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CrazyLittle posted:Melting down a NEW extension ladder is even easier! Or scrap aluminum extrusion/castings/scrap. Hit your local machine shop, I'll be they'd give you a bucket of the stuff. I pay like $3/lb at the local scrapyard for good aluminum drops, so scrap has to be less than that.
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Mar 25, 2016 00:18
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ante posted:Toss the bearings in the freezer for a bit, yeah Other way round... Heat the bearing and freeze the shaft.
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Jun 29, 2019 04:03
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The issue is parts availability and cost. A motor for a Bridgeport is under a grand. A spindle is cheap (or just swap the head entirely) for the same. Parts are everywhere, everyone knows how to work on them, and there are amazing videos from HW that show everything. Even clapped out, it'll be worth a grand when you sell. A Fadal control board is going to be $2500, and there are exactly four of them in the country, a spindle is $5000, and a 10 week wait. The control might only take floppies or gcode at 2400baud, and the CRT is obsolete. There are 2 people that still work on them and one is a nutjob that only response to a Yahoo group (and he's the technical one). These are pulled out of my rear end prices, but you get the idea. If you buy a CNC, make sure it's a widely available model with preferably a local company that knows them. Oh, and if it ever breaks and you want to sell, you'll be PAYING for it to be hauled to the scrapyard. This isn't a 2000# Bridgeport that you can toss on a uhaul flatbed. I've watched dozens of older CNC machines get scrapped because they cost more to move than they're worth. In a hobbyist shop, they're not much use because they aren't easy to program, they rarely have conversational controls, you're making one or two parts (not thousands like they were designed for), you don't have any programs to draw from, and you're one broken part away from a big bill repair or even worse, a 15,000# paperweight. Here's an example: https://www.machinetools.com/en/for...C9mYWRhbA%3D%3D That's not a big machine (20"x20"x16"), but it's 10,000# and 15hp. I don't know how big your 3P service is, but the parts to hook up a 15hp machine aren't cheap. Cat30 tool holders aren't cheap. Tooling isn't cheap. I've been tempted. If I go CNC, it'll be either a Haas or something like a used Tormach. My local machine shop runs a ton of Haas VF's, and they are happy with them. sharkytm fucked around with this message at 07:04 on Dec 25, 2019 |
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Dec 25, 2019 06:48
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The day to day is easy, most run auto lube systems. Clean air, good coolant, clean oil. But don't think this is a Bridgeport, the supplies aren't cheap. Fadal is decent but there are plenty of custom parts and non standard parts.
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Dec 26, 2019 00:45
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Honestly, you might do well posting on HSM or chaski and asking. I'd avoid practical machinist, as the crowd there is... Unpleasant, unless you're a pro.
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Dec 26, 2019 03:18
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Speaking of a VMC: https://r.tapatalk.com/shareLink/to...link_source=app
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Dec 27, 2019 00:24
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gonadic io posted:I have a weird shaped table and so need a custom bracket plate. It's basically just a metal rectangle on half inch steel, with some holes drilled, and a 90 degree horizontal fold half way down. Fusion360, or a sketch on a napkin and call your local fabrication shop.
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May 15, 2020 22:50
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Ambihelical Hexnut posted:gently caress it, let's roll: I'm reminded of this so many times: 75% of machining is setup. Congrats on a simple, repeatable setup that accomplished the goal.
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Jun 1, 2020 14:43
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Sagebrush posted:It's a bit more setup but honestly 90% of good CNC work is having a good job setup before you turn anything on. Machining in general. I spend 50% of my time figuring out the setup and fixturing for any non-standard machine work. There's a reason most machine shops have entire rooms of jigs if they do the same jobs over and over. Even my local job shop does this: a room full of soft jaws and jigs, a wall of filling cabinets full of setup sheets and prints with notes in the margins.
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Jul 6, 2020 14:40
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NewFatMike posted:This is super fun because an ENORMOUS part of industrial grade 3D printing is for tooling, jigs, and fixtures rather than finished products. I just finished designing and printing a jig that holds an underwater connector at a 2.5° angle offset around the mounting hole because when you tighten it from the opposite side, the rubber twists a little in my previous jig and the connector ends up at a 2.5° angle. It's just enough to notice and tickle my "pictures not straight on the wall" sense. It took 30 minutes to design, 2 hours to print three of them, and I used them today to build a bunch of units. No more slight angular offset! I use FDM parts all the time as assembly holders, chassis service carriers, and regularly include them with the finished product to help my customers work on the products. The cost is negligible once the design is completed, and it's so cool to be able to make jigs without spending metal money.
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Jul 7, 2020 01:19
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NewFatMike posted:I don't know what your budget is, but 3D Hubs might be able to help. I know some of the American team, they're p cool. ProtoLabs is another option. Not cheap, but very fast and they're up-front about what they can accomplish. Xometry is much cheaper, but they're farming the work out and who knows how the quality will turn out. I use them a lot, but I've had to adjust my expectations and add notes to the drawings to ensure the parts are usable.
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Jul 7, 2020 18:47
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NewFatMike posted:Yeah, this is for a maker space. I volunteer to maintain and educate our CNC machines. Your makerspace sounds awesome. I'm seriously considering buying a CNC for my shop. Either a Tormach or a small Haas.
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Jul 20, 2020 00:55
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Something something permanent license software, something something cloud computing. CLOUD, I tell ya. gently caress AutoDesk. I'm glad I spent the cash on SolidWorks. It hurt the wallet, but I have an actual license forever, not some monthly plan that can change features or disappear with no notice. And the educational version isn't an option, everyone talks up the EAA deal, but if you use it for commercial work and get caught, Dassault will fine you to the moon and back. I've seen it happen.
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Sep 17, 2020 14:08
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NewFatMike posted:That is true. Also, I'm in the hobby CNC thread talking about a replacement for a personal use license. If you're doing commercial stuff you should be in a commercial CNC thread and use commercial software. You're totally right. It's just worth mentioning because people use their hobby CNC to make commerical projects. Dassault doesn't care if it's $500 in sales, if you pop up on their radar, they'll come after you. I really liked the Fusion $100,000 limit. It fostered good will in the community, meant they wouldn't bust you for selling some CNC-carved sports team signs, and saves them the effort of lawsuits. Remember, it doesn't matter if you pay for a commercial license after the fact, the SolidWorks files are permanently tainted unless you start from scratch.
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Sep 17, 2020 14:33
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I ran SolidWorks 2015 and now 2020. I think I've had 5 crashes that weren't my fault like opening a bad document or using a buggy plugin (Xometry, I'm looking at you). Thousands of hours of time in design, lots of revisions, and lots of broken parts from suppliers or STEP imports. I dunno, it's loving solid for me. I do run a Quadro card.
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Sep 22, 2020 02:40
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Sagebrush posted:Solidworks is the worst 3D modeling program there is, except for all the others*. LOL. Basically. It's like why you can't name a file in windows "CON", "AUX", or "PRN" I need to do more parametric training, it would be super helpful to lots of my parts during the design phase.
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Sep 22, 2020 13:32
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Ambrose Burnside posted:I had to build a parametric product design suite inside Autodesk Inventor (rip to a real one, dying for F360s cloud profits) for a client a year or two back, it’s an incredibly valuable workflow to get comfortable with if you make a lot of derivative designs or do lots of work that all has the same overarching design requirements/constraints. the client made to-order steel wire products so it was a great use case, i mostly hung around their fabricators watching what they did and asking questions until i understood the implicit design rules they were following, and then built out the VBasic plugins to suit One of my big customers uses Inventor, and they're increasingly unhappy with it. Then again, SW hasn't added anything really "NEW" in a long time.
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Sep 22, 2020 21:08
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SolidWorks massively increased the capabilities of add-ons, like circuit works, their pipe and cable routing, but I don't use any of that stuff. And yeah, I'd be pissed too. There's a reason I'm still using AutoCAD 2010. I have a legal license and they can't take that away from me.
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Sep 23, 2020 05:03
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babyeatingpsychopath posted:I got the trial of GWizard for a feeds and speeds calculator. Yup. Delrin can be machined crazy fast. 100+ ipm and high spindle speed is how my machinist does it. Chip control is a pain on the lathe for sure, not so bad on a mill. Spindle speed with affect finish, so monkey with that to get an acceptable product. Check your outside corners too, high speed can chip them.
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Oct 5, 2020 14:10
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babyeatingpsychopath posted:Ok, so the cuts are looking great at low DOC, but my calculator says I can do like 4mm at a time. When I go 4mm (at same stepover) I get melting and the surface finish is garbage. Which direction do I go? Slower feed? Slower spindle? More cooling? I've got a vacuum pointed at it for chip clearing, but I can turn on air blast if I need to. As has been mentioned, higher feed or slower spindle speed might actually help. Higher feed will put more heat into the chips, and might work. It's always a balancing act. Water works too, but makes a mess and needs to be cleaned off the machine. Vacuum+air is a good move and cheap to start with.
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Oct 5, 2020 20:36
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babyeatingpsychopath posted:Well, I turned the feed rate up 50% (so now moving 6000mm/min on a full-depth slot with a 1/8" plastic-cutting bit) with 80PSI air blast. The chips are coming out and nothing's sticking to the bit, but surface finish is still all gummy at the top. Photos/video? Upcut/downcut bit? Did you try air with the original feedrate? Back it down by 50%? How sharp is the tool? Plastics like a razor-sharp tool, at least on the lathe.
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Oct 5, 2020 22:47
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Yup. I do a lot of stainless and titanium work. Double the feed, half the speed is a good mantra for drilling SS. You gotta get the heat into the chip, keep the cutting ahead of the work hardening, and use lots of oil. Titanium is kind of a pain in the rear end, and I generally leave that to my machinist. Plastics and aluminum generally love high feed and high speed.babyeatingpsychopath posted:Ok, I cut some test zig-zag patterns at different feeds. All 1/8" depth (3.175mm, 1 tool diameter). I started at 4000mm/min and went all the way up to the machine's maximum rate of 10,000mm/min, increments of 200mm/min. Spindle RPM was set to 18,500 as recommended on the shapeoko forums. The sweet spot for cutting at that depth seems to be 7200mm/min. There's just the tiniest burr at sharp corners. Below~6200, I get long, stringy chips. Below about 5000 or so, stuff is sticking to the bit. Above 8600, the surface finish is garbage. The machine skips steps in X at 9800mm/min.
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Oct 6, 2020 01:41
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Ambrose Burnside posted:this is the story for outsiders. the job is actually 95% "making sure individual part run times are short enough to leave 15 minutes early, or long enough that you can grab a coffee and a smoke before you need to unload the fixtures for the next batch" Unless you're in a job shop and then it's 50% setup, 10% trying to understand the print, 20% speeds and feeds, and 20% rebutting/QC.
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Oct 6, 2020 05:07
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If you're mounting something standard, like a serial port, Ethernet port, or whatever, and are doing enough volume to even consider buying a desktop CNC machine, you should call a commercial enclosure manufacturer. They're used to custom runs, have the right punch tooling, and will deliver perfect results.
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Oct 27, 2020 02:50
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babyeatingpsychopath posted:It's a poor craftsman that blames his tools. You need to fixture the box in the drill press somehow. Even throwing a chunk of wood on the table, turning it out of the way, and then backstopping your "long edge" so you're drilling from the plastic into the wood is better than just free-air drilling. The other trick is to design the pattern in CAD and print it out on sticker paper. Then you've got nice clean lines that show you where to cut/drill/file, and it's easily removed with some heat or iso alcohol. A drill, nibbler, hand files, and maybe some sandpaper is all you really need. However, as soon as you're talking about more than 10-20 (depending on complexity), just have Hammond/Budd/ProtoCase/PolyCase make them. I just ran some numbers through PolyCase's instant quote system, and it's super cheap. A DC-59F enclosure: https://www.polycase.com/dc-59f which is like $12.50 to start with 4 sides of the base needing machining, with 14! total features, plus the lid having 4 features came out to: QTY:1 (stupid money, $238 each) QTY:5 $61 each (still spendy) QTY:10 $38 each (getting there) QTY:25 $25 each (very affordable) QTY:50 $19 each (Now they're cheap) Figure out your time per unit, assume you'll gently caress up some, and it gets very affordable, very quickly. There's a $100 setup fee, but there are other companies. Compare and find out.
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Oct 27, 2020 23:06
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babyeatingpsychopath posted:Interesting. I wonder if you could use those ceramic coatings designed for headlights that "REPEL WATER, OIL, BUGS, DIRT, GRIME!" to any effect. They all wear/wash off pretty quickly. Lots of folks use RainX, it works well for a few hours.
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Dec 13, 2020 19:06
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Our maker space has one. It "just works".
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Jan 18, 2021 14:31
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This is exactly the problem. Thus far, they haven't.
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Jan 19, 2021 03:55
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NewFatMike posted:It's 3DEXPERIENCE WORLD this week (nee SOLIDWORKS World), and I thought this was super exciting: Striking out at Fusion. Good.
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Feb 10, 2021 16:25
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Rutibex posted:I wouldn't pay $200 per month for a maker space unless they had a star trek replicator They're usually less Makerspace, and more TechShop. Fully staffed, high-end machines, and big money.
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Mar 30, 2021 20:17
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mekilljoydammit posted:"Good used bridgeport" in 2021 is definitely a matter of getting lucky too; if you do get lucky and have a place to put it they're great bang per buck, but I've seen them trading more in the $5k range lately and personally, at that price, I'd be looking at CNC stuff; Tree CNC knee mills for example. Prices have gone up dramatically, and the quality overall is down. They're getting worn out and replaced, and there isn't the glut of small shops dying off like there were in ~'08. I'd be looking at something else if I was in the market. Mine is decent, but it was $2300 with a ton of tooling and fixtures, 2+ years ago.
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Apr 1, 2021 03:36
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honda whisperer posted:I did. That's what's really breaking my brain. They are as far as I can tell identical. At least the finish pass. Run the gcode through beyond compare and see what's different? If the finish passes look the same, then the problem lies elsewhere. Did the finishes on all 4 sides look the same?
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Jun 24, 2021 12:03
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