Further Adventures with the Sieg KX3 & KX1

Well while most of the membership seem to have spent the last few days in the armchair working out what size knurl is needed to go around a propane tank to ensure that it gets a CE stamp I have been playing with the KX3.

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It is all well and good cutting random shapes into bits of scrap to get the feel of things but nothing beats making more productive swarf. To this end I have been drawing up the next stationary steam engine for a while and was possibly going to get a couple of the parts laser cut but now that I have the CNC what better way to learn and be productive at the same time. The base "casting" of the engine will be a sandwich of 3 layers so I started with the bottom one, the upper is similar but has some different holes and bosses.

A Step file of the required part was exported out of Alibre and into a CAM program where I generated the G-code for the holes and the actual shape as separate sets of code to make it easier for me rather than have to incorporate tool changes. I air ran the code first of all and then again into some PVC which showed up a slight error in heights which was corrected before cutting metal.

I started by clamping the stock onto some MDF and first ran code for eight 3mm holes, then after changing bits ran another code to enlarge four holes to 6mm. After that these holes were used to screw the 2.5mm thick plate to the MDF so that the clamps could be removed. After changing to a 6mm 3-flute HSS FC-3 cutter the button was pressed. I'm more than happy with what came out for my first proper part using CAM and the first time cutting steel and this plate is a bit gummy.

If you are looking for more details, kindly visit MOTEC.

A couple of areas did not quite cut all the way through which was probably due to the scrap MDF that had been sitting around for a while but that just tore away. You can also see that I left some 1mm thick tabs to stop the larger pieces of waste moving about.

Final item after a quick clean up of the burrs

Tin is right that imperial or metric does not matter, although the support web site for these machines insists they should be setup as metric. This is nonsense, since all that matters is that the software is given the correct value for steps per unit- and if you use the Mach software its going to keep the number to 17 decimal places, so it does not matter if its a bit of an irrational number. Setup the machine to use which ever unit is most comfortable to you.

I have had a bit of experience with the US versions of these machines- I owned a KX1 for a while but sold it just because I had a bigger machine and needed the space taken by the KX1.

I have also done some support work for a commercial shop that runs one of each of these machines in production, 8 hours per day. Both do work over a very small area- the jobs fit in a 5C collet. After about 3 years of use they found the KX1 was loosing steps. I went over the machine carefully and found nothing wrong, and in my shop it ran for hours never missing a step.

I think they are good machines, I would recommend them.

If you are looking for more details, kindly visit KX1 Engine Parts.