Question Considering Buying Stepcraft 2/600 - Will it reliably cut 1/8" brass plate?

I'm considering buying a 2/600 with the HF spindle for use in my shop to cut out patterns in 1/8 inch brass plate - think cutting out a 4 inch tall letter "C." Accuracy would need to be about 1/64 of an inch. Any thoughts on whether this machine can handle this? I would cut about 400 of these a year.

Any feedback or thoughts are greatly appreciated. I'm a novice metal worker but experienced with woodworking and 3D printing.

Robert

Hi Robert,

You shouldn't have too much of a problem with accuracy provided that the machine is compensated for backlash. It might be worthwhile investing in a set of adjustable leadscrew nuts right away, as it sounds as though your machine will get plenty of use. Software compensation is very accurate, but tedious to get right. On my SC420/2 I can mill printed circuit boards to an accuracy of around 0.003" or so using s/w compensation.

If your budget will run to it, go for the industrial grade vfd spindle from Stoneycnc, I upgraded to one of these after my HF350 wore itself out and am extremely impressed with its performance and quality. It is fully controllable from Gcode via the Stepcraft control board

Again if your budget will allow, consider the T-slot aluminium machine base - it greatly improves machine rigidity, particularly on the larger machines.

Just a thought - if your jobs are as small as you suggest, do you need a big machine other than for future growth?

Regards,

Peter

Hello Robert.

I have successfully cut and milled alumimium sheet with my system which works well and I have the StoneyCNC small industrial HF spindle like Peter but I would not attempt to cut brass with a Stepcraft. Brass is much harder (Brinell Hardness Number in the range 192-202) unless you are talking about "soft brass" with a BHN of 60. CDA 206/CZ106 grade might be o.k.:

https://www.aircraftmaterials.com/data/copper/cda260.html

Aluminium (Brinell Hardness Numbers in the range 99-101) is enough of a challenge with these light duty machines and I only had success milling 0.1 mm depth per pass. I do not recommend them for metal milling.

Doug