Top Ten Lessons

Mostly Printed CNC - MPCNC Advice
1

I built a MPCNC from parts purchased here and have been running it a while now. For the sake of other beginners I want to share what I learned.

In no particular order:

  1. The easiest and best way to find loose nuts is to run the machine and see which ones fall off.
  2. Squareness is the highest virtue
  3. Inches aren’t small things. They’re huge.
  4. Adjusting the belts to exactly the right tightness isn’t a task, it’s a vocation.
  5. It is possible to cut stainless steel with a hand tool. Don’t.
  6. Wood is a wonderful material. Warm, beautiful, and on the whole easy to work with. But cheap plywood only becomes more evil the longer it sits in Home Depot. Burn it and send it back to Hell.
    7 Zip ties are your one true friend.
    8 Don’t be scared. The stepper motors make that sound because they love you.
    9 Double check the min/max coordinates in the Gcode unless cutting a hole in your table really is the job at hand.
  7. There’s always more dust.

Also, this forum is invaluable.

Thank you all.

8 Likes
2

So freaking awesome!

To go along with number 3, 3a)Just because you get a set a set of calipers doesn’t mean your dimensions need to be prefect to every decimal place they can display, no dimension is ever exact. Stop going grey over it.

3

That’s amazing. Well done John.

4

love it! thanks!