CNC Router

so guys...how's your machines coming along? i used mine to cut a bottom flange for a kalkreactor im building. just a simple 4"circle with a 1/8" deep groove in it so the reactor body has something to seat into. this was my first outing into the world of cad/cam but its been pretty intuitive so far. i'm surprised at the results i get with a machine made of mdf and iron pipe/skate rail slides. the next project is going to be a twist-lock flange a'la Spazz - style, for the top of the kalkreactor.





the reason it looks out of round, is because it is out of round. all i have laying around is small scrap pieces of acrylic, so i had to hold it by hand while the router was cutting it. it got a lil too close for comfort while it was cutting and i let it slip while cutting the outer circle. it moves quite fast and can be potentially dangerous especially when youre dumb like me and hold the workpiece lol.
 
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You better count your lucky stars you still have all your fingers. In the future, NEVER EVER have your hand in the CNC router while it is running. You can keep the piece of acrylic in place by securing boards around the acrylic so it can't shift in any direction, keeping your hands safe. :eek2:
 
lol i know it was a very dumb thing to do...and i am an icu nurse! i plan to make some screw-downs to secure the workpieces to the cutting bed. just got excited that i was actually cutting something i drew up on my own (as simple as it is!). no doubt that it could take some fingers...it cuts .25"acrylic at 80 ipm. lets see some machine progress pix and pix of things everyone's made!
 
Mine still looks the same. I still need electronics and time. I have been swamped at work and we are in the process of selling the house so the wife gets ****ed when I make a mess in the garage right now. Mine is probabaly on hold until after we move.

Thats cool seeing your first piece being cut though.
 
ANything I can buy that is similar to what you guys are building? Seems like I have little to no time.
 
blfuller: sorry to hear that. it will be worth it in the end though. thats a nice machine you've got started on. no doubt my next one will be steel or 8020 al for the frame, gantry and so on; with real linear railslides instead of the homebrew stuff of skate bearings and pipe lol.

dattack: sure you can buy them. you can get turnkey cnc minimills for around 5000$. you can also purchase manual mini mills starting at like 500$ and retrofit them to cnc by adding steppers, drivers, computer etc. it looks to be cheaper to go the retrofit path and you can choose the strength of the steppers. those are mills; however, what we have are cnc routers. our machines arent supposed to be as accurate and use a hi speed spindle to do the work. mines worked pretty good so far for the wood and acrylic that i've thrown at it. i wouldnt try to cut aluminum or anything like that with it, though.
 
i would slow down your IPM feed rate to 60 IPM for a 1/4" bit amd 40 IPM for a 1/8" bit. the cuts will be smoother and easier to glue to. less chip out and better bubble free seams. slower is always better with acrylic. but there is too slow also. i have found these feed rates o be the best on my router. also bit quality really does matter. i have special bits cut from a local carbide bit cutter that work the best at plunging and linniar cutting. most router bits dont plunge worth a crap and break the bottoms out of drill holes. so choose your bits wisely. here is the place i get my bits from.
he does custom cutter bits for just about any application you can think of. he custom grinds my bits on a state of the art cnc grinder.
http://www.accuratecuttergrinding.com/index.html
 
Hey spazz, how are you making the ramps for your twist lock rings?

I made one set from a 3d cad drawing and then used Cut3D from Vectric to rasterize the cuts and used a 1/8" ball mill. The result was a decent set of lock rings but they took 3 1/2 hours to cut! I am still pretty green when it comes to this stuff.
 
cool thanks for the tip Spazz! i went with 80ipm because it cut it without stalling the motors and didnt want to go so slow as to melt the acrylic. i'll slow it down. the endmills i have are from whiteside and were about 20$ each. they are .125" and .156" 2 flute spiral upcut. how many increments are you cutting the acrylic down with?

i would also like to see how the ramps are coded for. im wondering what you guys use for CAD? currently i'm using CamBam a free open source combined cad/cam program. its still early in development but is pretty powerful (at least to me, it is). it works good until i can decide what to drop the coin on.
 
mine are 2 flute spiral upcuts. i think they are better suited towards wood cutting. however they cut the .25" acrylic just fine. i may have to order some single flute cutters. no store around here has the endmills i need. they are either too large a diameter cutter or the shank is not the right size for my hitachi router.
 
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