Buying CNC mini-mill

[ljhmc]

Hello, hello.

I am very interested in buying a CNC Milling Machine, so after a long look on the net i was lucky enought to find this site. I have started a new company and we take standard pool balls and mill them out to fit electronics into them. I have a machine shop do the work for us, however it is at 100 pool balls at a time or a big expence. We are thinking to get a small milling machine to do quick orders to save turn around time and cost.

My question is what should we look for to mill out these resin pool balls? We have no idea where to start. I don't want the machine shop to think we are trying to do our own work or we would speak to them. They do good work for us. However ecah time a customer wants a special pool ball we have to stop and get it to the machine shop and hope they can get to it in less than two weeks.

Any help out there?

Thank you so much

 

[MitchJi]

Hi Jag,

To do some basic milling work I use end mills in the drill press (few $ each) and a cross slide vise ($49 ouch)...

Would you mind posting a link to an end mill description, hopefully with a photo?

Here's a thread with a very similar topic (maybe it should be moved out of GD before it dies?):

Small CNC mill recomendations?

http://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=13949

 

[ljhmc]

I think it's time to apoligize for my question. After a long day of phone calls and questions it time just to ask, what is the best table top CNC machine out there and can i get them used? If not where is the best place to get a machine to meet the needs we have?

Thank you

LJHMC

 

[kfong]

Check out our micromill, it should do what you want. For larger projects the mini-mill or the bigger X3 can also me converted to a CNC machine.
http://www.embeddedtronics.com/micromill.html

Last page shows the size comparison of our modified micromill and the X3
http://www.embeddedtronics.com/x3.html

Kin

Hello, hello.

I am very interested in buying a CNC Milling Machine, so after a long look on the net i was lucky enought to find this site. I have started a new company and we take standard pool balls and mill them out to fit electronics into them. I have a machine shop do the work for us, however it is at 100 pool balls at a time or a big expence. We are thinking to get a small milling machine to do quick orders to save turn around time and cost.

My question is what should we look for to mill out these resin pool balls? We have no idea where to start. I don't want the machine shop to think we are trying to do our own work or we would speak to them. They do good work for us. However ecah time a customer wants a special pool ball we have to stop and get it to the machine shop and hope they can get to it in less than two weeks.

Any help out there?

Thank you so much