Maximum Part Height

Stepcraft simply can't tell, because it depends on the motor and the endmill length that you use.
For the Proxxon you'll have a different value than for an SC motor or a Kress spindle or a Dremel ...
My guestimate is, that a proxxon reduces max. height by 15-20mm and a 1mm endmill with normal length reduces by another 10mm.

That said, I'd like to mention, that you will not find a 1mm endmill that can go through 100mm of material.

It also depends on the machine-table ... the alu tables reduce height for some mm as well.

The 840 elite is very specific as to hardware that comes with it. The slotted table, HF-Spindle 500 Watt, Stepcraft Touch Probe 2, Tool Length Sensor And automatic tool changer along with some other hardware. So with this hardware configuration, I need the max part thickness.

Hi,
What is the length of your drill, or end mill that you will be using?
Long series, short series, standard?
All of those will affect the max part height.

I have some 3mm long series end mills 65mm long, and some shorter at 34mm long.
Different spindles allow varying lengths of insertion into the spindle, and various spindles mount at differing heights on to the Z axis.

My 420 with my current spindle setup and a short end mill will allow me approximately 70mm, and my cutter protrudes enough to mill 8mm deep, and a couple of mm clearance on top of that.

Stepcraft simply can't tell, because it depends on the motor and the endmill length that you use.

They can't tell, but they could certainly provide estimates based on popular hardware configurations, e.g. with their own HF series spindle, a Kress spindle and a Proxxon spindle easy enough... but they choose not to.

If this information was available to a prospective customer who is considering spending £2,000 to £3,000 on an outfit it would be very helpful. The user/customer can easily then subtract a particular cutter stickout (e.g. 25 mm) and spoil board thickness (e.g. 6 mm or 12 mm) to find out what would be left from the original nominal 140 mm Z axis travel.

Maximum part height was an issue for me prior to purchase because it was my original intention to use the 4th axis to index a 800 mm x 80 mm x 40 mm guitar neck blank for two or four sided cutting. I needed to know how thick a spacer to add to the 4th axis rotary table and tailstock to allow sufficient rotation clearance and take into account the available milling depth once the spindle was fitted, etc..

Yet another area where Stepcraft chooses to let the user just guess what's right. :angry: I believe that I guessed adequately.

Doug

Doug, we beg your pardon but we try to help as good as we can! We are not able to serve every possible question. As there are specific questions we and also Erick or Rory or our other resellers try to help each potential customer individually! Thus, in many cases it is simply not possible to give general advices.

I´m sure, you know and understand this...

To be clear, the original poster mentioned a 1" (i.e. 25.4 mm) end mill, not a 1 mm as you are stating MagIO2 but yes, he will not find a one inch end mill that can go through 100 mm of material either!