Garage Shop Pt. 2: CNC Mill
Well it has been done! Probably one of the most important advances in my life. I think there are a few very special occasions in a person’s life, from birth, to marriage, etc, and on that list is when a human acquires their first CNC mill.
I can now say with confidence that I will never have as long of a period without access to a CNC mill ever again. My dry spell of not using coolant and cutting chips is now over!
On to the story because this one was a crazy adventure.
About 3 weeks ago, Ethan messaged me a Craigslist link because he thought it was funny that a company was selling basically the same model of mill as the Miters CNC (DynaMyte 1007). This one happened to be a DynaMyte 2900. Unfortunately it was near Ethan (6 hours away from where I currently live) and the price was just okay. I replied with a “Haha wouldn’t that be nice to have” and moved on with life. Then last week, Ethan messaged me the link again. They’d dropped the price of the mill significantly and I just couldn’t handle it. Ethan set up a meeting of the next day to inspect, and I scrambled to make a plan.
As for inspection, Ethan showed up the next day and Facetimed me to show me the mill remotely. Turns out the company that was selling this needed it gone by that Sunday because they had new machines coming in into that floor space on the next Monday. The mill was in great condition: they only used it to cut plastic they claim, and was fully functioning since it was being used for production before. It even had the manual that was older than me!
To summarize why I like a machine like this over say a modern Tormach: most importantly I am familiar with maintaining the machine. The MITERS CNC was the first CNC I learned to use and I spent hundreds of hours on it. 2nd, it has brushless servos instead of steppers. It has a working ATC, flood coolant, and an enclosure and since its used is much cheaper. It’s also about the biggest mill I could reasonably fit in my family’s garage.
Inspection looked good and I confirmed with Ethan it was time. I was now the owner of the mill. Only one problem: how to move it in less than a week.
My best friend from high school, Matt, offered to do the drive since he’s good at driving and has done crazy trips before. He rented a Home Depot F250 and trailer and left at 6am on Saturday. He made it up to the shop where he met up with Ethan and the machine shop guys around 1:15. Unfortunately the plan to use the shop’s forklift to put the mill in the trailer didn’t work and so improvisation happened (as usual with moving 1200lbs of cast iron and electronics)
2 hours, a broken Harbor Freight dolly, some sketchy ramps, a pallet jack, and the worlds sketchiest pallet I’ve ever seen later, and the mill was loaded. I would have preferred a better pallet situation but eh I wasn’t there and I can’t complain.
Matt made the insane trek back home and showed up in my driveway at 11:30 that night. We ordered him a Lyft home and I got ready for the great unloading the next day.
Bright and early Sunday morning, this was the state of the mill post drive. Fortunately nothing seemed to be damaged in the drive/collapse of the pallet but will find out when I eventually am able to power it on.
My yoyo, robot, FRC friend, Jeremy showed up bright and early as well and we got to work. Matt wasn’t feeling well after the insane drive the day before so we made do without.
Unfortunately with the limited moving crew I didn’t get many pictures but I’ll do my best to summarize. First thing we did was lift the mill from the side of the trailer with a borrowed engine hoist and put some sturdy 2x4s and 4x4s to make the mill slightly more vertical.
Next came the unnecessary but stupid step. My family had a red astro van that died about 8 years ago? ish. It has a blown head gasket and the engine needs to be swapped so it really should just be scrapped. Anyway on its last trip many years ago, it died down the street from my house. Some neighbors were kind enough to push it down the street for my mom and it ended up settling right in the middle of our driveway where its sat for ages. Problem is that theres’s no space on either side to back a trailer up to the garage for unloading the mill. And so Jeremy and I reinflated the D-shaped tires, with the help of a neighbor pushed it down the driveway to a spot along the curb, and later pushed it back into the driveway (but to the side this time as opposed to the center). I’ll continue to bug my mom about scrapping it in the future.
Anyway, with the stupid van out of the way we were able to back the trailer right up to the garage. Then using a come along, and some prybars to help reduce friction, we managed to scoot the entire pallet/mill contraption to the edge of the trailer.
We then were able to slide the engine hoist behind the trailer wheel, lift the mill into the air and drive the trailer out from under it.
We lowered the mill onto a dolly and rolled it to its new place in the garage.
We used the engine hoist to lift it onto its stand where it sits today!
Luckily everything went roughly as planned in the unloading phase. I had also bought a bunch of 3/4” schedule 40 PVC tubes for the Egyptian method of moving (roll the mill around the trailer/garage on tubes) just in case.
Unfortunately I haven’t been able to turn it on yet because my house doesn’t have a single 240V outlet! Luckily our breakers can be swapped out for tandem breakers, and I think we can run the new 240V line through our house’s crawl space to the garage so all I need is to convey this to an electrician so they can do it up to code!
