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Ambrose Burnside posted:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hvqb6IBrKgw Yeah I didn't gently caress with end limit switches at all on my machine, just let the steppers stall out at whatever hardware limits you have. Maaaaybe think about a Z-axis stop at the 'bottom' so you don't try to run an endmill through to your table or something. EDIT: New page.
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Aug 17, 2016 00:47
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End stops are cheap. You can get them at Creatron at Warden and Steeles. Also, drat you for getting your CNC running.
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Aug 17, 2016 00:57
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Good to know- wouldn't actually know how to set it up because it's more complicated than "plug some cables into clearly-labelled ports", but I'm starting to grasp what this "ports" and "pins" n so on business is, so maybe I'll be comfortable with that down the road. I'd strongly prefer a more physical solution like they had on the bandsaw at the blacksmith's shop- a forged arm shaped to physically flip the off switch once the saw had almost fully dropped- but the e-stop ain't positioned right  (actually I could 100% make a physical arm to at least shut the spindle off if the headstock drops past some pretermined point, the switch is mounted to the vertical column so it'd be easy, hmmmm...) I'm gonna need to build myself an enclosure before I do much, anybody got any tips or useful links in that regard? Cost and the ability to dissassemble it (mill's gonna get moved within the house once or twice in the next year) are concerns, my inclination is to roll with MDF for the back and sides and get some plexiglass for the front and use aluminium extrusions for the frame. Ambrose Burnside fucked around with this message at 20:51 on Aug 17, 2016 |
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Aug 17, 2016 20:45
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Ambrose Burnside posted:... my inclination is to roll with MDF for the back and sides and get some plexiglass for the front and use aluminium extrusions for the frame.
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Aug 17, 2016 21:19
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I went to Staples and bought a 3 sided foam core board that kids use for science fair presentations. Works decently.
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Aug 18, 2016 03:11
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Ambrose Burnside posted:Good to know- wouldn't actually know how to set it up because it's more complicated than "plug some cables into clearly-labelled ports", but I'm starting to grasp what this "ports" and "pins" n so on business is, so maybe I'll be comfortable with that down the road. I'd strongly prefer a more physical solution like they had on the bandsaw at the blacksmith's shop- a forged arm shaped to physically flip the off switch once the saw had almost fully dropped- but the e-stop ain't positioned right Seems like you could use this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZWCX9tdkk8
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Aug 18, 2016 03:58
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CarForumPoster posted:Seems like you could use this: Oh I like this. I've also been wondering if I can adapt my mill to transfer intricate patterns onto sheet metal more efficiently for doing repousse projects, and the spring holder would let me draw onto warped post-annealed sheet no problem.
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Aug 18, 2016 23:24
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Ambrose Burnside posted:Oh I like this. I've also been wondering if I can adapt my mill to transfer intricate patterns onto sheet metal more efficiently for doing repousse projects, and the spring holder would let me draw onto warped post-annealed sheet no problem. http://cnc-aid.com/ Cheapest non home-made one I have found.
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Aug 19, 2016 01:52
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Run the same code with a ball end mill, just adjust the Z depth so the radius is cutting just a bit out of those sharp edges. Works a treat on metal, not sure how it would handle on wood.
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Aug 19, 2016 02:27
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Should I bother with this http://lexington.craigslist.org/tls/5745347334.html I have access to a 4x8 sized cnc at our makerspace, but I wanted something to cut carbon fiber and g10 on (very small projects, 2d and possibly 2.5d for the most part) moron izzard fucked around with this message at 21:13 on Aug 23, 2016 |
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Aug 23, 2016 20:36
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For $300 that's not bad if they've done the hard work squaring it and all that stuff. Just be aware it will be very small and once you add any fixtures you might find you run out of space really really fast. But it could also be really handy for making poo poo to make a larger one or making the stuff to convert say a mini-mill to CNC, as well as any general small parts. I just got a portable AC unit for my garage/shop, so hopefully I'll be able to tolerate working in there long enough to get my shapeoko 2 fully squared and redone up with some better wiring. Also aiming on doing up a Raspberry Pi 3 for the g-code server to the arduino, which could be awesome because aside from a monitor I should be able to fit all that poo poo into a 50 caliber ammo can with lots of room left for cooling fans.
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Aug 24, 2016 14:03
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The handheld CNC router is available for preorder now, at $1500 + 100 shipping, -100 with a referral link. I almost preordered, but it turns out the ship date is like September 2017, not 2016 as I had originally thought. The retail price is $2000, which I think is pretty fair. If they didn't charge my card immediately, I might have still gone for it. https://shapertools.com/ After toying around with the idea of a CNC purchase for like 5 years now, I finally took the plunge and ordered a CNC ready Taig yesterday! Turns out you can order it without the lacklustre motor for $175 less (total comes to just under $1000 incl shipping, with free collets, basic vise), and for that money I can pick up a 2/3 HP brushless motor + controller + power supply, so that'll (if everything goes as planned) allow me to adjust spindle speed without changing belts/losing torque. I should be able to put the entire thing together for just under $2000 (including spiffy DSP based stepper drivers and an offline FPGA based 3/4axis controller (no computer/mach 3 required), so if anyone else is interested in putting a Taig based mill together, I can go into a bit more detail about the BOM. rawrr fucked around with this message at 04:31 on Aug 30, 2016 |
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Aug 24, 2016 17:00
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Just got an email: Inventables' Carvey is $500 bucks off until mid-September. I was always interested in Carvey and it seems that it does just what it advertises. Someone after "real" CNC will find it limiting, but designers and prosumers not making e.g. guitar bodies will find it quiet, clean, and with friendly software + interface that helps you get what you want/expect with WYSIWYG and presets for materials, etc.
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Aug 24, 2016 21:44
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What's the best material to futz around with that'll map acceptably onto metal? I've done some stuff with plywood and the like so far, but there's way too much tearout and you can't learn anything about, say, achieving a good finish. Is machinable wax worth making n playing with if I don't intend to do any lost-wax casting with the end result? Should I just spend some cash on a bunch of aluminum offcuts?
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Aug 30, 2016 02:43
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If you're wanting to learn about machining metal, there's no real solution other than making metal chips, yeah. Especially if you're trying to achieve a good surface finish on aluminum -- that's so dependent on your cut parameters that you wouldn't learn anything useful from cutting other materials. Go to a scrapyard and see if you can buy twenty pounds of random aluminum junk or something. Hacksaw up a cast alloy wheel and practice facing and squaring up the pieces.
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Aug 30, 2016 04:01
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Machinable wax is also cool and good for testing your toolpaths. Look up recipes online, and it takes maybe an hour and almost no money to whip up a batch
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Aug 30, 2016 04:06
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I'll probably be making my first batch tomorrow, but the recipe is just 1 part LDPE (i.e. freezer bags or recycling symbol 4) : 4 parts paraffin wax by weight. Melt wax at 300*F, and dissolve LDPE into it. Pour into mold and let it cool as slow as possible. Can throw in a crayon for colouring. Machinable wax really does sound like the ideal material for prototyping/learning, and they supposedly make great molds for casting silicone molds, out of which you can cast solid resin parts. I like the fact that you can collect and remelt chips, and reuse them infinitely until the plasticizes burn off.
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Aug 30, 2016 04:37
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How are you doing the melt? I see people use second-hand deep fryers and the like but I don't have anything like that, and I'm leery of putting a bunch of plastic and wax in the oven that I cook with.
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Aug 30, 2016 21:41
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I used the cheapest rice cooker I could buy (~$15) that I originally bought to do acetone vapor smoothing for ABS prints on. Ovens probably aren't the best because you'll need to be stirring and monitoring temps, but my rice cooker worked fine, if a bit slow because it's pretty low wattage. I made up a batch earlier today and everything went pretty well (no surprises, and really isn't a complicated or sketchy process), but I won't get to test out how well it machines until I actually get my Taig setup in a couple weeks. PS If you do use a rice cooker though, you might need to take out the thermal fuse and hold the switch down with tape or something. And just keep an eye on temperature and shut it off once it creeps past 300f. I wired up a PWM controller to modulate power but I don't think it was that necessary given how slowly the mixture heats up.
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Aug 30, 2016 21:58
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  So this looks pretty promising, cuts like butter with a hacksaw, no melting. Was expecting a bunch of bubbles and was ready to buy a vacuum pump, but this looks almost flawless even though I didn't do anything in particular to degas. I put a piece of cardboard over the box as it was cooling, and that seemed to be all that was needed to prevent a huge divot in the middle from shrinkage. Seems like the piece shrank evenly from all sides, and the wax basically dropped out of the mold. P.S. This is approximately 600g paraffin 150g LDPE ziplock bags (e: and two crayons) rawrr fucked around with this message at 00:09 on Aug 31, 2016 |
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Aug 30, 2016 23:26
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I just use a pot and a hot plate with an IR thermometer, although my results aren't as clean as that. You can use HDPE as well as LDPE, just keep them consistent in a batch. And if you have a local place you go to a lot with coloured bags, then that's the colour your wax will be, no crayons or anything needed. I have put vanilla extract in before, though, that smells great when you're machining it.
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Aug 31, 2016 00:31
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A 1/4" piece of aluminium plate is so cheap. Why bother making some wax?
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Aug 31, 2016 01:10
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I want to build a CNC router. Something that can easily cut 3/4" MDF or 1/8" brass/aluminum. As much as I would love to start out with a 4x8 machine, my shop space just currently won't support it. Seeing as I'm going to have to put this machine up in the loft, a smaller table would be beneficial. (Though I don't mind tossing a 4x4 sheet up there, just nothing larger.) What resources are out there? IE where do I start? I've seen several diy designs, but I'm incredibly out of date otherwise on software and hardware.
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Aug 31, 2016 01:31
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When I looked into it a while back the OX CNC is what I almost went with: http://www.openbuilds.com/builds/openbuilds-ox-cnc-machine.341/ http://www.smw3d.com/ox-diy-cnc-kit/ Because it uses extrusions instead of sheet metal for the frame, you can easily resize it later by buying longer extrusions and a larger piece of MDF base. The openbuilds page (if you scroll down a bit) will also list what seems like up to date electronics and software options.
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Aug 31, 2016 01:38
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Brekelefuw posted:A 1/4" piece of aluminium plate is so cheap. Why bother making some wax? What if you want to make something thicker than 1/4"?
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Aug 31, 2016 01:57
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Also 1/4" aluminum is more likely to break your bit on an errant operation
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Aug 31, 2016 04:52
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imo wax has pretty much the ideal properties for prototypes, learning, and mold casting, especially for less rigid, low hp hobby level machines. Faster, easier, and quieter to machine too, and the last one is important to me because I live in an apartment. I wasn't happy with the surface finish, speed, and accuracy I was getting from my 3D printer for prototyping, so wax just sounds awesome for everything that doesn't need to have structural properties.
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Aug 31, 2016 05:06
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Brekelefuw posted:A 1/4" piece of aluminium plate is so cheap. Why bother making some wax? Wax can be collected and re-melted and machined again, aluminum would require a foundry.
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Aug 31, 2016 06:14
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I've made machinable wax and used it over the years. I started when metal prices were sky high and I wanted to learn / test CNC operations. I never tried to make it pretty, so mine all turned out to be a turd green. Hot plates work ok, deep friers work better, but the best luck I've had is with thrift store crockpots and a hand mixer. I've also experimented using machinable wax to make investment molds and that seems to work ok for the little effort I put into it. I've tried adding stearic acid to a couple batches, and that seems to make no difference. Commercial machinable wax is much better, but a shitload more expensive. You do need to temper your expectations, the stuff is somewhat fragile, thin sections will crack and unless you're super careful you'll hit clumps of plastic that gravity drug to the bottom of the mold. If you keep your machine cleanish you can remelt it, just don't forget to sieve out the metal chips mixed in. (Oops). But you can do nearly every machining operation you can think of save grinding and sanding I guess. It cuts, carves, threads and taps. If you break something you can weld it back. Squaring up the stock is also a touch annoying since I used pans and cake tins. Controlled cooling really does help, but I rarely bother. I'm just trying to use it to gently caress around, not build aerospace prototypes. Now, as has been pointed out, Aluminum is back to normal (shoutout to speedymetals.com) and I haven't messed with the wax in a bit.
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Aug 31, 2016 14:02
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Sagebrush posted:What if you want to make something thicker than 1/4"? Just a suggestion of a size to grab for practicing on. Get whatever you want.
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Aug 31, 2016 14:42
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Right now I'm mostly trying to avoid tool breakage while being able to practice most of the usual machining processes without having to stress about feeds n speeds, but I'd get over it pretty fast if I just snap up like 5 3/16" double end mills the next time they're on sale and learn from my mistakes, I figure.
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Aug 31, 2016 21:23
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Ambrose, have you used any feed/speed calculation software? I looked at a bunch of commercial packages, and then found FSWizard. Online, free, and has been invaluable for cutting bit preservation. I have a largely unsuitable, extremely high minimum RPM wood router as the spindle for my X-Carve right now, and FSW does a really great job of estimating the right cutting depths and speeds for a given material and cutter. I pretty much only break bits due to straight up operator error these days.
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Sep 1, 2016 00:36
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Ambrose Burnside posted:Right now I'm mostly trying to avoid tool breakage while being able to practice most of the usual machining processes without having to stress about feeds n speeds, but I'd get over it pretty fast if I just snap up like 5 3/16" double end mills the next time they're on sale and learn from my mistakes, I figure. Check banggood. I seem to remember seeing packs of small Dia. end mills for under $10. No tears if you snap a handful for that price.
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Sep 1, 2016 03:26
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Acid Reflux posted:Ambrose, have you used any feed/speed calculation software? I looked at a bunch of commercial packages, and then found FSWizard. Online, free, and has been invaluable for cutting bit preservation. I have a largely unsuitable, extremely high minimum RPM wood router as the spindle for my X-Carve right now, and FSW does a really great job of estimating the right cutting depths and speeds for a given material and cutter. I pretty much only break bits due to straight up operator error these days. I'd tried a couple and didn't find any of them super-useful, but daaaang thanks for pointing me to that one, it's really good for free n in-browser. The roll-over explanations for everything take the learning curve out, too. Brekelefuw posted:Check banggood. I seem to remember seeing packs of small Dia. end mills for under $10. No tears if you snap a handful for that price. Ordering some now, less than a dollar per 1/8" ball end mill, yep, I'm severely on board. Shame all the Chinese import places mostly stick to metric sizing, as great as metric is it's real inconvenient if you're in north america
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Sep 1, 2016 18:23
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You can find cheaper (though not as cheap as those banggood ones) endmills on amazon too, though their search tools for this are pretty atrocious so you'll likely have to hunt a lot.
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Sep 1, 2016 18:33
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Aliexpress and dhgood are other places to check, especially since they usually have user reviews for the product that you can sort search results by. What are people's experiences with Chinese end mills vs brandname ones? Most people seem to suggest avoiding them for learning, because it adds another unknown that you might end up having to troubleshoot for, especially if you don't have the experience to figure out what the source of the problem is. OTOH I find that Chinese stuff is starting to strive for higher quality and value vs lowest cost, so I'm not as quick to equate made in China with poor quality anymore.
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Sep 1, 2016 18:58
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Parts Kit posted:You can find cheaper (though not as cheap as those banggood ones) endmills on amazon too, though their search tools for this are pretty atrocious so you'll likely have to hunt a lot. To add to that because Ambrose and I are in Canada: Amazon.ca has horrible tool selection, and the prices on everything are jacked up to insane levels. I'm talking something that should be $30 costing $300 on Amazon.ca for some reason.
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Sep 1, 2016 19:33
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Brekelefuw posted:To add to that because Ambrose and I are in Canada: Converting to metric dollars can be tricky.
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Sep 1, 2016 19:38
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Brekelefuw posted:To add to that because Ambrose and I are in Canada: I find that I'm better off just ordering stuff that's made in China from China directly; the price works out to be cheaper and if you find sellers that are willing to ship e-packet (dhgate lets you filter by shipping method), the shipping is usually only a couple bucks more and will get here in roughly 1-2 weeks (I've had a computer fan I paid $3 incl shipping arrive in 3 days wtf), roughly the same amount of time as buying something from the States.
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Sep 1, 2016 19:54
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rawrr posted:What are people's experiences with Chinese end mills vs brandname ones? Most people seem to suggest avoiding them for learning, because it adds another unknown that you might end up having to troubleshoot for, especially if you don't have the experience to figure out what the source of the problem is. OTOH I find that Chinese stuff is starting to strive for higher quality and value vs lowest cost, so I'm not as quick to equate made in China with poor quality anymore. Brekelefuw posted:To add to that because Ambrose and I are in Canada:
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Sep 1, 2016 20:14
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