No more “flat” work. It’s time to challenge myself.
I think I want to make a steam engine. I found plans for one with wood supports instead of the usual metal. Mortise and tenon construction with clearance holes held together with threaded rod and nuts. Much of this seems doable with my LongMill.
This should be a good challenge of my CAD/CAM skills, work holding consistency, WCS management, and sanity. I have already started putting the drawings into Fusion. Many pieces are stick shaped in nature with milling on 4 sides. The plan is to setup a vise with a stop so can set one WCS zero and just manually flip to all 4 sides. That should allow me to get clean tenons (I’ll have to clean the mortices - no dogbone stuff will be done)
Yes this is a little crazy. Yes it would be MUCH easier to do this with my table saw, drill press, and other tools I have. But it wouldn’t be as much fun.
I’ll start with the wood and we’ll see how that goes. Would be great if I had a Vortex and could do true 4 axis work. Maybe Santa will help me out.
Then we’ll get to the metal. 
Full plans:
