Hey guys I love the micro but I was wondering if you could offer a base made out of billet with T-Slot Tracks cut in to help with hold down.

T-Slots are nice, but how would you feel about a regularly spaced pattern of tapped holes? The micRo base could be machined by the micRo while attached to the micRo. So, you could make any pattern you want, but 1" by 1" spacing of 10-32 tapped holes seems to work for a lot of people. Heck, you could also just make a new set of mounting holes for each new project that requires it.

brilliant. elegant.

Yep, that's how we're going to supply them. We only machine the critical attachments but provide the files for your clamping holes. We figured there'd be many scenarios and that the community could share the patterns with each other based on the intended use.

The grid of holes approach is much better than t-slots in my opinion.

I have a small fixture plate for my micro mill that uses this approach but alternates rows of threaded and unthreaded holes every .5" This gives the 1" x 1" spacing of threaded holes you mention above and also a similar grid of unthreaded holes used to place dowel pins. The pins are great for locating a part but also can be used with pairs of wedges to secure a part.

One cool thing about the threaded holes is using a socket head cap screw (SHCS) as the fulcrum for a strap clamp. You screw the SHCS in to match the height of the workpiece and bolt a strap clamp across the SHCS head and the workpiece, securing the clamp with another SHCS in the next threaded hole. The SHCS fulcrum is much easier than using the typical stepped blocks.

Or get fancy and add a threaded hole to the clamps like these:



Here's an example of a mini-mill fixture plate:
http://www.fignoggle.com/plans/figNoggle_X2FixturePlate.pdf

I am going to go with tapped holes in mine as well. I am planning on just strapping the micro to a bit of scrap wood and having it at least drill the holes itself, and if there is enough torque available in the spindle I was going to try to get it to tap itself as well.

Definitely not. It's not that kind of spindle....(actually, I can't even tap on my 2hp mill, unless I convert the spindle motor to a DC motor).

If you're using a wood base why not try threaded inserts for the clamping grid? Let MicRo drill the holes then screw the inserts in by hand.



http://www.woodcraft.com/family.aspx?FamilyID=1048

I like the look of the threaded holes as well. It also looks like the clamps would be fun to mill. What thickness are they, like 3/8"?

The base of my micro is made out of .5" aluminium plate. I would clamp the entire machine down to the scrap lumber so I don't drill into my nice workbench when I punch through the aluminium.

Sorry, I misunderstood your comment about wood. Rigid tapping is difficult even on large CNC machines. Beyond having adequate torque you'd need an encoder on the spindle to sync rotation with Z travel. You'd probably be better off with a tapping head on your drill press though I have seen people tap through holes in 0.5 aluminum with a cordless drill -- not for me but that is a lot of holes to tap by hand!

Not quite, probably 8mm thick but done in steel.

There's also something called "thread milling" that is definitely worth a look. I haven't done it myself (yet, I'm scared of breaking the bit) but it looks like it gives you ultimate ease, control, repetition, and one thread-mill will work with lots of different diameters.

There are at least 2 different variants of thread mills, some have a single point (I haven't seen any of these for sale yet, but I haven't looked very hard) and some have many points. It seems like the single point variety would allow nearly infinite diameters and pitches (so long as the tool can fit into the hole you wish to tap) but are probably much slower.

Multi-point thread mills are expensive (note: only the top 3 mills have a shank small enough to fit into the micRo spindle).

[later]
Oh, here's some single point thread mills, they're not exorbitantly expensive. [edit]I'm not sure these are actually for a mill... never mind, sorry![/edit] I bet there's lots of places to buy them...