I've had a Tormach PCNC1100 Series II for over 8 years now, in the UK. I've made hundreds of parts for work, and my traction engines, in all sorts of materials; plastics, aluminium, cast iron, steel, stainless steel, silver steel (aka W1) and gauge plate (aka O1) with over a thousand hours of running.
Most of the (few) issues I've had with the machine have been electrical/computing. There have been some intermittent spindle issues. These have been traced to poor crimps, a dry joint, and a very poor copy of an industrial connector not making reliable contact. My original PC (not from Tormach) was problematic. I also had some problems with Mach3, particularly in 4th axis applications. Pathpilot seems much better, albeit slightly odd when working in metric units.
I imported into the UK via a shipping agent; I think the total cost was around £2000. About two thirds of that was VAT (government sales tax) and import duty. The single most expensive part of the shipping was a truck from Liverpool to Cambridge.
I bought the mill, 4th axis and some tooling. I made my own stand and tray with built-in coolant. This was partly due to cost, partly because the Tormach stand wouldn't fit in the space available, and because at the time the stand was only available with a 110V 60Hz pump.
Subsequently I've bought more tooling, I use the TTS system on my Bridgeport as well, a power drawbar, not fitted yet
, and an electronic tool height setter.
On the Tormach I tend to use relatively small cutters (mostly <10mm) and run fast with high feedrates. A fundamental part of the equation is CAD/CAM. I design in 3D CAD, and was doing so before I bought the Tormach. If a part is going to made on the CNC mill it helps to orient the part correctly in CAD to start with, rather than faff about in the CAM program. The way I design parts is influenced by the cutters I will use, for instance when setting internal radii or creating narrow channels that need to be milled out. I program the Tormach exclusively in metric for convenience, even though a lot of the traction engine parts are, and are designed in, imperial.
The steepest learning curve for me was fixtures and initial stock size, ie, how am I going to hold this part, what am I going to use for work references and how am I going to set them, what stock will be sacrificial, and so on.
Naturally I can't show most of the work related parts, but here is the first ever part I made, it's a former for a custom differential choke that holds the winding wire equally spaced around the cores:
And this is the internals of an inverter heatsink, about 300mm square, machined a few weeks after I started from knowing diddly squat about CNC:
It was a pretty intense learning period though, with a lot of sleepless nights!
For my traction engines I've made all the wheel spokes, simple but tedious, as well as assorted gears, particularly bevel gears:
And complete sets for the differentials:
When I made the steering worm, I had a lot of issues with CAM and Mach3. In the end the G-code was hand written, and I used inverse time feedrates (G93):
The Tormach also allows me to make tooling I couldn't do otherwise, like spline cutters:
A couple of thoughts while I remember. Getting the electronic tool setter and sorting out tool tables was one of the best things I did. I use a program called NCPlot to look at the G-code I use. Experience has shown that my CAM program doesn't always generate G-code that reflects the toolpath it thinks it is using, which could be embarrassing. NCPlot also provides a useful view of maximum excursions in each axis to check there are no rogue lines of code that will drive the cutter to where it shouldn't be.
I have recently fitted a high speed spindle, up tp 24000rpm:
I've used this both for work (a heatsink with a lot of narrow and deep internal fins) and for making bevel gears for the traction engine governors:
Overall I'm very pleased with my Tormach and wouldn't be without it. Of course there's a strong feeling within the UK modelling world that CNC is 'cheating' but do I give a 4X?
Having the Tormach has changed the way I design and machine parts, allowing me to save time, get a better part, and make parts I couldn't do any other way.
If the machine is good for me it should be great for a company.
Andrew