• Als Spam markieren
• Beitrag melden

• 
  Diese Gruppe Alles

• Archiv
• RSS-Feeds

• Kontakt
• Hilfe
• Impressum
• Datenschutz

Milling thin materials

In a separate thread, Turning Small Diameters, I asked about the
capabilities and characteristics of lathes for small scale (2mm railway)
model making, and received excellent guidance. At the end of that thread the
topic got on to milling machines, and as it was already quite large, I have
started a new one to ask similar questions.

So, materials at small scale will often be quite thin. 5 thou to 40 thou
(0.12mm to 1mm) brass would be quite common. There's probably little need
for a milling machine for very thin material, and if I get a mill it would
most probably really be for thicker stuff, but anyway I am intrigued to
understand what is realistic on the sort of mill that I might get - around
50Kg weight or less (important to me), and probably £500 or less. I wonder
if  I would ever use the mill on these sort of materials.

What is the thinnest material I can realistically expect to mill?

It may seem impossible, but I know even less about milling than about
turning. But I suppose the operations to consider are edge-milling a shape
on thin sheet, and surface milling thinner areas. I guess there may be
techniques for handling thinner materials like laminating with something
thicker?


To get slightly off topic before we've even started, Dave Littlewood, in the
Turning Small Diameters thread, said:

>BTW, and back to your original question, I think you would find a
>milling machine about as much use as a lathe for modelling work. Be sure
>to get one which retains position as you move the head or knee - many of
>the smaller oriental types have a round column with no register, so if
>you move the head you lose position

Mills in my size range seem not to have a knee at all - which I assume is
the component that moves vertically on the column and supports the milling
table. The table just rests on the base, and all the Z-axis movement is
achieved from the milling head movement. Any mill I would consider would
have a square column. The mill I have looked at most is the Sieg X2,
basically because that's the one covered in depth on the excellent mini
lathe site that is my main source of info (minilathe.com).

But I don't really understand your point. I assume you are talking about
maintaining X-Y position after Z-axis head movements - unclamping a head on
a round column would allow the head to rotate and lose  position? But even
the little Sieg X0 type micro mills, with a round column, use some sort of
racked arrangement for Z-axis movement that I assume retains X-Y position? I
must be getting the wrong end of the stick, as usual.

Chas

Antworten