I love this! Your setup looks really similar to my shop - except better organized. I even have a window in about the same place, the lumber rack above, and a radial saw to the right of where I plan to put the LongMill when it arrives.
The radial already sticks out about 36" from the wall, but my shop is kind of narrow and adding another 12" or so on that for the LongMill is going to make it feel even more crowded. This looks like a great solution to that problem. Folded up it would be no wider than what I already have, and when folded down I can just deal with losing a little floorspace temporarily.
Do you have it on wheels? That would be perfect because then it could be rolled away from the wall to do longer stock too.
Space limitations have prevented me from acquiring a CNC in the past. My shop is in one half of a two car garage because my boss insists on parking her car on her half. I managed to claim the ‘air rights’ and decided to mount my longmill on a platform that I could hoist out of the way when not in use. I bought a Racor 4’x4’ ceiling lift with a 250 lb capacity on Amazon for around $250 US. It works great. When lowered, I clamp it to the MFT top on my workbench to keep it from swinging around.
And the shelf boards are in. Awaiting a missing bag of parts from Sienci (thank you for the fast response!) before I can proceed on the machine assembly.
Woah @Iguana, looking clean I hope your missing parts find you soon, I’d really like to see how the final setup looks with your LongMill sitting on top
Sysimpgrp:
I see you have these big holes in your waste board, as you do in your work bench.
Is the MDF strong enough to support those kind of clamping tools? Maybe I should ask, how deep are the holes?
Thanks Hansi
the dog holes in the MFT workbench go all the way through. you can either use clamps that hook into the hole and clamp the workpiece down to the surface or you can use in-line clamps that insert into the hole and exert force on the side of the workpiece that rests against a fence or bench dogs.
On the CNC, I couldn’t decide among t-track, t-nuts or dog holes for work holding, so I just used all 3. The mdf is 3/4 inch thick. You can’t use the workbench clamps that clamp downward as the holes don’t go all the way through and the clamps are too tall to clear the x gantry. But I am able to use the holes for positioning my fences that I then hold down using the t-nuts. I have been experimenting with cam clamps that fit into the dog holes and also the festool in-line dog clamps. I have seen the kreg in-line clamps used on you tube but I haven’t tried them yet. There are also designs for cam clamps on you tube. I also have an in-line toggle clamp that fits into the t-track. I have found that while the in-line clamps hold the workpiece firmly against the fence they also lift it slightly and need to be used in conjunction with some hold down clamping.
this is one of the more interesting workholding systems that I have seen: