Re: [CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO] Sherline vs. Taig head was Re: Has anybody tried BobCad software?

Bill Vance wrote:

>Anyone know how well the mini-mill MT/R8 heads/other parts stack up with these?
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I've got the 150 Lb mini-mill. It works, kind of. I use it mostly for
demonstrating and testing motion control hardware, and normally
use a CNC'd Bridgeport for actual machining. I have the R-8 version,
as I already have a lot of R-8 tooling. The head has plastic gears, which
worry me a bit. One nice feature is you get 7 inches or so of head travel
on the vertical slide, and there's no round column to cause loss of X-Y
alignment, which almost all of the mill-drills suffer from.

The weakest point of the machine is the flimsy attacment of the vertical
column to the base. Even when making very light milling cuts, the top
of the column vibrates quite a bit. On the heaviest cuts possible, my
Bridgeport head deflects about .002" but the mini-mill deflects about
1/4" on a fairly light cut. To get any real work done on the thing, I
think one would have to get the spindle up to about 10 - 20,000 RPM
and use 1/8" carbide end mills.

Jon