Build finished in the Netherlands (Haarlem)

Ok, so I set out to do this around Christmas but due to a day job, kids and several other activities my brother and I finished it just last weekend. So far it has milled two ‘try out jobs for me’.

The working area of my build is around 350 cm and 560 cm. We’ve got a Kress 800 attached to it. Since we had difficult with the Z axis, the max speed was 100 and is now down to 45 and it performs flawless however, not that quick, so I will probably start a testing session to see whether it can be upped to 55 or even higher.

Next is making sure the kress is mounted exactly in a 90 degree angle because it seems slightly off and seeing if I can control it from Repetier server on a Raspberry Pi. After that homing switches and getting educated on changing Bits during a job, I’ve seen several possible solutions for this but no ‘end to end’ how-to. This could really be a great subject for a blog post. I know how to do this might vary per setup, but a how-to for the default setup, ESTLCAM, Repetier Host and Marlin might help out a lot of starters.

Congrats on getting it done, looks good!

My firmware has the speeds maxed out (arduino processing limitations) if you use my recommended hardware and settings. Z axis is 8.7mm/s max (maybe 9 I think I left a buffer). If you want it to go faster change that axis to 16th stepping and you can double that speed. Careful though, speed should the last thing you worry about. Bit selection, feeds and speeds, perpendicularity, axis length, material mounting, all are more important to me.

As odd as it seems to most people, end stops on a cnc are very complicated. They do not make machining easier. When you mill something, typically, you mount the material first then zero the axis to it. If you add end stops you will then have to calibrate the end stops at the beginning of every job. Yes, they are recommended for bit changes but that is a relativity advanced subject, and you will need a z axis touch plate and calibrate the offset.