The Home Machinist!

I see now.

Since I bought my small CNC mill I have put a piece of aluminum tooling plate on top of the main table, so in case of an accident I would not damage the table.

On top of the tooling plate and using double sided tape, I attached a piece of polyethylene 1/8" thick plastic that I can cut into. That is my working surface.

I just learned another, better way from this guy that I bought a Clausing mill from.
This gentleman makes RC controlled racing miniature motorcycles.
Most parts are CNC machined. http://www.allevenrc.com/productshome.htm

He glues the material into a piece of 1/4" or thicker Plexiglas using crazy glue.
Then he clamps the Plexiglas with the material to the table as one piece.
Then one can over plunge by some .010" to .020" and cut the parts clean.

After that to remove the parts from the Plexiglas he uses a small propane torch to heat up the parts just enough to have the glue release it's hold.
Cleaning excess glue is done with Acetone.

I tried doing that and it works great.
I used to use double sided tape also holding the material, but if I use coolant of any type it will get into the tape and some times the material will come loose creating problems.

Gluing solves that problem.
This method can be used for holding hard to hold parts into a lathe also.

Mike;

Looks like you did a real nice job.

What software runs the machine?

Jim

_________________
Tool & Die Maker/Electrician, Retired 2007

So much to learn and so little time.

www.outbackmachineshop.com

Jim,
I'm using the trial version of Mach3 right now. I wanted to test everything out thouroughly before I forked out the $159 for the full version. I am very pleased with it's capabilities and the wizards for bolt circles and pocket milling etc. that came with it. It also came with a beta version of LazyCam which I am having great difficulty with. First I had to download a freeware program to convert autocad .dwg files to DXF to get LazyCam to open them (Lazycam doesn't seem to recognize autocad dxf files). Second problem is that I cannot get Lazycam to post G-code after I go to all the trouble to configure everything.

I guess that's why they call it the BETA version! But Mach3 is great. -Mike

Wow, way to make me envious.
I have been wanting to do something like that.
Looks great.
Jim

Jim,

I was a machinist (professionally) for a long time, now I work as a technician in an automotive supplier' QC lab. I took only basic electrical courses in community college almost 20 years ago. I do have a fully stocked machine shop out back and am comfortably self taught in AutoCad. My real hobby is restoring old machines.

The internet has been a godsend for me because there is so much information available for free (that used to be only available to tradespersons) that I could search almost daily and read data from suppliers, other HSMers, college libraries, and specific forums until I understood the steps, found some machine specific photos, and gathered my parts from Ebay and specific vendors.

This was the best (educational) learning experience I have ever had, bar none. If I can find a decent lathe to change to CNC, that may be next!

Go for it. You won't regret it. -Mike