Hi Joe, I don't mind the questions at all. I am completely a hobbyist so no pressures or expectations around making money for a business or training others. I don't use it often enough to have muscle memory so each time I go back, I have to figure things out a bit again. From my limited experience, I say limited because I can tell many of you have used your LOM for much longer than I have, I found the CNC version to give me more accurate milling and it was faster. If I was as proficient as many of you seem to be, I may not have that view. When I figured out how the software worked, I was able to do some things that were a bit unique and even did some work directly in the Gcode. Because my professional life is in IT, half the fun was in figuring things out.
I posted many months ago about my custom gazebo project that I was hoping to finish this year but I got side tracked on other projects this year so hopefully I'll finish it up next year. The balusters on my lower rails I did with my 1500. I made about 50 of these balusters before I got the CNC version. They were all about 3 feet tall and I started with 4x4 redwood posts. I did the traditional rope twist, barely twist and a couple flute designs. I got good at doing them quickly. When I got my CNC version, I used it to do the large 6x6 posts (7 feel long) and about 150 smaller spindles for the upper rail. I also used it to make the balusters for the final bottom rail. I still have about 100 more smaller spindles to make for the upper rail over the entry and the second tier. Here are some links to the pictures I posted previously: Lower rails and Posts: https://groups.google.com/forum/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer#!searchin/legacy-ornamental-mills/gazebo%7Csort:date/legacy-ornamental-mills/m9RAH_NZdus/qq8oFMJ3BQAJ Upper rails: https://groups.google.com/forum/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer#!searchin/legacy-ornamental-mills/gazebo%7Csort:date/legacy-ornamental-mills/YQRK74hviVw/IgiSIeJJAgAJ The spindle software that came from Legacy was pretty simple and easy to use so there isn't too much training on that. The tricky part, for me, was getting Mach 3 to talk to the CNC. That took time but now that it is working, I should be good to go for a while. The CNC LOM is not supported from Legacy but I took one of their CNC classes which helped me a ton. If I was doing a lot of turnings for a business, these LOM CNCs are a good value compared to what it costs to buy new. Having used both, I definitely prefer the CNC LOM. If you were to really look closely at my work, the CNC spindles and balusters are much more accurate. One of the problems though is if a mistake is made on the CNC, it is much harder (usually have to scrap and start over) to correct then a mistake on the manual LOM. This is likely more of an issue with my lack of experience though. More than happy to help with any other questions. Feel free to email me directly if you want to get into more details. Thanks, Tracy On Mon, Dec 9, 2019 at 1:14 PM 'joe biunno' via Legacy Ornamental Mills < legacy-ornamental-mills@googlegroups.com> wrote: > Hi Tracy!... thanks for the reply... you are just the person to shed some > light on my question(s)… hopefully I will ask a question or two that you > can answer that does not put you in a position of answering a personal or > business question in a public forum, such as this group... vague, > non-specific answers work also... the Legacy CNC, if you are using it for a > billable-type job, would you say it is paying you a proper amount, on a per > hour basis?... if you were to do a single piece, would there be a savings > of time if you did that one piece on a manual Legacy as compared to doing > the same piece on a CNC Legacy?... there are times I will take on a job > that pushes the limits of what we can do here in the shop and there is a > bit of a learning curve taking place... as a business, I have learned to > accept the fact that we might not make as much as I might think, on a per > hour basis, but I justify taking on the job in the first place by saying > that if we ever get another, similar-type job, we will have the experience > to do it and make what we should be making... this is the catch 22 of going > to CNC... can any business afford to go through the learning curve?... now, > if it is more of a hobby setting, or second income situation, and you feel > like spending some of the kid's inheritance money, well then I say go for > it, LOL!... learn the computer aspect of CNCing and have some fun with > it!... for the record, I have the Legacy CNC package that originally came > with the 1800 that I purchased, used... it was never installed and the > machine was set up as a manual machine... I combined it with a 1500, to > make a very large capacity Legacy mill, but still kept the CNC equipment in > its wrappings, as I wanted the people in the shop to run the machine, and > they were not capable of learning to use a computer for the task at hand... > anyway, thanks for your time... might have another question or two later... > my best... Joe B. > > >>> -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Legacy Ornamental Mills" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to legacy-ornamental-mills+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > To view this discussion on the web visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/legacy-ornamental-mills/d0de9f0e-9b0f-49db-bf5f-a0f681261cc4%40googlegroups.com > <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/legacy-ornamental-mills/d0de9f0e-9b0f-49db-bf5f-a0f681261cc4%40googlegroups.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer> > . > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Legacy Ornamental Mills" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to legacy-ornamental-mills+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/legacy-ornamental-mills/CAPnmKgDQTJO0MOiuHQAfDu%3DU33KBxF2kWu4r7V2X3fzQD457GA%40mail.gmail.com.
