Minimill ACME leadnuts update!

Hey everyone!

Just wanted to give you a quick update on our acetal/delrin ACME leadnuts. They’re back in stock (we make batches so sometimes we in production)!

The standard ones are 16tpi for your Harbor Freight and similar Sieg X2 minimills. We are working on a 20tpi version for you Micromark and Little Machine Shop owners who have the 20 tpi version leadscrews. Unfortunately, due to the square and trapezoidal form threads, we can’t use a single point thread tool for all pitches. So, we’re making a 20tpi tap. Hang tight!

*figNoggle*

Kaizen Foam and 5S – A place for everything and everything in its place

Well, it’s 2017 and if you haven’t heard of shadowboxing, 5S, lean manufacturing and such, it’s time!

Remember that one photo we posted that had tools scattered about in the Craftsman tool chest? Well, that was 10 years ago and we knew there was a better way even then. But OK, we’re busy and so we don’t always get around to things, but alas, we finally did.

The gist is this – organize your tools! Try this stuff from Fastcap – it’s called Kaizen foam!

Happy Holidays from figNoggle Designs 2015

Hi Everyone-

We see it’s been over a year since we’ve posted ANYTHING here… Well, we’ve been very busy moving shop, working on new products, and… getting into 5-axis CNC machining. It’s sometimes hard to believe that all of this started with a $500 Sieg X2 mini-mill from Harbor Freight.

We’ve seen Tormach get into the hobby metalworking market and the market itself finding a place in the world. It’s been quite an interesting ride, for sure.

We still remember reading on the YahooGroups forums about the plastic headstock gear breaking and people solving that problem by making belt kits (including us well). Then nearly a decade later, Sieg figured out how to implement a belt drive AND brushless motor in a newer version. We even saw Chris at LittleMachingShop.com offering longer table kits and getting into the YouTube community.

Which leads us to… My how Youtube content has changed! When we first posted a little video of our CNC converted minimill performing a simple contouring toolpath generated from Mach 3 (ArtofCNC) back on April 14, 2007, we never thought it’d get even 246,394 views to-date. Nowadays, Youtube creators such as TubalCain, Keith Fenner, Tom Lipton of Oxtool, and Abom79 (to name a few) get tens of thousands of views from the metalworking community within days of posting their content.

Since 2007, we’ve helped many hobby machinists get into CNC with our PDF plans and conversion kits, improve accuracy and repeatability with our ACME leadscrews and kits and generally improve their experience with their own little $500 mini-mills. Well, as we get into 2016, we are going to make some changes here…

We’re going to (OK don’t hold your breath though! – we’re still pretty busy here with other developments) change the format of the website to a more interactive way of posting content. This will include a more active Youtube presence, little clips of things we find interesting with respect to machining, and we’ll even share some of our experiences going beyond 3 axes :)

Thanks again for all of your continued support. We’re still here and going strong!

Happy Holidays!
figNoggle Designs