Machines

Once you’ve scanned in or modeled a 3D form, these are the machines that turn it into a real physical object. Milling machines and routers do this subtractively; a block of material is held tightly to the bed of the machine or in a fixture, then rotary cutting tools systematically remove everything that isn’t your part. These tools come in various sizes and types: the most important distinction is between “ball end” tools that are rounded at the tip and “flat end” tools that are not. The former…

A manual mill doesn’t require any software, and it’s simple to use; you just crank the handles and watch the calibration dials until you’ve cut away all the extra material. All manual mills come with hand crank handles and dials calibrated in .001″ increments. There are two choices for motors and two choices for bed size. You can get the manual shortbed model 2018 or the manual longbed 2019 . You can get the ⅕ hp motor that’s only offered on the manual mills; or you can pay $125 more (before…

If you wish to adapt a Taig Mill to some other CNC system, you can buy a CNC-Ready Taig Mill without the controllers, motors, and cables that Taig sells with its CNC Mills. The “CNC-Ready” Mills ( Models 2018 , 2019 , or 5019 ) are factory assembled, with ball bearings in lead screw bearing blocks, adjustable leadscrew nuts, couplers, and Nema 23 motor mounts. This unit does not include stepper motors or a control system. Handcranks are available, but they aren’t very useful for milling…

Fully CNC-equipped Mills have 200 oz. in stepper motors on the x, y, and z axes with integral high resolution encoders; Mach3 control software, and a sophisticated bi-level chopper driver capable of 30 inch per minute speeds in single-axis rapid traverse mode. There’s also a Mill with a Digital Servo Lock System ( DSLS ). CNC Mills include stepper motors, cables, and a controller box, but not a computer. You can use any Windows PC running XP or later. If the computer does not have a parallel…

An excellent choice for jewelers and miniature model makers, the Sherline 5400 CNC Mill is equipped with a powerful ¼ HP variable-speed DC spindle motor for smooth speed changes on the fly. The control box comes ready to hook up four stepper motors, if you decide to upgrade with the 4th axis rotary table. Sherline supplies their own version of the open-source Linux CNC (EMC) software, which works on Linux operating systems. This allows you to run the mill and avoid the necessity of having…

Sherline is best-known for their lathes which, though small, are well engineered and supported with a full range of accessories. The 3.5″ × 8″ 4000 is the smallest of them, suitable for jewelry, watchmaking and miniature modelmaking. The longer 4400 lathe has a 3.5″ swing and 17″ between centers, making it useful for small to medium-sized projects. Like all Sherline’s machines, these lathes are available in metric or Imperial versions. The metric version of the 4000 is called the 410…

Roland Digital Group made a series of machines for capturing surface data from objects and then carving them from solid material. This is the largest of these units which combine a touch-probe scanner and light-duty milling machine in one integrated package with a working envelope of 8″ × 6″ × 2⅜″ (for the MDX-20). On this machine, a fine and sensitive piezo-electric scanning needle records even delicate objects without damage or distortion and stores them as polygon mesh surface data which can…

Sherline miniature machine tools have long been prized by modelmakers, hobbyists, and jewelers for their precision, performance, and low prices which they have maintained although continuing to manufacture in the USA. Boasting a large range of accessories in hard-to-find small sizes, they have brought accurate machining within the range of thousands with neither the space nor funds to contemplate this before. The Sherline catalog features an enormous range of products, some hard to find…