Kaden writes –
So I was hangin’ with one of my hardware buds last night… he’s my go-to guy for obscure and/or drool worthy toolage. Last time I visited he showed me a bunch of Orthopaedic surgery tools from the ’80’s that he’d scored from an estate sale in the interior. Cripes, Phil, ya wanna have nightmares?
Hold something called a Femur Reamer in your hands. That’s all you need to do: give your subconscious a few hours to ferment the experience and you’ll be waking up in a cold sweat at 30 minute intervals for the next 6 nights.
Last night the talk turned to ‘rotary tools’. For the record, I do not view Dremels with the awe and reverence of most Makers. Anyway, 5 minutes into the chat, dude showed me one of these. Let me muck about with it, but wouldn’t sell it to me, the bastard. I was into the Goog as soon as I got home, placed my order 28 seconds later. You will *never* find a more needful Dremel accessory: The build quality is strong-like-bull and smooth-like-silk, there’s add-ons available to make it even better, and it’s just screamin’ for a DIY CNC bodge. The manufacturer has a bunch of other products that seem equally lustworthy.
ACRA MILL PLUS – Link.
16 thoughts on “Acra mill plus”
Comments are closed.
ADVERTISEMENT
Join Make: Community Today
Or, you could get off your make(r) duff and build a cnc table that’ll hold a dremel, or laminate trimmer, and cut out the most fantastic things ever.
Hey, didn’t some guy just win a nice CNC laser for doing just that!
Cool, but its kinda useless without the drill press and Z-axis addons.
Also the guys caps lock seems to be broken.
It’s only a single axis mill. By the time you add on the Y and Z axis attachments you’re up to $250.00. You might as well spend $50 more and get the more robust Harbor Freight micro mill. Machine yourself a bracket to attach your dremel to the micro mill and you’re got yourself both a high-speed mill and a mill capable of cutting metal.
Having the benefit of hands on experience with *both* the HF Mini mill and the Acra, I’m of the opinion that the Acra feels more like a quality piece of toolage than the HF product. Ability wise, you’re comparing apples and oranges; if I wanted a mini mill, I’d buy a Taig rather than wagering cash money on Harbour Freights’ kinda inconsistent quality control.
But that’s me…I’m a sucker for hackable tools with intuitive learning curves.
The Harbor Freight mills aren’t too terrible. They’re made by Sieg (the HF micro and mini mills are the Sieg X1 and X2 respectively). The Sieg mills are re-badged and sold by Grizzly, Micro-Mark, Homier, Cummins and, of course, Harbor Freight.
They’re fairly popular and you can hack them with CNC conversion kits or PCB drilling spindles, etc.
Congrats on the new tool Kaden! If I didn’t know what it’s like to have a Taig, I’d probably be tempted myself. Of course now I could build one of these…
I bet it would be more rigid/less runout if you used a foredom flex shaft instead of the dremel.
But any mill or lathe is better than no mill or lathe…
Putting it together looks like a project in itself…
Seems to me an X-Y table and the drill press kit sold by Sears (among others) for the Dremel would get you farther and cost about the same.
X-Y Table for $110 here.
Drill Press for dremel – $40 here.
Of course, with a little ingenuity and some modification, who knows what you’d have?