Hi there, I've come across the need for a horizontal mill. One that will be used to engrave the ends of rubber blocks of varying lengths. I've decided a horizontal mill would be the best application as this would allow for the part (6" x 6" x 24"+) to be laid flat and the engraving tool be perpendicular to the end face. The reason for this decision is it would greatly benefit the user when loading and unloading parts as often times we are engraving more than 100 parts an order. What I'm wondering, as I don't have much experience in the scene of home-built / DIY routers, is what would be the best axis set up for this application in terms of rigidity. It's likely only going to be used for engraving rubber, though it's a hard durometer. My first thought was to take a conventional router setup and rotate it 90 degrees. But would there be any rigidity loss with the Z axis gantry being turned horizontal... I suppose not? In terms of programming, it would effectively be the same as the machine wouldn't know that it's rotated 90 degrees and it's simply machining as if it was a vertical format.
If your workpieces are only 24" then you only need to have a vertical edge onto which to clamp them on a conventional LEAD or Workbee type of machine. So you let the machine hang over the edge of the table and the workpieces sit vertically with the ends up where the machine work surface would be. like the end of this machine
