Sorry for the slow response, If you end up going back there I would love a quote. Most places don’t laser cut aluminum though. Usually water jet, sometimes milled. This Christmas season has been so busy I have not had a chance to get any new quotes.
The DXF is linked in the first post.
Will do. The shop i go to has laser cut a bunch of aluminum IAC block offs for me. They will not laser stainless. I will ask them, its usually pretty cheap.
If you see this today could you give me largest dimensions for this piece. i am at work at the moment and our CAD system is set for .ARD files so i cannot open this here. I just need to know length and width. Gonna price it for 1/8" or .125
i Lasecutted motor mounts from 4mm acrylic, 2x plates are much more stronger than printed so ill need 8mm acrylic.
next week ill check my local hardware stores if they have it then ill cut new plates.
Cut some out of aluminum, I used .085" and it works really well. It is much more rigid than the printed ones and the stepper that it is on is much cooler than the others.
ill cut those aluminium ones once i get the machine up and running, ill use those acrylic mounts untill i can cut tho out of aluminium.
Only thing is that aluminium plate costs alot where i live so it might take a while.
Any word on these water jet quotes? Any word on us DIY’ers having success with milling our own. I got a decent handle on this beast with 3d printing and am setting it up to mill next.
No good quotes yet. If I can catch up and get a little ahead on printed parts I will just mill them myself to sell.
You do have a mill, it would be a good thing to use it for. Just remember to keep the aluminum very close to the gantry and go slow. Go a bit slower than my vid.
What speed (rpm) did your spindle run at? The power of the spindle sounds more than enough, but most of these motors originally aimed at the woodworker market are too slow to move such a tiny bit through aluminium. A minimum of 15,000, netter 20,000 rpm is necessary. The speed of the cutting edge biting into the material to be cut away is significant. So, a larger mill diameter may be helpful for you.
Above that, did you remove the chippings? They can build up a real wall and get compressed, leading to broken tools. Compressed air and / or a good vacuum cleaner are a must!
Don’t use coolants for VHM tools - they get micro fissures and will crack VHM may get very hot without problems.
where do you source your aluminum, online or local?
I got it locally but am not happy with their prices or selection. So I might start looking online.
So with these you get great strength, but lose the easy connect for the wiring. So I guess we could make a new printed model to attach to one side to allow the ability to still quick connect. I liked the idea of not having to solder everything. I haven’t started my CNC build yet, but this will be a great thing to test aluminum cutting with and get some strength back. It’s good to see how much folks are still bringing this project to new levels. Thank you Ryan!
I still haven’t got a decent quote for these yet. I need to seen how long it takes me to make a set to see if its feasible to do this myself.
As for the wires, the wiring harness takes care of the ease of use. I took on that project instead of the mounts. The harness is much faster and cleaner than the solderless mounts.
Thanks for the compliment.
I work for a small production company, but the only machine we have that would do these parts is a haas vf1 mill. Probably can’t offer even close to pricing that a waterjet can offer.
Someone posted about wanting a plasma cutter attachment for the MPCNC. I run a Torchmate at school and I don’t really see a reason that the MPCNC couldn’t have a plasma cutter attachment. The Torchmate uses two nema 23 steppers the x axis and two on the y. The z is jut manual adjust. Of course you need to build a base designed for plasma cutting instead of mounting it to a table, but you could make a bunch of these parts just as fast as waterjet. Even the cheapest plasma cutter should do this job just fine. If I get in some 1/8th steel plate I can make a test piece.
If the machine was mine, I would do it for a little more than material costs+shipping, but I can’t offer that since I would be putting hours on a machine that doesn’t belong to me and the consumables for plasma cutting aren’t super cheap (though better than breaking endmills). Waterjet would be a cleaner cut initially, and I would probably make the holes undersized with the plasma cutter and then drill/ream them out to size.
It could be done out of aluminum too, but you would probably want a water bed because aluminum tends to make a mess by melting to the slats holding the piece up. Plus it melts so easily that it can fly up into the torch and clog it which burns up your consumables.
Last time I used a plasma the edges left a lot to be desired. I do plan on making a plasma add on when the weather gets a bit better but I doubt those 3mm holes would work. We’ll see, I just got in the production harnesses in so no more doing those by hand for 40 minutes each. I have a few projects to work on now, these mounts are one of them.
The edges with aluminum will leave a lot to be desired, but it isn’t hard in a metal shop to clean them up nice with a grinder and sander. I have gotten steel to have decent edges by playing with the plasma cutter’s power and the feed rate. I have only done a few cuts with the Torchmate, waiting on more scrap to play with before actually buying good stock. People that get them dialed in can get pretty good edges. Not waterjet good, but waterjets are many times more expensive than even a large cnc plasma cutter.
As for the holes I would redo the cad drawing before importing the dxf into the software. With small holes I would just make them points to get a pilot in the right place then drill them out. You could make a jig pretty easily to gang drill them or just hold them steady for one hole, drill one of the holes in each plate, then shift it for the other hole. That would take a while though. Once you got into a grove you could still do it cheaper than water jet unless you value your time very highly.
The machine I run maxes out at 2ft by 2ft, so you could fit 6 vertically and 7 horizontally so 42 in one 2x2 sheet of material, assuming autocad isn’t giving me weird dimensions. The cut would take a few minutes, but you wouldn’t have to be totally babysitting it. You could be drilling the previous batch or cleaning up bad edges.
I will make this one of my practice cuts next time I get scrap about the right thickness and see how good I can get it to turn out. I might end up making them from steel since I haven’t printed them yet anyway.
What wiring harness do you speak of? I looked through the remix stuff on thingiverse, and must have missed it.
https://www.v1engineering.com/product/wiring-harness/
Plug and play, no more cutting the stepper plugs off.
I work for a small welding fabrication business that mostly does stainless steel and mild steel construction with some occasional aluminum work. My one job most of the time is to make CAD files from customer’s drawings on napkins or whatever and also keep our plasma table constantly running, so I see a ton of metal get torched by plasma. If a customer wants perfectly straight edges and super tight tolerances I send the drawings for milling or water jet at another shop. The kerf and arc wander of a plasma torch work best for stuff like 3/4 plate that is going to get a grinder on it anyway before it’s welded together. I know that plasma isn’t the best option for this but it’s possible.
With that said…
It’s still worth doing for other things.
I’m almost finished with my MPCNC at home and you’d better believe that I’ve already ordered a pen style plasma torch to stick on there and cut with.
Congratulations Drew…You just became our resident expert on plasma!
I will be getting mine going with some tax money, if there is some. We can play 1000 questions as soon as I have it running. I have only used a plasma in a body shop a long time ago on a handful of cars so you are the new go to expert. 
I’ll be glad to help in any way that I can. I’ve been lurking here for quite a while I like this project and it makes my head spin just thinking about possibilities with a modular system like this.
