Tormach - first steel machined part Media

This is footage from last week, it's the very first part I made on the new mill! I wanted to try something new, something that would prove the awesomeness of this machine, so I quickly designed a widgimadinger from 1018 cold rolled steel. A pointless object, it's sole purpose was to remove a LOT of material using a small endmill and a very deep depth of cut. I used a 1/4" 4 flute endmill with 0.79" flute length, 0.75" DOC, 1" of stickout from the holder. It sliced through this part like butter, shaving it away layer by layer. The operation produced some really neat long and thin chips. The surface finish could have been a little nicer, and there was a little bit of chatter in some spots. I'm wondering how much nicer it would look if I machined the same thing in stainless or a nice steel like 4140, I've only turned that one but it always leaves a wonderful surface finish while 1018 almost always looks like crap.

Sooo, the machine is a success!! I would never have dreamed of doing a cut like that on my old Grizzly G8689 CNC conversion. And if I did, I would have stepped down 0.025" at a time and it would have taken forever. This part took 18 minutes.