Baltazar's workshop blog

My workshop

cncworkshop — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 14:57:00 +0000

I thought I would put in a picture of our workshop. Sorry about the bad photo quality. My Nokia E65 does not really do good pictures, but it’s better than nothing. But I did do a cool panorama picture .

The workshop is about 160 square meters inside of the city limits of Stockholm. We are about 5 guys sharing it as workshop and 3 people just storing bikes and boxes. This is part is my space just down the stairs. My CNC mill on the left with a touch screen and the computer on the shelf behind. Bellow is my storage of plastic and metal sheets. A small workbench and next to it is all the aluminum materials. On the Wall on both sides are shelves with tools and materials. Some smaller machines and finally a tool cabinet. I would have like to buy one of those high quality ones but the cost made me go for this cheep one for 995kr from Bauhaus.

Other stuff in the workshop is:

One larger manual mill (ZX45) with a DRO from Duabhuset

A medium sized Lathe (CQ 6230A) also from Duabhuset

We also have a TIG, MIG and a Plasma cutter

Sheet-metal roller/cutter/folder.

Bandsaw that will do metal as well as wood and plastics.

We bought this old wood bandsaw and I put a new 1,5Kw motor in the machine. I hooked it up to the frequency inverter to be able to adjust the speed of the saw-blade for different materials. I also built the guide for cutting straight out of alu.

We also have the regular stuff such as high pressure washer, air compressor, degreaser, drills, grinders and so on. We have most of the stuff you would need for a hobby workshop. It’s good to have hobby workshop together as you can share a lot of tools and machines as well as knowledge and an extra hand when you need it. The downside it’s almost always a mess.

Cleaning of transport grease of your new machine

cncworkshop — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 14:09:00 +0000

Well I must confess I have been really bad at updating this site. Time to put some things on here.

Well the first thing you have to do is to clean off you new machine. The machine is delivered with a lot of yellow gunk on it. Transport grease. It’s hell to get off but it’s good because it keeps your machine from rusting. The longer it’s stored in the warehouse the harder it is to get of. And mine was probably put in storage some time in the 40′s.

For cleaning I would recommend paraffin oil. Very effective for cleaning off grease.
In Sweden it’s sold as lamp oil “Lampolja” about 49kr for a bottle at Jula.
Ethanol or (T-sprit/T-röd) is always good to have around but this grease is does not easily come off with this.

We have one off these degreasers in the workshop but some parts are not easy to unmount from the machine for cleaning.

I always wondered how much good the degreasing flouid does for those tires around there.

Well last bud definitely not least DO NOT FORGET to put oil and grease on your machine after cleaning or it will rust.

Purchase of Bench top mill

cncworkshop — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 23:21:00 +0000

My first purchase was a Optimum BF20L Vario that I’m going to convert to CNC use. I went for the little wider L variant of the BF20, a choice I’m quite happy about now. But the table could be a bit wider in the Y. I also bought the CNC addon kit (357 0020) for the machine. I didn’t buy the ball screw kit for the machine as I figured I could always ad this later.

I ordered the machine from a local dealer here in Stockholm http://www.automaticproduction.se/. Really nice and helpful guys.

The machine came in large crate but the delivery guys had no problem taking it down to the workshop. We had to be 3 guys to get it out of the crate though.

I found out reading on http://www.cnczone.com/ that the machine is in fact manufactured in China. After hearing some story’s about other machines in the same class I found this machine to be the best choice at the time. Even though the manufacturing is in China the Quality is managed by germans on site and in Germany. Having compared the machine to the ZX45 a RF45 clone the BF20 seams to be off much higher quality.

Though I would have preferred a machine with a MK3 or ISO30 instead of the MK2 spindle. I did find a page with a guy (Anders Wallin) here in Sweden did an upgrade to both the motor and spindle to MK3.

The DSMD25V machine from (http://www.vdb.se/) would have been a cheaper choice but I only found out about it 2 months after I already had bought my machine. As you see the machines are very similar and with all likely hood manufactured from the same design. Though I must say that support and manuals from Optimum has been exemplary and it would probably be much easier to get spare parts if needed for the Optimum machines. An other factor is the availability of factory made ball screws.

Another choice would have been the X3 or Super X3 from Sieg Industries (http://www.siegind.com/) also sold in the states by harbour fright. This machine seams to be a popular choice in the State’s while Europeans and especially Swed’s seam to prefer the BF20 as local availability is better. One of the downsides to the X3 or Super X3 is the Z box column is a open box design. This makes the machine just slightly more unstable. I don’t think this a large issue at this size though.

The Super X3 is also available fully CNC converted or as a kit from Syil (syil.com.cn). After having done some research I would personally have preferred the kit from CNC Fusion mostly because they are much more clear about what is included in there kits.

Another choice was to go with the RF45 machines or clones such as the ZX45. The downside is the machanical gearbox and heavy spindle head. This would require you to convert the pinion for Z axis in the CNC machine.

For double the price of the BF 20 the BF30 Vario is available from Optimum. It even comes in a ISO 30 variant. I really like this machine but it’s a bit pricy for it’s size. It does feel like a cross between the RF45 and BF20.

Still I’m quite happy about my choise of the Optimum BF20L Vario. With a little more money I may have gone for a BF30 but I could just as well have gone for an old Bridgeport.