On 15.11.11 19:30, perotter wrote: > Some DATRON mills are polymer-concrete. I think they are concrete with > a polymer used like rebar would be. I also think that all of the 1st > ones were concrete, but some are now granite.These mill are for high > speed milling.
When I visited ANCA, a couple of decades ago, they just called it "cement-filled plastic", I think. (Or perhaps that's just as much as I understood at the time.) But now their website also talks of polymer-concrete. So it's been in use in the CNC machine tool industry for at least 20 years, then. For us, it might be easier to build machines with a fabricated steel exterior, filled with epoxy-granite. The effect should be similar, I think. (The method seems to be popular with users of micro-mills, especially poured down the column.) Epoxy has another use in machine building, e.g. for installing ballscrew end bearings. The mounting holes can be bored oversize, the ballscrews aligned, and epoxy used to fix the bearings, in a more modern alternative to the babbit metal method used in the 1916 example in Kirk's OP. (Building a solid but imprecise base, then adding precision by later alignment, has a lot of appeal for a DIY machine.) Erik -- Leibowitz's Rule: When hammering a nail, you will never hit your finger if you hold the hammer with both hands. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ RSA(R) Conference 2012 Save $700 by Nov 18 Register now http://p.sf.net/sfu/rsa-sfdev2dev1 _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
