Taig CNC Machine Usage

I want to do a little bit of a poll. Out of the people who have been trained on the CNC machine, who is still using it? What have you been making? I want to make projects on the machine more visible to help get a better sense of how to use and improve the training. I am here to help.

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I wanted to illustrate what went from a little side, slow-burn project to a rush job.

Most years I participate at Siggraph for my job. I’m part of a larger organization, but we wanted something to separate out our little ‘cool group’ from the rest of the big org.

I decided to make little badges we can wear with our product’s logo on it. But I didn’t want just a simple button, I wanted a 3d manifestation of our logo.

Over many months, I ended up learning how to mill this little guy out.

That got cast, and I made plastic versions and painted them… lots of them…

Then, the weekend before Siggraph came, and it turns out the awards for the honor we give every year didn’t arrive in the mail. They rushed to me and asked ‘what can you make us?’

Well, I had a design, why not modify it a little and go with it. I knew it would work, just a matter of some adjustments. I decided to scale up the little buttons into medals (similar to finisher medals in a marathon).

I had a hell of a time figuring out how to mount the thing, the stock wouldn’t fit in any jaws nicely, so I notched a ring near the bottom of my stock on the manual mill to give me something to hold on to.

Once mounted, I used the clever indicator in the spindle setup to find my center. This was awesome, I found the center quickly because of tools made by others.

Within the same day they asked, I had the master machined!

I took it off the mill, cut it from the blank and cast the mold. A couple days later, I had all the medals in plastic (if I could have made them fast enough, they would have been nice as metal… but limitations)

Moments before the event happened, the original awards arrived, but we gave the winners both. Here they are at the ceremony.

I love that machine and look forward to making mechanical things next.

PS: if you ever want to learn a LOT about CAM, try doing lettering on a curved surface :stuck_out_tongue:

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Here are some of my projects over the past year:

Eccentric spacers for wheel tensioning on my bottler

Mounting brackets for aluminum extrusions (aluminum and UHMW)



Aluminum bracket for pre-tension spring (also for bottler)

The delrin bushing was made on our lathe!


Strike plate for heritage wood door (I wanted the patina)

Punching keyed holes in plastic enclosures


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I’ve not had a chance to use the mill in the last little while. It’s a great machine and I have plans for a few projects.

Below is list of things that I’ve made on the Taig. I think one writeup is missing which was an embossing plate that I used for embossing paper.

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It’s been quite a while since I’ve machined anything on the Taig since my first few practise parts:

I don’t have any projects immediately pressing, but not having my own set of bits and being unsure of the status of the shared ones has been a bit of a hurdle in the past. Maybe a recommendation for a ‘starter kit’?

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I want to use it, but every time I’ve gone in all the parts are locked away. I guess I need a refresher.

Are you confusing the Grizzly with the Taig? Most of the parts for the Taig are on the shelves.

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