I use the micromark for facing acrylic and renshape on the Nomad. It leaves a fantastic surface finish. I am concerned about the intermittent off axis load it puts on the spindle so I take it slow and am conservative with the depth of cut.
Mark’s point about sharpening the tool is a good one. It’s easy to say, “just use a grinder”, but wrapping your head around all the relative angles is tough for a newbie. You-tube and google are your friend but as you stand there in front of the grinder it gets kinda boggling. I have been assured by a couple of grizzled machinists that hang out at Tech shop that it is a skill well worth having so I plug away. I was able to get a cutter that works just using a grinder and a diamond sharpening stick.
Now let’s see about that Amana thing with the inserts…
Three hours of being linked here and it has gone out of stock. Clearly we are all sitting around waiting for the ball to drop (or box to ship). Since we can’t do anything to make the machines arrive, we’re gathering up all the accouterments in anticipation.
Well, I did also buy one of the “32428 - TTS® SuperFly™ Cutter Kits” from Tormach. It was $118. Of course I did also buy the accessory to drive it (a new 440).
Kind of extravagant buying a Tormach just for surfacing your spoilboard
I’ve spent a disturbing percentage of the cost of your 440 on converting my vertical mill to CNC, although I may be going overboard using servos instead of steppers. I almost wish I had gone your route, but hindsight is always 20/20, and I’m not quite up to spending at your stratospheric level .
Nice toy though, I’m mildly (significantly) jealous.
I feel your pain.
If I could offer one possible way to take the “bite” out of buying a new 440… do what I did and also buy a SlantPro lathe at the same time.
With all the lathe tooling and accessories, the 440 looks almost free by comparison
The other thing that is nice is they show up packed in nice wooden crates, and so you have lots of material to make signs that say “Will mill for food”.
Just got an email from Little Machine Shop about their special of the week. Since it was appropriate to this topic, I thought I’d pass it along: Special of the Week - LittleMachineShop.com
Excellent for the SO3. Alas, too big - shank wise - for the Nomad.
For surface finish I’ll take a fly cutter over surface mill any day.
Now let’s see about that Amana thing with the inserts…
If one has an SO3 and the budget, I would look at the related models that have a larger diameter and shank. My analysis says that one that is 2.5" in diameter will work really well in an SO3.
When I surfaced my mdf spoil board on SO3 w/ 3/4" straight router bit I had slight ridging only between 12:30 and 2:15 as on a clockface. How does one corolate the ridge pattern to what vertical is skewed ? I actually sanded the ridges off in 5 seconds but I know I’m off . I didn’t want to just play with the Z axis plate and router mount and really screw it up. I guess the “excellent representation of skew” I can see, but how does the wedge pattern of ridges tell me which direction ? need more coffeee. thanks didn’t realize his reply was from a year ago, bummer…
You can tell from looking at the cut, but that only really gets you to knowing which direction, not how much, and it’s a lot of trial and error. Look up mill tramming on youtube. There are a lot of examples of doing it with an indicator and special tools, but the same general process basically work with a properly shaped stiff wire stuck in the collet (I’ve seen the video, can’t seem to find it right now). Once you’ve seen how it’s done with an indicator/holder, should get you going in the right direction.
I just got a dial indicator from H F but it is only .02 in precision. Granted thats better than my eyesight, thanks Mike I’ll give youtube a look. I haven’t looked for “mill tramming” dang that terminology. As I’ve said to others “you (I) can do it”
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