My 20-year old Daughter and I just got it going enough to test the movement. Everything works fairly well, although I think my ramps is a bit spotty (should have not tried to get it cheap in the first place), so I just ordered the setup from Vicious. Otherwise its looking good so far.
Still need to add wire sleeves, and the tool mounts. I’ll start with 3D extruder to make rough box for my ramps/arduino. I’ll swap with a d660 to make the router, but for now a pen taped to the z is what I’m using for calibrations.
Note: I see some folks using hacksaws to cut tubing. A small inexpensive pipe cutter works faster, cleaner and precise! follow that up with a debur tool ($7) and everything looks factory made. the debur tool works on almost anything given some light touch, so its useful for more than pipe cleanup.
Now I need to learn how to get items sent from Fusion 360 over to the machine. I did a quick test using repetier and Estlcam and it worked…albeit very jerky due to the texture of the conduit.
Does the coating on the emt conduit wear-in? Or do I need to do something? its very bumpy right now.
Table working area: Y24" X36" Z4"
Were calling this machine ‘Kermit’.
Thanks for all the forum posts. This is an incredible piece of engineering!
I used a pipe cutter. I don’t know if it’s something wrong with my cutter or the surface of the conduit, but I kept spiraling instead of ending back at the starting place. But I was able to force it to work.
My conduits “scales” didn’t really flake off, but they got flattened. IIRC, I made a simple gcode file that went in diagonals for a few minutes. If you had a 600mmx900mm cutting area you could do this:
G01 F900
G01 X600 Y900
G01 X0 Y0
Over and over…
And do something similar for the z. You know, something like that. It will think 0,0 is where it’s turned on, unless you reset it… It shouldn’t be able to break itself, but use your head.
Green looks good. I think you’ll change the nickname to slimer once it starts making a mess :).
Jeff those pipe cutters will walk sometimes, but if you always cut it with the cutting wheel trailing, not leading the cutter runs much truer. Also a light pass until it grooves.
I second the info Bill gave is a bit hard on the wrists compared to a chop saw…but I lack a chop saw.
the debur tool vicious mentions is the absolute best for sure.
I used a pipe cutter…but man was it a lot of work. I then lost my pipe cutter when I went to cut larger rails to enlarge my machine and bought a new one. But the new one was cheaper and made from plastic. Didn’t work at all. No matter what I did it wouldn’t follow a groove once it was snug enough to even leave a mark. So borrowed a friends chop saw and did it the easy way.
The deburring tool was great on the chopsaw cuts. But on the pipe cutter cuts it didn’t do a lot of good, I took my dremel with a grinding stone and cleaned up the bulk of the inside with that then went over it with the deburring tool and some sandpaper on the ones I cut with the pipe cutter.
I also printed and installed caps on the ends since I didn’t want my daughter sticking her fingers in there in case I didn’t deburr as well as I thought I did. I still have a scar on my leg from an incident with a burr on a steel tube when I worked in a shop making suspension seats for off road vehicles for a few years
