A few months ago I saw a CNC Mill listed on defcad website. It is intended to work metal for gun parts. Very small work area. But one idea that I really liked about it was the fact that its spindle is mounted horizontally. That way all the metal shavings would just fall down into a collection bin at the bottom. I can’t get that idea out of my head.
For those of you that have done this CNC router/mill thing for a while I have to ask. Would it be worth it to have a machine designed to be wall mounted? I mean we secure out material to the spoil board anyway. So that wouldn’t be any different. It would make it so the machine takes up a little less room in a shop. Dust would still need to be vacuumed but chips could just fall. It would make it so gravity is less likely to cause a fire.
Then after the “Is it worth it” question we would need to ask “how to make it work?” My brain goes all over the place for this one. Everything from counter weights attached to the G2 belts to barn door type hanging roller mounts. My brain is formulating a design that is similar to the Low rider with different roller setup.
In both the MPCNC and the LR, the Z axis is a screw, because it’s substantially more torque. That’s to combat gravity. Additionally, the gravity helps the leadscrew bottom out, which eliminates the backlash. These are the big reasons why you don’t see angled mpcnc or lrs.
I do have a maslow cnc and the total floor space it takes up is about 30" by 120" by about 7’ tall. There are actually quite a few people who have hinged the frame to the wall so it hangs flat against the wall when not in use. It does rely heavily on gravity to move the router around and you do lose a little accuracy in the corners. The original designer has quit selling the kits recently but has been working with some different people who are interested in offering kits and there should be several different purchasing options sometime between (hopefully) next week to shortly after the first of the year.
It is a large format cnc designed to work with 4x8 material but some long time users (2+ years) are getting really nice results with finer details. Other people have made some very impressive large signs, furniture, kayak frames, a tear drop camping trailer.
My total build cost ended up being just under $700 but I added some aftermarket options to it.
Some people have had some difficulty calibrating it but I had no issues with it (I think they were people that were not real comfortable around computers in general and thought it would be a plug and play type machine. Surprise! Is any cnc machine like that? For under $1000, I mean).
All in all the pluses outweigh the minuses for what I personally use it for and my MPCNC takes care of the little (under 24 x 30") fiddly items I want to make with finer detail (plus I can turn it into a 3d printer down the road if I want to)
I am currently happy with both machines considering I have less than $1300 total investment which is way cheaper than my last hobbies (trap shooting - 2 shotguns = $2500, reloader = $400 + shell components for about 5 months a year or golf - clubs = $1400 - green fees, cart and ammo, I mean golf balls $75+ every time for only 5 months of the year)
A few people are looking at tilting tables for storage, and theres no reason this concept couldnt be adapted for wall mounting.
For actual use though I think the designs rely a lot on gravity to help and keep the required forces reasonable. You’d be looking at a very slow x axis and counter weighting or spring loading a lot to make this worth it.
I’m not sure exactly what is your question about. Do you mean “how to modify a MPCNC or a lowrider to be able to cut on a vertical plane” or just “how to build a completely new machine”?
If the goal is to modify Ryan’s machines, I guess you’d have to replace the belt systems for Y and replace the lead screw for Z. You could keep the belt for X. You’d have to use zero backlash ball screws instead of those, or at the very least for the Z axis since you might be able to get around with gravity on Y to limit the backlash with standard lead screws.
That would be a pretty extensive mod but perfectly doable, the only issue would be the cost as ball screws are expensive. You’d have also probably to use bigger motors, and of course bigger drivers to drive them. For a vertical MPCNC you’ll also be likely to add some kind of 45 degree support under the corner to help carrying the load, or use the same technique I’ve used on my table, with the corner tubes going through some big wooden posts.
Now that I’m thinking about this, it would be quite hard to use a low rider vertically because you’d have a hard time to counter the gravity dragging the Z assembly down, it would be likely to get a variable angle depending on Z height and so it would be hard to keep it square from the table. So I guess you’d have to use the MPCNC as a basis for better results.
Nothing really impossible if you’re ready to mod extensively the CAD files, that’s quite a lot of work but I see no reason why this shouldn’t work.
I originally posted the thought just to hear what everyone thought of the idea. I wanted to start a conversation to first establish if it was a good idea or not. Then if it is a good idea I wanted to hear ideas on how to make it work.
For other people I thought the idea of using less floor space would be desirable. For me the best advantage would be chip control. The shop vac gets gummed up with the stringy stuff. If I do more aluminum then the chips could build up and cause a problem.
I love the suggestions posted here. It gives me a lot of neat ideas. And a lot of valid points on what would work and what would not. I don’t have immediate plans to try to make one but maybe in the future.
For now I just need to find a way to move my MPCNC out of the way when I need to use my table saw because the CNC is sitting on top of it.
Somewhere around here is another thread about standing one up on edge. We went through a lot of pros and cons in there. The hardest part is counterbalancing the spindle.