play in the bolts.. they dont slip through bolt holes snug so there is positional play in your x.y axis... you can rotate the part slightly even with all the bolts in place..the dowels into reamed holes on fixtues eliminates that play

I noticed that also👍

Thanks! Yeah 60 less pounds is nice!

I found his weight it’s not fair take it back

​@@WesleyKaganWay to go, buddy! I was thinking you looked a lot leaner!

Glad you enjoyed it

Noted- thanks for the tip! Alignment dowels seem to be the way to go. Honestly trying to hold onto these thin parts is half the battle, excited to make an actual part! Will do on the machinery handbook. Thanks!

Holding thin parts is made easier by using a Venturi system to hold the part down. It only works if you have a low weight to surface area. It works by removing the air from under the part and in turn allows the atmospheric pressure to hold the part down. So if you calculated your surface area of the part, then multiply it by 1bar, you’ll find out your hold down force.

I regularly work on, repair, and maintain these Fadals through my job if you need any tips. @@WesleyKagan

@@WesleyKagan : I have a copy of Machinery's Handbook here... there's not much CNC info in it. 1948 edition! 😜

@@WesleyKagan : What I don't understand is how you found the courage to hit "Start"! 😰

Thank you!

totally agree....never new you could even do that slick replacement....now to find a used Fadal :P

Thanks, will do!

Thanks! So far it’s much better at its job than I am.

Just to share my Dad retired at 80 in 2003. I spent many a Summer helping supervise the Fadal, typing programs on paper punch tape and such. My Dad was a world class machinist getting thin walled aluminum wave guides into a generation of satellites like Telstra. He used a lot of tricks, built jigs a lot and employed a dead blow hammer to solve some of the things you alluded to in the video. You will figure it out and thanks again for the trip down memory lane

Very nice, thanks for sharing!

the car they made killed twelve of their team though.

@@amandahugankiss4110what

Trying to, I’m going to get better. One video a month is the goal right now!

​@WesleyKagan nah, post whenever works. I'm here bcs of how good the content is. People like you and Micheal Reeves have a following based on quality, not quantity.

​@@WesleyKagan.

One a month, I’ll take it 🤝

I know, and the 24 hours after that I’m sure was a real nail biter

​@@WesleyKaganI don't have any nails left at this point. Had to run down to true value to get some more

Congratulations!

I’m back! I’m around, I just have a lot of half finished projects haha

It should work okay. Soluble oil creates a weird film that can be hard to remove over large areas. It may seem easy enough to clean at first but then you see how big the machine is vs the 1sqare yard you spent an hour on. Weirdly, or perhaps just logically this film comes off pretty easy with... More soluble oil. Newer machine coolants are less prone to separating and leaving waxy films. They also often smell minty fresh and don't have problems growing nasty stuff in the coolant tanks. No more chlorine tablets or oxygenating bubbly things for machines that stagnate. An active machine will oxygenate the coolant as it runs but for shops that only use these things a couple times a year the new coolants are a game changer over plane old soluble oil.

Yeah I'm running carbide on everything, It came with all the end mills and tooling you see- luckily most of it is kennemetal or American-made carbide tooling. It's a 7500 RPM spindle, and in learning I'm erroring on the slow side which I think is problematic. I need to trust my tooling more, and my accidental rapid plunge into the corner shows that I can push all of those tools a lot harder and faster, probably to the benefit of tool life. She will do 400ipm.

@@WesleyKagan erring on the slow side is the better of the two tbh, but you would be amazed at what carbide can handle. Especially with the flood coolant. Depending on coating chip welding can be a pain but the coolant goes a long way to controlling that I run my haas at 8-12k and with some variance to optimize finish on everything except my face mill I run at 6k. My main roughing tool is a 12mm carbide no name I get from McMaster and I run that thing at 8k with an .06 radial, .75 axial at 220ipm (.007ipt) it munches through aluminum and it could go faster Harvey tool has a great calculator to get you in the ballpark for speeds and feeds Fusion also loves to default to G1 rapids with a hidden parameter that clips your max speeds. It looks like yours may be doing that unless the clips you showed were on rapid override. Faster rapids are one of those things that seems arbitrary but will make a huge difference. There is an option in a bunch of tool paths in the linking tab to set a no engagement feed rate and If you have a machine template setup I think you can change it there, and there may also be an option in your post. Just be careful if you switch it back to G0 rapids, a lot of older machines will dogleg on multi axis rapid moves (that aren’t a perfect 45* angle) and you have to be careful because it wont move where you think it will, or where fusion shows it moving. Only an issue if you like to run your clearance heights on the dangerous side or you have complicated part holding or fixturing that extends above the clearance plane

@@WesleyKagan also can’t wait for more m120 content. Mine is chilling on a pallet waiting for the motivation to come back 😂

Yeah, I tried that starting out- The issue I ran into is that my post processor likes to send the machine to E1 + T1 tool offset, which then trips my z axis up. Still working on how to feed it Gcode that it likes.

@@WesleyKagan Oh Z's inachine coordinates are weird, all negatives. keep going, I've spent way too much time talking to an LCD panel (well crt to begin with, I could smell the inside of that panel when you opened it) questioning it's actions😁 An old CAD teacher once said "if you do a job, got paid and the customer was happy. You did it right". If you are your own customer, win all round👍

STILL MUST MEASURE DO THE OFFSET BECAUSE THE HEIGHTS OF EACH TOOL STICKS OUT OF THE TOOL HOLDER AT DIFFERING LENGTHS ALL AND ALL NOT MUCH DIFFERENCE

@@WesleyKagan I also just bought a new CNC mill despite never having used one before! There isn't a mill-turn postprocessor for it, so I just hacked up the Fusion postprocessor code to make a fully-functional post to do lathe-style operations with the workpiece in the spindle. It's just simple Javascript, very easy to modify it to send the right G/M codes and parameters and suppress irrelevant stuff that the mill can't understand. Now I can just turn a spigot and shoulder on the stock, slam a few stock parts into ER40 collet chucks in the autochanger, load a set of tools in a gang plate in the vice and I'm making parts with precise parabolic and hyperbolic curved faces. Huge fun.

Yup.

I do some things! Thanks! Good to be back!

This comment is streets ahead.

Many.

More than one probably.

Thanks! I appreciate it!

Thanks for the kind words!

Thanks! Will do!

Thanks! Looking forward to it myself too!

Thank you! Yeah, always have something going haha