Hi, does anybody know of small, desktop size CNC machine for milling stones? Would it not be a matter of milling tip, such as special metal alloy the milling tip is made of, and speed at which it is moved and rotated?
Hi Yuriy,
Definitely Hard Diamond/Silicon Carbide/Carborundum Tools or coatings.
And coolant flowing while machining. Also prevent the abrasive shavings/slurry from getting inside guide rails, rollers, linear bearings, ball screws, etc.
We did some ceramic in our haas mill. But we had a separate water bath that
isolated EVERYTHING from the machines sump.
Just regarding the endmills; I bought a couple from 2linc.com (they call them “armor mills”) and they worked good on river stones (engraved words on the stones for presents). They have a speeds and feeds page, but I ended up going much slower because the workholding was not great (wax). http://www.2linc.com/endmills_armor_mill.htm
Thank You. It looks like all these machines are huge, commercial size robots. They are certainly great; though, outside of my scale for now. I am looking for a desktop size, portable. Milling is fun! 
I just thought of a solution - a small bath tub could be built for a piece of stone, and I am talking of milling small stones the size of a big coin, to hold water, so that the stone would be submerged in water, while milled, the bath would be mounted directly on the milling bed. This makes me think of two problems though - 1) the milling tip would splash water all around, and/or 2) if the bed was moving instead of the tip, water would spill with the movement, or both. These are likely to happen; though, I could work around with it. That said, even simple CNC machine could work on stones. This is only theory for, I do not know of any small CNC machine. Thanks again.
This topic was automatically closed 365 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.