once my confidence with the machine grew i finally ventured in to alu milling.... with TERRIBLE results, screaming mill and terrible tooling marks. after 3 weeks i finally worked out what was wrong, no coolant/lubrication, so out came the WD40 and away we went the arclight main bezel for the front of the roof if a plane sheet of 1.3mm alu shaped and contoured to fit in to a recess in the existing factory plastics to say that the milling went very well would be an understatement, the results are fantastic, i will be doing way more alu work in the future including my own custom grills for sale the lesson here...... WD40 is your friend on to the REAL work some time ago i designed this bezel for the arclight based on the mk7 ironman cheat arc, at the time i did not have the ability to bring it to life..... now i do and so the madness begins starting with a massive block of plexi (300x200x20mm) and a psychotic grin, the mill went in to action, to keep a fairly good finish and prevent melting of the pexi, i invested in some coolant (you will spot the chips chance colour a few times depending on the coolant i am testing in each phase) the endmills i am using are designed to go no deeper then 12mm and i am going down to 20mm so lots of coolant is being used to try to push the working limits, and thankfully it worked far better then expected the above shots represent 3 hours of mill time, going super slow to avoid trouble
Very cool little CNC machine. May I ask how much you paid for it, shipping and all included? Got a couple of CNC questions. I hope you don't mind! And how many milling bits were shipped with it? Are milling bits generic, so any milling bit will fit this machine? I assume that the "Home" header is for stopping the machine before it goes beyond the boundaries of the material currently being milled, or what? If yes, shouldn't that "Home" switch be movable, depending on the size of the material currently being worked with? What is a "Probe" header good for? I am assuming that the knob on the control box is for setting the speed of the mill - but am I right about that? The parallel cable is for... what? Connecting the control box to a PC? I don't think that modern motherboards would have parallel ports these days, so would one need to purchase a PCI-E card with a parallel port on in order to use this machine? What's the software like? Easy to program/work with? Which type of file formats can you import in the software?
HI Mads Machine plus shipping was £650 Ask any questions you need to dude The home header is a simple V and ground connection you can attach a switch to, when that switch is triggered by part of the CnC physically hitting the switch it send a signal to the control software telling it that the machine is now at "home" AKA coordinate ZERO. The home switches set the master cordinates that any other offsets you give the mill work from, they are considered to be absolute cordinates The parralel cable does indeed connect the control box to the PC, you buy a parralel PCI card for about 5 euros almost anywhere (with the proximity of the pc to the mill and the debris it produces a cheap PC is best) The knob on the control box is for the motor speed on the router (the speed the machine actually moves is governed by the control software on the PC) The probe is to allow you to use a special tool that detects edges of material (if metal) and sets the mill automatically with the offsets for that work piece. it can also be used to tell the control software how long your endmill cutting bit is in order to set the Z axis modeling software - solidworks or any that can export IGES tool paths created in Visual mill and exported to G code g-code reader/mill control - mach3 A new user can use both visual mill and mach3 but oth also cater for very advanced setups if you need them to milling bits (endmills) are as generic as a drill bit, if it fits in your collet (collets clamp in 1mm incriments 1-8mm) then you can use it
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/CNC-3040T...479?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_3&hash=item19d9aede6f This is the same machine and same seller as the one i have
continued...... after getting the centre to full depth the tricky work can begin, the endmills i use have a flute that is 12mm long, this limits me to 12mm depth or i will not get any kinf of chip evac when cutting......... but i ignored that and took them 20mm deep mach3 with custom skin displaying tool paths and the current positions of the axis, just about to start fork on the epics above i am skipping sections of programs or making ones that leave out large areas of the design specificaly to allow me more sway room as i get closer to completion first roughing (horizontal roughing) for one of the arms, using vegitable oil (liberated from my chip pan) as an ad hoc lube, as this is cast plexi it melts if you even breath on it. the tooling looks a bit rough as ive not cleaned up all the debris in the shot... the results even at extream depth were very pleasing, although oil as lube does make the chips look horrible and a nightmare to clean up the eagle eyes may notice the slight lip on the bottot of the right arm, after finishing the left i decided to change max depth to 19.5mm to give me a ,5mm tab to help keep the part stable later and to stop the coolant from destroying my baseboard
continued.... erm.... some more back to milling the center this time leaving zero stock, this was make or break, if i had planned anything wrong the whole piece would be ruined, but it seemed that lick was on my side full cleanup can wait until all the cutting is complete for some scale many many hours later we have this, i quite like the liered effect of the roughing but this is destined to have a smooth finish finishing took less than an hour, meer seconds compared to the time the entire roughing took and this is what we and up with well thats me up to date, more updates in a week
thanks dude, now to plan the revised loop, replacing the res with a pair more fitting the theme (EK 1590) and adding GPU loop, there may me POM involved
just a quick message to my followers I have been rather ill this week and completely unable to even look at a power tool let alone operate it safely, i am now recovering and will be back to my insane self in a few short days
Subscribed. Looking excellent, love that latest piece. And get well soon. And excuse the overuse of emoticons, kinda hooked on them.
Really? I'd always thought the key was elbow grease, sanding paper and polishing... Looking very, very good! Can't believe I ignored this for so long!
The finishing was with a ballnose, 4mm ball with 1mm stepover and 1mm step down, I could have taken it to 0.05 but then I am left with nothing to do by hand. If I had pieces I had no hand tool work on It wouldnt feel like my work
BEHOLD AN UPDATE.... yes, yes, I know, took my sweet time. HEY!! you try modding and having 6 kids So where were we, Time for the Arclight front lower bezel, the AZZA9000 has a split front bezel due to the front mounted PSU, After several weeks of anguish I finally found an intake design that fits the theme, twin Horizontal slots it is!!! TO THE CAD SOFTWAREEEEEEEE!!!! Not the most complicated design by a long way, but the look im going for is very stark Once the dimentions are worked out for the raw material its on to cutting out some 1.3mm alu sheet, time for the new toy AND YES I DO HUM THE JAWS THEME WHEN CUTTING I had been debating for a while on buying these but for under £20 worth a shot I am actually quite impressed how easy they are to cut wit and how accurate you can cut... as an added bonus the bi-product seems to be "traditional" jewelry..... IT has been a while since i fired up the mill so after a lot of maintenance (read playing with WD40)we were back in action ..... And yes, i do love taking pics of the mill running All done, the opposite side has been shelled out at the ends a little to make bending easier for fitting Bring on the rough sanding and surface finishing Damn did i really let it get this dusty 10mins of rotary tool and some cussing at a piece of plastic in the eye (keep those glasses on kids!!!!) 15mins of hammering, inc getting told off my my wife for using the metal legs of the kitchen units as a former to hammer on...... Shaping was a lot easier then i expected (i have no metal forming tools bar a very large rubber mallet), mostly thanks to the shelling i did to the ends on the mill one final test fit Heres a little context as to where on the front this piece goes.... yeah its massive LATER......... Once again Tauntauns are roaming Hell and ye another day has been spent modding, just a short update this time (someone who shall not be named forgot to take pictures) picture several hours of cutting and filing......... Did you enjoy that?..... GOOD!! And suddenly the insanity and clashing panel scheme makes sence (IT AINT MODDING UNLESS YOU HAVE BARE FEET IN SHOT) test illumination on the Arclight intake, whilst it was milled as all one piece i masked out the center and sprayed the rest matt black. The effect is a little too bright with the Vegas fan, i may spray the blades black and just use the ambient light from the ring of LEDs to illuminate the center What do you think? leave as is or get rid of the reflection from the fan blades? Stay tuned for more Arclight coming soon (I PROMISE) and a new side long project on commission to be called 'SMITE'. Watch this space
