New Primo build in Illinois

Just built my own MPCNC Primo after printing a full set of parts for a friend’s build and getting jealous. Three weeks after starting the first print, I just plotted my first test crown and am excited to start milling! The assembly went much smoother than I expected; kudos to Ryan for an excellent design and to the user community for all of the testing!

I did hit one snag: The tension bolts can’t be properly tensioned if the teeth are biting on the far hole. After disassembling the trucks and filing the holes, the rest went off without a hitch. This would be useful information to include in the assembly instructions, even if it is common knowledge that I was lacking :slight_smile: .

The next steps are to print an electronics enclosure, run wiring, mount the spoilboard, and start learning CAM. My project queue includes a wooden wall map, some RC parts, and probably some laser engraving down the road.

Build details:

  • Primo 25.4mm
  • Stainless rails, 0.065"
  • 12x24 work area
  • Dual endstops
  • DeWalt 660
  • RAMPS 1.4, Mega, Raspberry Pi with Cncjs
  • MDF spoilboard with inserts

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The crown didn’t turn out too bad. The initial messiness was me futzing with the pen because it was just clamped on.

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Very nice, now just figure out how to manage all those wires :joy: I had the same fun!

Nice build! Welcome to the crowd! (My phone suggested “to the aristotelian”, I hope you don’t need to get into that…)

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Sharp spinning things and electrical wires, what could possibly go wrong?!

Just need to wait for a rainy day so I can muster the motivation to spent a few hours crimping and soldering!

Did my first test cut today, which worked great! I built an enclosure from 1/2” MDF, which is surprisingly effective at sound isolation.

I still have to add drag chains, a dust shoe, a laser, an enclosure for the vacuum… the list never ends, does it!

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Looks great. I dont know that I’d bother with drag chains. I’d just anchor the cables to the sides of the enclosure up high enough that they can’t sag down far enough to interfere with the work.

Thanks, will give that a try.

Any chance you could share your firmware as I am going to use ramps thanks

I’m running grbl based on the following source, which is a fork of grbl-Mega-5X. It adds dual end stop squaring and a few other customizations for the MPCNC:
https://alexpgh.github.io/foss-toolchain-mpcnc/zoom_1/

If you’re looking for Marlin, here’s a v1engineering page with links to firmware and RAMPS configuration:
https://www.v1engineering.com/marlin-firmware/

I started with Marlin but have been much happier after switching to grbl. It has better third-party support and some useful laser features which aren’t available yet in Marlin.

Good luck!