Will_c
Well-known member
On the Bridgeport CNC, it only has around 125mm of Z travel in the quill, which is fine for most parts, but can become an issue with drills and longer reach tooling.That's very interesting point Will.
I haven't got one...yet but heard some good stuff about them. Very valid point about lack of travel.
Was merely highlighting the fact that it's very realistic for a hobbyist to now have a mini CNC in a bedroom plus 3d printer etc. interesting times. Where will be in 10 years time?
Luckily, the Bridgeport has 250mm+ of travel in the knee, so you can adjust the workpiece height to suit the available quill travel.
If you're mainly making small RC parts, it could be quite suitable, but as soon as you start cutting harder materials and metals, I think the lack of rigidity would make a big difference.
The next step up is something like a Tormach CNC, but I think these are quite expensive for what you actually get.
I ended up wanting a small milling machine that I could fit into a normal garage/workshop, so I found a UK company that was making mechanical frame kits for them at the time. I then had to source all the electrical components and configure the control system myself. It works well, but it does take a lot of time and effort to build and set everything up and it's still not fully complete.