[TowerTalk] Long shank U-Bolts

[Charles Gallo]

Yes and no. Those CNC routers are good for thin-ish cuts in fairly soft material (aluminum is soft), but when you have to cut steel, or have to do large diameter work, they just don't have the rigidity. Not to say they don't have their place. The compliment each other quite well. Currently wishing I had a nice 36x24 (at least) CNC router to do some work on some 3/16 sheet

--  
73 de KG2V
Charlie

> On Jan 3, 2015, at 4:09 PM, Richard (Rick) Karlquist <richard at karlquist.com> wrote:
> 
>> On 1/3/2015 12:05 AM, Roger (K8RI) on TT wrote:
>> On 1/1/2015 8:56 PM, Doug Renwick wrote:
>> 
>> I realize not everyone has a mill, but they are relatively cheap on the
>> used market. About 40 years ago, the company I worked for purchased 2 of
>> the same model used that I have, but theirs were strictly mechanical
> 
> Does this kind of "big iron" still make sense for the home builder
> now that lightweight CNC routers are available?  I see a lot of these
> machines shown at Maker Faire's.  They are far more versatile than
> a traditional mill because they can trace out any size or shape hole.
> With conventional equipment, you go broke buying drill bits and milling
> bits for each hole size.  The CNC also replaces a Rotex turret punch
> with no punches to buy.  Until I retired I had access to a full machine
> shop at work with antique Bridgeport mills, etc and these were very tedious to make large quantities of parts on.  Errors were hard to prevent too.
> 
> Rick N6RK
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