what is the best material to build a mill enclosure out of?

[Gary Campbell]

My vote would be for 16ga steel, tig welded and powder coated

[Upnorth]

My vote would be for 16ga steel, tig welded and powder coated

I would think hard before welding together for an enclosure for a milling machine. Mine is held together by bolts. I can disassemble it in about an hour to do maintenance on the milling machine. End panels can be removed also if I ever need to put a really long work piece in there. Might also be useful if you need to move it also. If a shop has enough overhead clearance a welded one would be ok as you could just lift it off.

I should point out mine is not completely built. I never did finish the back doors on it I just used some plastic sheet held in place by magnets. I also did not put a top on it but will some day. More as a place to hang lights than to contain coolant.

[rk9268vc]

My vote would be for 16ga steel, tig welded and powder coated

I would think hard before welding together for an enclosure for a milling machine. Mine is held together by bolts. I can disassemble it in about an hour to do maintenance on the milling machine.

Yeah It will still be made of spreadable chunks. I plan to move in about a year so it all has to come apart.
The sections though will be bent and welded together. There are a few bends that are longer than my 2 foot long bender that ill have to cut dashed lines on the bend points to bend by hand. Then weld up the seam.

The main thing Is a welded joint (assume I weld it well) cant leak coolant like a bolted joint.

[rk9268vc]

just placed an order for a 4x8ft sheet of 16ga cold rolled :]

[Vwfan]

Nice how much per sheet ?

[rk9268vc]

Nice how much per sheet ?

$166 for 4x8ft 16ga cold rolled from coremark
Tax exempt (ive got an LLC) and customer pickup

Im probably going to go with a white enamel paint unless I can get it powder coated somewhere for cheap-ish

Ive got some 3/4" hot rolled round bar on hand I can use to reinforce it in the corners. (im thinking I might want to add legs)
Ive got the base and chip tray for the mill that im going to mount this to. No sense reinventing the wheel, but I might need some legs for the corners since it will be cantilevered out 28" in either direction.

Working on finishing up the sheet metal model in SolidWorks. Im going to probably pick up a cheap plasma cutter as well. Will be a lot of work with an angle grinder otherwise, and too thick for tin snips imo. We have a big plotter at work, going to see if theyll let me plot the cut templates on film to use as a template.