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Robert LaLonde
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I posted this on another forum, but then thought some here might enjoy reading it.
October 2006 - 11 years ago - I really knew nothing about machining. I had a small manual lathe my wife gave me for Christmas, a bench grinder I wallowed out parts with, and a drill press I wallowed out holes with. I thought I knew how to use them, but I was wrong. That's when I ordered a mill. I ordered something I could afford and I thought would be easier to use. A Taig 2019-CRER.
I was wrong.
It was sold as turn key. "That's for me," I thought. "I can just plug it in and start learning how to use it." Boy that was a mistaken assumption. It arrived in two boxes. One from the factory containing the basic mill, and one from the reseller containing the stepper motors and all the electronics. That's sure not turn key in my opinion.
After several days of cussing swearing and assembly in between doing my day job I finally got it assembled and set it on a work bench. There it sat for a couple weeks until I ponied up for Mach 3 to run the machine and picked up a used computer to run it. I was starting to understand that "turn key" was just sales puffery at best. "Finally I can start cranking out parts," I thought. I was wrong.
At first I tried to use the Wizards. A sort of short cut conversational programming macro capability in Mach 3. I thought it was me or my machine at first, but some of them are quite bad. I had circles come out like lemons and had people tell me it was the machine. The thing is the tool path on the screen looked like a lemon as well. I started to think I had a lemon. I was wrong.
It turned out the wizards were made by a variety of people learning as they went and with varying degrees of knowledge. The parameter inputs standards weren't consistent from one to the next making them harder to learn, but once you did some of them were quite good. There is one that is really a group of tools called NFS Wizard. It allows you set setup multiple operations and string them together.
Then there was my machine. In a lot of ways it was quite good, and in others it was quite bad. Its a kind of confusing Frankenstein's monster. The Z axis ways are a sort of box clamping mechanism with a square tapered brass gib that pushes the head to one side on the ways. The Y axis ways are two square rods with half squares on the saddle that engage them. The X axis has the only "normal" ways with a dovetail and a tapered brass gibb. I didn't have a clue about any of that, and because everything was different I was a bit afraid of it. All the axis have 1/2-20 "precision" v-lead screws with brass pinch nuts. Learning how to adjust all of that, knowing nothing, and thinking that machines had to be "perfect" left me struggling for months. The seller wasn't much help. Taig was responsive to questions however. Eventually I learned how to tear it down and put it back together... because I had done it so many times. I could take one apart and put it back together easily now. Probably less than an hour. Maybe a little more if I adjust everything how I want it as I do. Adjusting a Taig is a balance between speed and precision. I eventually I came to accept what it was and what it could and could not do.
The electronics and control were another story. The reseller left me thinking it was my computer so I upgrade it.. a couple times. The breakout board and drives looked suspiciously like a knockoff of an old Xylotek control. Of course I didn't learn that until years later. It was slow. 20 inches per minute max and even after I had the machine dialed to the best of my abilities it still would flake out.
I cut parts like that. My first parts were more a matter or turning perfectly good material into piles of chips and broken end mills. I'm sure my wife got quite tired of me showing her some really ****ty parts or engraving on a piece trash, and expecting validation of my prowess as a machinist. LOL. Eventually I started to find a balance between what it could do and what I wanted it to do.
One day I was reading a tackle making forum and a machine shop owner who made molds went on a long winded rant about what was involved in making molds for rubber worms. It just sort of rubbed me the wrong way. I went out to the shop and started working on a Friday night and didn't stop until I had produced my very first mold. I didn't have any real CAD software. I didn't have CAM software. I did get ripped off for $75 for LazyCAM, but if you can produce anything other than the most rudimentary parts with it my hat is off to you. Of course knowing nothing I thought it was my lack of knowledge, not the software. I coded most of it by hand. Simple engraving type operations. I used Excell and some macros to write iterative incremental code. I learned how to write simple code for cutting arcs and then learned how to change the plane so I could cut arcs in X & Z instead of X&Y. It was very much hand coding, but atleast I had a computer to do the drudge work. 3 days later I had a mold I thought would work. It was a total piece of crap compared to the work I do today, but it would produce usable baits. I caught fish with them.
Over the ensuing months I learned to make other molds, discovered CamBam, and wrote bigger and bigger programs. All the while I fought with my machine and my crappy controller thinking I was really just asking to much of it. I would hover over it ready to hit the e-stop when things went wrong... and they did. I would weld up holes in a piece of aluminum right there on the table and start over, because I didn't want to waste metal over and over again.
The best thing I ever did for the machine was spend $600 on a package of steppers, cables, controller from Ahren Johnson over at CNC Router Parts. I bolted it on and it was like a different machine. I was screaming along at 30-40 IPM with the machine adjusted tight, and with it loosened up bit I could cut parts at 60 IPM. No kidding.
I started pushing the machine to see what I could do. If I had settled for less I could have probably stopped there, but I was learning about HSM. Something a Taig is best at, but not really suited for. Its got a 10K 1/4HP spindle, but as documented the feeds didn't match that. So again it was a balancing act between over powering the spindle, pushing the steppers to hard, and adjusting the machine for precision or speed.
The whole time I was cutting parts. More and more often I was getting finished parts that looked ok. I still sometimes had issues with the machine, but it was because I was asking more and more out of it. One Taig owner and reseller in a group all but called me a liar when I told him how many hours I had on my machine. I experimented. I ran wood routers as spindles for more power and less weight so I didn't have to worry about the spindle when pushing the machine. I easily burned up a dozen of them. Some failed because they got packed with aluminum chips and shorted out. Others got so hot the plastic spindle noses that held the bearings would melt. Some I actually went through brushes on. I started rating them by how many hundred hours I would get out of one.
Somewhere in all of that I wrote code file for a mold that was 1.3 million lines of code and took over 30 hrs to run. I hovered over the machine as long as I could, and then I slept on the floor next to it while it ran. I was startled awake at any odd sound from the machine, and I was startled awake a lot. I wound up cutting that job twice because I made a mistake and ruined the first run. That 1.3 million lines of code was one half of a mold. I spent a solid week in the shop doing that one job. I only went in the house to grab something to eat, and to use the restroom. I still have that mold, and I still use it. People keep asking me to reproduce it and sell it, but I am pretty attached to the design.
A couple months ago I ran 5.6 million lines of code for a mold program. 2.3 million lines per side. I ran each side on a different machine at the same time and it took a little over 8 hours. It was done right the first time. The next day after a little hand finish work deburring, pressing in alignment pins, and tapping clamping screw holes it shipped out. I spent all the time the job was running in the office doing CAD and CAM for other jobs and ignored the machines until they needed a tool change. (Sorry no ATC machines in my shop... yet.)
Now instead of knowing nothing I feel like I know a little bit.
That Taig taught me to machine, rebuild machines, design machines, and understand that there is no such thing as perfect. If two parts are a "pefect" fit they become one part. I retrofit a KMB1 from a non-working Randtronics control to a modern PC based control. The first time it took me a year. When I upgrade my controls it took me a day. I repaired everything that was wrong or went wrong it it. Mechanical, electrical, electronic, setup... I took a cheap flimsy Chinese noodle router and retrofit it with a robust control system and motors in a day. I redesigned the leads, motors and control system on a MaxNC and cut the first mold I was really really proud of on it. One I consider a kind of work of art. A mold I reproduce and sell today. I made parts with my Taig for several of my other machines. The Hurco KMB1 has a companion spindle mount, and an encoder cover made on the Taig. The spindle mount on the noddle route was made on the Taig. Bidirectionally adjustable captive bearing carriers for the MaxNC were made on the Taig, and its saddle was modified for spring loaded anti backlash nuts on the Taig.
I have the Taig all apart on a shelf in the shop because I am to busy to mess with it, but I plan to put it back together again. When I do it will be a fully functional and usable display piece in my office.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
If you have read all of that and think that a Taig may be more trouble than its worth... then you would be wrong.
The knowledge to do everything I had to do or learn is out there. Nobody currently sells it with as crappy of a controller as my first one. People will gladly guide you with software choices and control software to get started. Its not a production machine and it was never intended to be one but I used it like one. Its intended to be a hobby machine for a guy piddling around with it for a few hours on a weekend or in the evening. It would last and run for years and years like that. Maybe a lifetime. I got years of actual run time out of mine running way beyond what it was designed for. I literally made (and sold) tens of thousands of dollars worth of parts with mine. It paid for three other machines and their retrofits, and it made parts for them before I put it on the shelf.
October 2006 - 11 years ago - I really knew nothing about machining. I had a small manual lathe my wife gave me for Christmas, a bench grinder I wallowed out parts with, and a drill press I wallowed out holes with. I thought I knew how to use them, but I was wrong. That's when I ordered a mill. I ordered something I could afford and I thought would be easier to use. A Taig 2019-CRER.
I was wrong.
It was sold as turn key. "That's for me," I thought. "I can just plug it in and start learning how to use it." Boy that was a mistaken assumption. It arrived in two boxes. One from the factory containing the basic mill, and one from the reseller containing the stepper motors and all the electronics. That's sure not turn key in my opinion.
After several days of cussing swearing and assembly in between doing my day job I finally got it assembled and set it on a work bench. There it sat for a couple weeks until I ponied up for Mach 3 to run the machine and picked up a used computer to run it. I was starting to understand that "turn key" was just sales puffery at best. "Finally I can start cranking out parts," I thought. I was wrong.
At first I tried to use the Wizards. A sort of short cut conversational programming macro capability in Mach 3. I thought it was me or my machine at first, but some of them are quite bad. I had circles come out like lemons and had people tell me it was the machine. The thing is the tool path on the screen looked like a lemon as well. I started to think I had a lemon. I was wrong.
It turned out the wizards were made by a variety of people learning as they went and with varying degrees of knowledge. The parameter inputs standards weren't consistent from one to the next making them harder to learn, but once you did some of them were quite good. There is one that is really a group of tools called NFS Wizard. It allows you set setup multiple operations and string them together.
Then there was my machine. In a lot of ways it was quite good, and in others it was quite bad. Its a kind of confusing Frankenstein's monster. The Z axis ways are a sort of box clamping mechanism with a square tapered brass gib that pushes the head to one side on the ways. The Y axis ways are two square rods with half squares on the saddle that engage them. The X axis has the only "normal" ways with a dovetail and a tapered brass gibb. I didn't have a clue about any of that, and because everything was different I was a bit afraid of it. All the axis have 1/2-20 "precision" v-lead screws with brass pinch nuts. Learning how to adjust all of that, knowing nothing, and thinking that machines had to be "perfect" left me struggling for months. The seller wasn't much help. Taig was responsive to questions however. Eventually I learned how to tear it down and put it back together... because I had done it so many times. I could take one apart and put it back together easily now. Probably less than an hour. Maybe a little more if I adjust everything how I want it as I do. Adjusting a Taig is a balance between speed and precision. I eventually I came to accept what it was and what it could and could not do.
The electronics and control were another story. The reseller left me thinking it was my computer so I upgrade it.. a couple times. The breakout board and drives looked suspiciously like a knockoff of an old Xylotek control. Of course I didn't learn that until years later. It was slow. 20 inches per minute max and even after I had the machine dialed to the best of my abilities it still would flake out.
I cut parts like that. My first parts were more a matter or turning perfectly good material into piles of chips and broken end mills. I'm sure my wife got quite tired of me showing her some really ****ty parts or engraving on a piece trash, and expecting validation of my prowess as a machinist. LOL. Eventually I started to find a balance between what it could do and what I wanted it to do.
One day I was reading a tackle making forum and a machine shop owner who made molds went on a long winded rant about what was involved in making molds for rubber worms. It just sort of rubbed me the wrong way. I went out to the shop and started working on a Friday night and didn't stop until I had produced my very first mold. I didn't have any real CAD software. I didn't have CAM software. I did get ripped off for $75 for LazyCAM, but if you can produce anything other than the most rudimentary parts with it my hat is off to you. Of course knowing nothing I thought it was my lack of knowledge, not the software. I coded most of it by hand. Simple engraving type operations. I used Excell and some macros to write iterative incremental code. I learned how to write simple code for cutting arcs and then learned how to change the plane so I could cut arcs in X & Z instead of X&Y. It was very much hand coding, but atleast I had a computer to do the drudge work. 3 days later I had a mold I thought would work. It was a total piece of crap compared to the work I do today, but it would produce usable baits. I caught fish with them.
Over the ensuing months I learned to make other molds, discovered CamBam, and wrote bigger and bigger programs. All the while I fought with my machine and my crappy controller thinking I was really just asking to much of it. I would hover over it ready to hit the e-stop when things went wrong... and they did. I would weld up holes in a piece of aluminum right there on the table and start over, because I didn't want to waste metal over and over again.
The best thing I ever did for the machine was spend $600 on a package of steppers, cables, controller from Ahren Johnson over at CNC Router Parts. I bolted it on and it was like a different machine. I was screaming along at 30-40 IPM with the machine adjusted tight, and with it loosened up bit I could cut parts at 60 IPM. No kidding.
I started pushing the machine to see what I could do. If I had settled for less I could have probably stopped there, but I was learning about HSM. Something a Taig is best at, but not really suited for. Its got a 10K 1/4HP spindle, but as documented the feeds didn't match that. So again it was a balancing act between over powering the spindle, pushing the steppers to hard, and adjusting the machine for precision or speed.
The whole time I was cutting parts. More and more often I was getting finished parts that looked ok. I still sometimes had issues with the machine, but it was because I was asking more and more out of it. One Taig owner and reseller in a group all but called me a liar when I told him how many hours I had on my machine. I experimented. I ran wood routers as spindles for more power and less weight so I didn't have to worry about the spindle when pushing the machine. I easily burned up a dozen of them. Some failed because they got packed with aluminum chips and shorted out. Others got so hot the plastic spindle noses that held the bearings would melt. Some I actually went through brushes on. I started rating them by how many hundred hours I would get out of one.
Somewhere in all of that I wrote code file for a mold that was 1.3 million lines of code and took over 30 hrs to run. I hovered over the machine as long as I could, and then I slept on the floor next to it while it ran. I was startled awake at any odd sound from the machine, and I was startled awake a lot. I wound up cutting that job twice because I made a mistake and ruined the first run. That 1.3 million lines of code was one half of a mold. I spent a solid week in the shop doing that one job. I only went in the house to grab something to eat, and to use the restroom. I still have that mold, and I still use it. People keep asking me to reproduce it and sell it, but I am pretty attached to the design.
A couple months ago I ran 5.6 million lines of code for a mold program. 2.3 million lines per side. I ran each side on a different machine at the same time and it took a little over 8 hours. It was done right the first time. The next day after a little hand finish work deburring, pressing in alignment pins, and tapping clamping screw holes it shipped out. I spent all the time the job was running in the office doing CAD and CAM for other jobs and ignored the machines until they needed a tool change. (Sorry no ATC machines in my shop... yet.)
Now instead of knowing nothing I feel like I know a little bit.
That Taig taught me to machine, rebuild machines, design machines, and understand that there is no such thing as perfect. If two parts are a "pefect" fit they become one part. I retrofit a KMB1 from a non-working Randtronics control to a modern PC based control. The first time it took me a year. When I upgrade my controls it took me a day. I repaired everything that was wrong or went wrong it it. Mechanical, electrical, electronic, setup... I took a cheap flimsy Chinese noodle router and retrofit it with a robust control system and motors in a day. I redesigned the leads, motors and control system on a MaxNC and cut the first mold I was really really proud of on it. One I consider a kind of work of art. A mold I reproduce and sell today. I made parts with my Taig for several of my other machines. The Hurco KMB1 has a companion spindle mount, and an encoder cover made on the Taig. The spindle mount on the noddle route was made on the Taig. Bidirectionally adjustable captive bearing carriers for the MaxNC were made on the Taig, and its saddle was modified for spring loaded anti backlash nuts on the Taig.
I have the Taig all apart on a shelf in the shop because I am to busy to mess with it, but I plan to put it back together again. When I do it will be a fully functional and usable display piece in my office.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
If you have read all of that and think that a Taig may be more trouble than its worth... then you would be wrong.
The knowledge to do everything I had to do or learn is out there. Nobody currently sells it with as crappy of a controller as my first one. People will gladly guide you with software choices and control software to get started. Its not a production machine and it was never intended to be one but I used it like one. Its intended to be a hobby machine for a guy piddling around with it for a few hours on a weekend or in the evening. It would last and run for years and years like that. Maybe a lifetime. I got years of actual run time out of mine running way beyond what it was designed for. I literally made (and sold) tens of thousands of dollars worth of parts with mine. It paid for three other machines and their retrofits, and it made parts for them before I put it on the shelf.
