Hello everyone.
I am in the midst of a very slow building in the St. Louis area.
I am piecing together an MPCNC currently and will be posting updates in this thread as I progress. I look forward to interacting with you all and also getting this thing up and running!
I don’t have any pictures but will start posting some as I acquire more things.
Where at in the st.louis area
I am over in Edwardsville
I am making some progress. It is truly amazing how this is coming together. Everything just works!
Back story: A friend of mine told me about the MPCNC,that he andw going to build one and I decided I’d like to build one as well. He did all the hard work and printed all the parts for me and all I have to do is assemble the machine.
I’ll post more as I make more progress.
This community is amazing and thank you all, esp Ryan, for all the effort put into this!
Sounds good, I’m in the Arnold area just down hwy 55 I’ve finished my first build a few months ago now working on my larger one
Sweet looking build!
Update: I have the rails set up and am test fitting everything. Due to being not smart, have conduit from both Lowe’s and Home Depot in the build. The Conduit from Lowe’s is very smooth on the OD but seems out of round. The roller bearings torqued snuggly glide across the conduit effortlessly.The conduit from Home Depot was tex like tiny waves. I could not get the conduit from Home Depot into the assemblies without loosening the bearings in the assembly. Even then there was a significant inertial force required to get assemblies moving along the conduit. I’ll be heading to Lowe’s to grab another piece of conduit.
For me that discovery was bitter sweet. I have not tested it in a couple years but the smooth stuff at the time was super soft and the bearings quickly wore it out. The texture on the other stuff comes right off with use (zinc) and it works great.
Hey, I’m close too. Southern Jefferson County. Will be working on a job in Arnold this summer.
Would like to see your build in person Jason. I’m wanting to get the drag chains, but not sure how to mount. Just ordered a 3m section yesterday.
I sanded the conduits fairly extensively before installation. Before, they looked the ones pictured here:
What grit sand paper did you use?
Can you provide a link to the cable chain mounts you are using on the conduit, motor and z axis. I really like the look. I am in the middle of a build and am working on cable management.
Don’t remember, maybe 80 - 120.
Cool, thanks. Always good to see how others did things… gets the mind aware of other ways to do it. I’ve been working on some mounts myself.
The rest of my cable chains will come in tomorrow. I could post some pics and my stl/F360 files once done. I made some conduit inserts, works really well.
Take your time, enjoy it. For some the build is the project. In the first year there were probably 50% that finished there build and then asked, “what should I make”? HAHAHA That is how the MP3DP came to be.
X axis movement (1 stepper set up)
Z axis movement - seems kind of loud and rattly
My SD card isn’t reading so I can’t do a trial crown but I’ll figure that out here shortly.
My next steps are to rip some small 3/4" MDF boards on a table saw and glue them to build a U shape base with an inner width of 24" that will sit on top of a cabinet topped with MDF. My idea is to buy 24" wide sheets of MDF and insert them into the U shape for cutting things, or else mount them to the table with clamps.
After the base is constructed and everything physically mounted, my next focus will be wiring. I’d love to cut out some panels to create a box for the control board and power supply but I’m not sure I want a janky rigged machine doing actual work.
Those Z movements are reallly fast, are you sure your steps are correct? Is a 20mm command actually moving 20, or 40?
It’s on my list of things to do. I was able to run the crown gcode through the SD card and it moved around, maybe not completely accurately but that’s ok, so i’m calling this a great success for now.
Now time to refocus on all the basics and get the machine installed as it should be.
Thanks Ryan!
I never set the default step size parameters in the Marlin config.
I have 16T pullies installed right now and changed the default value from 80 to 200 and that took care of the X and Y axis.
The Z axis was set at 4000; this is still in progress and I’ll use the prusa calculator to get this figure out.
It appears that the Z axis is ‘missing’ some steps; when I run the test crown, it’s not processing the Z0.5 step properly and there is a significant offset at the finish of the crown (10+mm) versus when I zero the Z axis at the start of the crown. More to come.
Welp, fried my board doing something stupid.
Now to figure out how to repair smd. I think I blew a 6 pin voltage regulator but I am not knowledgeable enough to really know. I have no idea what to replace it with. See you guys in a few months.
That is why I stopped carrying import ramps, this was the last straw. The 5V reg’s popped under the “strain” of the LCD led’s…Lame, they should handle a lot more. I have some real 4 pin ones in the shop maybe you can cross reference for a 6 pin version vs your boards schematics.
