Any G0704 owners?

[bellyupfish]

What would you estimate to be the "largest piece" you could make on this mill?

[Forrest Addy]

Depends. It's an unanswerable question as posed.

You can narrow it down by looking at the piece your considering, the axis travel specs of the machine, and the tooling you propose to use. You can accomplish work on larger pieces by shifting them on the table.

[bellyupfish]

Yeh, it's a hard question to answer. Just trying to decide which mill I'd be happy with.

[dalee100]

Hi,

Two ways to look at it. Work envelope and table load. The work envelope is 6 7/8"x18 1/2"x13". The slide for the head, (z axis), can be flipped to gain up to 18" of daylight. That is the maximum size that can be worked without repositioning the work piece.

The other consideration is table loading. A G0704 has a maximum table load of 130lbs. That the total weight of fixtures and work piece.

Dalee

[RichR]

The work envelope is 6 7/8"x18 1/2"x13".

Close, you have to allow for half the tool diameter plus a smidge to gain access to the edges of your piece. For the height you have to allow for the stick out
of the tool.

[boslab]

I can fit a 6m long 4 x 6 girder on my mill, but it don't half stick out a lot!, I wasn't joking really!
Mark

[sasquatch]

Bellyup fish, i have the canadian version of that mill, and do not do large pieces on it, so no help there. Just want to say i've had the mill for 3 years, it is the model with the longer table,, and it works fine for me. never had any problem with it. (but then i do not push it hard either.)

[danlb]

To get the absolute largest work on there, you need to eliminate the vice and the large tool holders. A R8 collets to hold the mills/drills will add several inches of Z. A boring bar will easily use up 6 inches or more of Z.

The Y only has nearly 7 inches of travel, but you can rotate the work to get closer to 14 inches IF you leave a feature that you can measure from to re-establish your co-ordinates.

One of the advantages of the Bridgeport style mills is that the head moves in and out (ram head). This vastly increases the Y axis without re-fixtureing. It also swivels to the side so the cutter is not even over the table. This allows you to mill a huge part that is attached to the SIDE of the table or even on the floor.

Good luck on the search.

Dan

[GSWayne]

If you get one you will definitely want to reverse the slide for the head to get more vertical clearance. If you use a drill chuck and a vise you are limited to rather short drill bits unless you make that modification. I wonder why they don't ship them reversed? Coming from a Mini-mill type machine I am very happy with it, it is a huge improvement. If I was coming from a Bridgeport, I imagine I would be disappointed The original motor was marginal and eventually burned out and I replaced it. The newer motors are better. I have a 4" vise and 6" rotary table on it which seem like about the right sizes for this machine. I also installed a DRO system which make me much more productive. Just clamp a piece of stock in the vise and in a few minutes all the holes are exactly where you thought they should be. It is repeatable enough so you can drill your hole pattern then put a tap (or a mill for counter boring) in the chuck and then go back and tap (or counter bore) all the holes instead of switching between the tap and drill for each hole.