3.) I will buy the hardware kit v3 with the Makita collet. Are there any „sharp stuff“ from the shop I should order as well? (Especially for PCBs/Acrylic? I only have ordered the barebone Makita 0702 yet)
4.) Is there any recommendation where to buy the „steel tubes“ in Europe/Germany?
5.) Why is PLA recommended for the printed parts instead of PETG? Implant on printing the parts myself in PETG.
6.) I’ve read that you can change the Makita for a Diode Laser as well, is this true?
7.) Am I right, if you can use a diode laser, you can use an rotary axis attachment as well? (Just plug it into the Y axis)
Thanks in advance for your time answering my questions
PLA is stiffer than PETG and does not flex as much. Use PLA. It has been tested and discussed around 100 times here.
I bought the Open CNC Shield, a German board, that I really like. You might want to have a look at it. There won’t understandably be much support from this forum though.
Definitely buy the collet for the Makita router. It’s not available in Germany, only in America made by Elaire (those are the ones Ryan sells). I’d also order the aluminium plates, cutting them in Germany is more expensive. I’d also get the YZ plates if you don’t have a CNC available.
If you are by chance close to Oldenburg you could also come visit and look at a working LR3.
What is the „best“ board around for the LowRider v3?
Just about any board that runs Marlin and supports five stepper drivers will work for an MPCNC. Their performance will be similar. There is a small (and only potential) benefit in having a 32-bit board run at 24V (rather than 12V). So, in my mind, the selection process is more about how much work is necessary to get the firmware running. V1 maintains a limited set of firmware setups. The easiest path is to pick a board, driver, and display that exactly matches one of these setups. Note that only the setups for the Rambo and SKR Pro boards are tested by V1. Problems with the rest are identified by community use.
When you branch out beyond these setups, there is more work involved. If you run into trouble getting another setup working, usually the forum/community can help you, but it does involve setting up an environment to compile the firmware, and mucking about in the settings.
One benefit to selecting either the SKR Pro or the Rambo board is that there are 3D models for LR3 housings for the electronics available on Printables and/or Thinkiverse.
Make PCBs like in this video: youtu.be/7EctuSTL7-w
People struggle with making PCBs using CNC machines. This is not limited to the V1 machines. Plan on a lot of testing and experimentation. You might be better off using a laser head on your machine to etch a mask and using a traditional acid bath.
Engrave transparent acrylic
I’ve seen some nice engravings on transparent acrylic done by diamond drag bits. I’m not sure of a source for these bits in your country.
If you’re talking about milling solder mask off of pads like that you would at least need surface leveling, which requires using bCNC or other software to remap the gcode based on a grid of probed points. Even with surface leveling, milling solder mask like that is something I haven’t seen anyone do on these machines. I’ve milled many PCB’s fine, but I don’t use soldermask (just con-coat after solder/testing). Even without the soldermask work, just milling the copper traces is much more difficult without surface leveling.
Do you have a specific laser had in mind for etching a mask?
I don’t. I’ve never used a laser for generating PCBs. Over the last year I’ve done a lot of cutting and engraving with the NEJE40640, and I’m very happy with the performance compared to what I paid. These days, more money, gets more power, but higher power may result in less resolution. If I personally were purchasing a laser just for PCBs and other engraving-only tassk, and I did not want to spend a lot of money, I’d pick the NEJE40630.
