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Kaden writes -
So I was hangin' with one of my hardware buds last night... he's my go-to guy for obscure and/or drool worthy toolage. Last time I visited he showed me a bunch of Orthopaedic surgery tools from the '80's that he'd scored from an estate sale in the interior. Cripes, Phil, ya wanna have nightmares?ACRA MILL PLUS - Link.Hold something called a Femur Reamer in your hands. That's all you need to do: give your subconscious a few hours to ferment the experience and you'll be waking up in a cold sweat at 30 minute intervals for the next 6 nights.
Last night the talk turned to 'rotary tools'. For the record, I do not view Dremels with the awe and reverence of most Makers. Anyway, 5 minutes into the chat, dude showed me one of these. Let me muck about with it, but wouldn't sell it to me, the bastard. I was into the Goog as soon as I got home, placed my order 28 seconds later. You will *never* find a more needful Dremel accessory: The build quality is strong-like-bull and smooth-like-silk, there's add-ons available to make it even better, and it's just screamin' for a DIY CNC bodge. The manufacturer has a bunch of other products that seem equally lustworthy.
Or, you could get off your make(r) duff and build a cnc table that'll hold a dremel, or laminate trimmer, and cut out the most fantastic things ever.
Hey, didn't some guy just win a nice CNC laser for doing just that!
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Cool, but its kinda useless without the drill press and Z-axis addons.
Also the guys caps lock seems to be broken.
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It's only a single axis mill. By the time you add on the Y and Z axis attachments you're up to $250.00. You might as well spend $50 more and get the more robust Harbor Freight micro mill. Machine yourself a bracket to attach your dremel to the micro mill and you're got yourself both a high-speed mill and a mill capable of cutting metal.
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Having the benefit of hands on experience with *both* the HF Mini mill and the Acra, I'm of the opinion that the Acra feels more like a quality piece of toolage than the HF product. Ability wise, you're comparing apples and oranges; if I wanted a mini mill, I'd buy a Taig rather than wagering cash money on Harbour Freights' kinda inconsistent quality control.
But that's me...I'm a sucker for hackable tools with intuitive learning curves.
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The Harbor Freight mills aren't too terrible. They're made by Sieg (the HF micro and mini mills are the Sieg X1 and X2 respectively). The Sieg mills are re-badged and sold by Grizzly, Micro-Mark, Homier, Cummins and, of course, Harbor Freight.
They're fairly popular and you can hack them with CNC conversion kits or PCB drilling spindles, etc.
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Congrats on the new tool Kaden! If I didn't know what it's like to have a Taig, I'd probably be tempted myself. Of course now I could build one of these...
I bet it would be more rigid/less runout if you used a foredom flex shaft instead of the dremel.
But any mill or lathe is better than no mill or lathe...
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Putting it together looks like a project in itself...
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Seems to me an X-Y table and the drill press kit sold by Sears (among others) for the Dremel would get you farther and cost about the same.
X-Y Table for $110 here.
Drill Press for dremel - $40 here.
Of course, with a little ingenuity and some modification, who knows what you'd have?
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