Best Mill To Cnc In 2016

J

Jbar

H-M Supporter - Gold Member
H-M Supporter Gold Member
Joined
Sep 24, 2014
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After doing considerable research I've concluded the Grizzly G0704 has been the best candidate to CNC for hobby machinist in the last 4-5 years. However, I've noticed most of the articles and videos are 3-4 years old. Here in late 2015, is there a better mill to CNC given what you guys know today? My fear is I go buy/CNC a G0704 and find out a few months down the road there's a new mill of technology I hadn't read about.

And if you were to CNC a mill today would you go with Mach 3 or the newer Mach 4?
 
Matt (Precision Matthews) has one of his slightly larger mills already set up with CNC. It includes a longer quill stroke, one of the restrictions (1.7") of the PM25, but not the belt drive. I suspect it could be arranged, however.
 
Both the Pm25 and G0704 have a max RPM of 2250, thats really slow for cutting aluminum, small endmills or doing any type of 3d surfacing. I would try and find something with more RPM or plan on adding an auxiliary spindle.

Kevin
 
There is mods out there for both machines to replace the bearings and get the rpm up in the mid to high 3000 range. If you look on CNC zone still a lot of conversions going on those 2 mills. It all depends on what you are looking to do. It is just as the size of the mill goes up, the cost of the conversion goes up.
 
09kevin said:
Both the Pm25 and G0704 have a max RPM of 2250, thats really slow for cutting aluminum, small endmills or doing any type of 3d surfacing. I would try and find something with more RPM or plan on adding an auxiliary spindle.

Kevin
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I agree on the slow speeds of PM25/G0704. The G0463 and G0619's are the only 2000 RPM, so not really better than the 0704 except heavier - bonus.
 
I think that kd4gij has it right for higher RPMs. I did a spindle motor upgrade, put on the high-speed low vibration belts, polished & balanced dual-pully shiv and bearings. I went from a crappy cast Iron spindle motor to a high end WEG motor and push to 4K-4500 rpm's (tops I am happy with for now) and it sounds far better than it did at the original max of 1500RPM. Very smooth and best upgrade I did yet on the 3:1 unit I own. It was not all that expensive either.
 
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