Scratch Build – Complete ⭐ WING X99 - A CNC-milled Scratch Build! (Benchmarks,temps and wallpapers posted)

Finished the video update that includes updates #5 to #18. A lot of CNC milling! You asked for some CNC video so here it is! Hope you will enjoy!

Wing X99 - Update #2

 

Great work and very cool to see the tools used for your project. In your experience, do you ever have to periodically mill flat the spoil board after a certain amount of wear to prevent your piece from laying unevenly across its surface?

 

Yes, I do. I am a bit lazy and I rather wear some on the spill board instead of having the cutter not go all the way through. It is usually no problem though. But to insure that I get clean cuts I go down about 0.1 into the spill board. I have about 6mm of material to remove on the spill board before it is "worn out". I have done that twice during this build so far, and one of those times was because of aligning the mill etc. 6/0,1 gives me about 60 layers to peel of. Should last me very long.

The pieces never lay uneven though. When you have face milled the surface its basically flat. All the inaccuracies in the machine gets parallel/leveled to your spindle after that first pass. I just go over edges with a 120 grit sand paper to smooth over the shallow cuts and remove any point higher than the table.

 

This is the PCIe holder that is going to screw down into all the PCIe slots.


Holes done.


Well... This is what happens when you set your Z-zero at table height when you wanted it at the top of the part. Well this was a fun way to kill a 85$ chamfer mill and a pair of underwear.


The mayhem...


A slightly bigger hole than I intended...



Video of the Crash




Start button holder. These will be magnetically loaded instead of spring loaded. By mounting the magnets with the polarities opposite each.



Here you can see where the magnets will be placed.


A 60 degree chamfer/engrave mill. My spindle is a bit slow (18 0000 RPM) so I need to go quite slow.



A quick pass. Some "edges" in the cut, should have gone a bit slower. But this will be cleaned up when I sand the surface.


LED and PWR done!


Doing the "line" in top of the case.


And also doing the bottom part of the line. It is just a 1mm thick aluminium strip


All done!


All set for doing some engraving



This is the G-code for the engraving.


Really nice results! (do you spot the dot above the text? Yeah, that was deap, like 1mm deep. So I ended up redoing this again...)


X99 text done!


Cutting the rubber foot for the case. Just printed the shape and taped it to a piece of neoprene rubber.



Then I just cut it with a knife.


Turned out really good. Patience and slow is the way to go


Cover for the IO-cables and 4-pin power for the motherboard.


Looks even better in reality than in CAD.


Here you have the channels.


Cover plate for the motherboard plate.


Extruded areas for the magnets.




All the chips from the case milling and milling some parts for the CNC. I would say more than half is from the case. Quite a lot...


What was here?


A acrylic cable window! (the protective plastic is still on here, its just regular clear acrylic, PMMA)


Took A LOT of work to get a balanced design. I must say though that I am REALLY happy with the result. One of the best looking features if I am to be the judge. Was trying to get a sort of "tree" look to go with the wing theme.



Soooooo soo pleased right now! And also a huge relief. All the aluminium case parts is now done. I have basically worked 12-16 hour days since mid October til now. And to see everything pan out is so very satisfying but there is still much to do. Next up is the acrylic case parts.

 

Oh for Christ's sake man give the rest of us a chance will ya?

Between you, Twister, Mike and P0pe it's going to be a CNC dream team year. Oh and Happy birthday

 

That looks SOOOOOOOO DAAAAAAYYYYUUUUUMMM good.

Crash vid: OK, I prefer my slow/low torque rig again. The same mistake would have only cost me the damaged underwear. Your rig punched that bit in like it was hammering a nail. Mine would have just cried really loud.

Chips: Enough to make a really uncomfortable bean bag chair.

 

Yeah, that crashing bit must have made some racket. I've had an 8mm steel cutting tool snap in the lathe, and that measured on the sphincter scale...

And how come that the swarf you end up with always seems like five times the amount you milled off?

 

ughhh! Don't sell yourself short man! I always end up looking at other people thinking, "damn I wish I came up with that". But I guess you value what you/your mod does not have and don't see what separates your mod from others. That is at least what I end up doing

Bean bag

A underwear change and you are good go to man!

On a more serious note though, those small servos can easily be stopped by hand if you grab the screws, but if I can not physically stop the any axis if I try and hold/push it. No chance in hell, it would snap your arm of if you got stuck. I am guessing it requires a few hundred KG to stop it. Both me and my friend tried to stop the Y-gantry. No change, it did not even change the sound the motor made

Yeah, I jumped a fair bit and you can see how I moved the camera

Well I guess it is all that air vs the very stacked aluminium sheets. But yes, it still feels like it is TOO much

 

You pucker more when a 15mm thick bit of 6061 breaks out of the work holding.....
My shed has a nice bit of ventilation now because of that.

And those pants went straight in the bin....no survivors.

 

Are you able to sell the aluminium chips to a scrape dealer?

 

On the topic of safety, I saw this a while back

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7sRrC2Jpp4

This dude was trying to show how dangerous this was by simulating how dangerous kick back is from rotating tools and he almost cut his finger/hand of. Really lucky. I have seen another video where a wooden plank went through the wall and into the parking lot.

Make sure you use a table router the right way or if you are using a table saw without blade guard or a "push pin" you need to get it. These are really scary things. I know some use routers to fix acrylic/aluminium/wooden edges or using table saws to cut sheets of metal. Just a public service announcement, please respect these.

 

Also, update



First up, 10mm plexiglass for the illuminated foot.


Used coolant here, later discovered that it did not matter and only made a mess.


This needs to be chamfered.





Here you can see the basic idea. A LED-strip will be placed in the clearance slot.


Really pleased! Hope this will give the illusion case is "floating".




Test piece for the light box. Everything looked fine so I proceeded with the real piece.



The loc-line gets quite cold. You can see frozen condensation around the line





Here it is, working away. Unfortunately did not take a picture when it was done. But it looks just like the test piece


Using a special cooling unit that cools the air up to -delta 50 degrees Celsius. That means the air coming out of nozzle is ~20-50 = -30 degrees Celsius. This keeps the more dimensionally stable and produces better cuts.


Side panels was made out of 6mm acrylic.




Top window is also 6mm acrylic.







All acrylic pieces that goes into the case is now done! The white light diffusing mid plate and logo in front was also done, but I do not have pictures of them unfortunately. But, apart from surface treatment on the aluminium, the case is basically done, machining vise.

 

Funny, that's what I do. I often think that other people's designs turn out to be much more elegant than what I ever came up with.

Well, (grabs beer), have I ever told you guys how I nearly took a finger off trying to hammer a stuck R8 chuck out of the spindle of my mill? Some idiot in the factory had tightened the draw bar as if it was an MT3 spindle and chuck. Anyhow, I hit the draw bar with a rubber mallet while holding my hand under the chuck to catch it as it drops loose, and I did --but it was heavier than I expected and my hand dropped right onto the precision vice on the table below.

The thing about precision vices is: they have perfect, polished right edges. Which turn out to be damn sharp. I cut my pinky length-wise, right to its bone. Bled like a gusher. Luckily my wife was a nurse.

Still have the scar. And a pair of solid workman's gloves next to the mill.

 

Wow, that is what you call a fit !

 

Dont get me started on lathes....

There is a roof section with a hole in a Bishops Stortford workshop....I forgot to pull the chuck key out and pushed the loud button.....

 

snuggelysnugg!

Never push the loud button with the chuck key in

 

How about a 3" indexable drill rapiding into the chuck of one of our CNC lathes? When it exploded I swear it shook the whole building. Thankfully I wasn't anywhere near it.

Anyway, really love what you're doing. Seeing your router finally convinced me to start building my own. Probably about halfway done with mine, won't be as nice as yours.

 

Bah, don't know why but my was not posted earlier. Here I go again...

Yeah, it is really humbling to watch these videos time from time. I have 2 precision vices and some edges are chamfered but those that need to be exactly square as you say, they are sharp...

Also, gloves! I am glad I am not the "only one" that uses gloves when it suitable. Makes me happy when other people use gloves when you should No need to ruin your hands when you don't need to.

I'm going to rant about what triggers me soooo hard when I am at workshops in general. I can't tell you enough how many times they have saved me from small crap that would make you either bleed or mess up your skin. I "always" (read sometimes) get crap from the "old guys" when I wear gloves. The good old "sissy hands" that needs gloves... That mentality is so damn stupid that I get angry. I usually wear "montage gloves" that are very thin if I am not doing anything heavy duty. Gives precision and at the same time protects you. And I always make sure to take them of when doing things that is dangerous, drilling or using the lathe (basically machines that spin). You don't want to get stuck with gloves because they get stuck and mess up your fingers or worse, pull you into a machine. Also, long sleeves are not good for the same reason, roll that shieeeeet up when using lathes.

The worst mentality is the, "I am going to 1 up on everything everyone else does". Resulting in people skipping just regular plain reason. If you are lifting big sheets of sheet metal, wear gloves! "I don't need it and I am so cool for not wearing gloves, and now I am going to tell others they are sissies for having gloves" resulting in less people wearing safety equipment due to peer pressure.

Sorry for the rant but this triggers me so hard... Fine ruin your own life, don't try and effect others. Bahhh!

Niiice! Really fun hearing about your work motivating others (at least somewhat) to do things! Makes me glad! Good luck with your machine! And also, take your time during setup and make sure everything is aligned, cant stress this enough. Because once you get it running it is "well, its FINE, ill change that later (which you never do )". Doing it right the first time saves A LOT of time and heartache

A "few" KW in those machines usually, spinning a few hundred kgs of material, coming to a stop in a blink of an eye

I bet the operator needed drawer change

 

That's a lot of incontinence confessions.
Shinji is joining the club!

 

Im feeling all nostalgic.....

I remember when most threads were like this.....