Hi, y’all. I’m working on a 34" by 30" MPCNC here at home. I’m really loving it, too! What an awesome machine! The Z height will be about 4" or so, using a cheap 400 watt spindle off Amazon. I’ve got a Mega/Ramps combo using 8825 drivers and a cute little PWM to 10V board to give me variable spindle speed. It all seemed to work pretty well together when spread out on the workbench.
I made a nice square roll around stand for it, but haven’t gotten a proper top, yet. The plywood on there now is not particularly flat, even with the other piece screwed down to it. I think a sheet of MDF might need to come home with me soon. Initial tests last night showed it to be almost perfect for size and square. That “graph paper” thing I printed was 200x250mm and might be part of a mm different along the 2 diagonals. I guess I need to draw one of those crown things, huh? I still need to work on getting the legs leveled better, and building a box for the electronics. I’m also thinking of adding a max Z endstop and one of those hockey-puck things for a Z probe.
Anyway, that’s it for now. Thanks again, Ryan! This machine is great fun and it’s not even completed yet.
Okay, it’s dirtied up. I grabbed a 2x6 cutoff from my scrap bin to mess around with, and figured I’d invent a power planer. A pretty slow one, at that. After watching my shell-script-generated gcode go back and forth I remembered all the NYCCNC videos I’ve watched - I should have made a spiral path around the block. It would have cut cleaner. At least I’m learning. The first picture is while it’s doing a 1mm deep cut at F800 with a 2mm stepover. I then went back with a 0.2 mm finishing pass that really cleaned it up. The second picture is after just a vacuuming.
The bit is an 1/8" two-flute from precisebits.com. I got it ages ago when I was going to play with mounting a dremel to my 3d printer to do circuit board stuff. That project never materialized, but thankfully that gave me a nice bit for my MPCNC.
Next will be to hook up the PWM to control-voltage board so I can turn the spindle on and set the speed through gcode.
Where abouts? I’m in the Frisco area. I’m new to all of this and I’d really like the opportunity to meet some of you guys and maybe find someone to show me the ropes and have a beer!
I’m in North Richland Hills, but I’m definitely not somebody to show anyone some ropes about CNCing. I’ve built this one machine and cut a whopping three things with it… and the last one taught me things I didn’t know about Fusion 360 CAM, like “select the bottom of the area next time so maybe it’ll cut below the surface”. Now you know as much as me.
I think for learning in the D/FW area, I’d check out the Dallas Makerspace (Google it for directions). They have open house on Thursday nights, and if I remember correctly they have a Shapeoko machine. I’m not a member, so please contact them with any questions.
