How often and how much? Didnt want to gum it up with grease and sawdust so i havent put anything on it, still turns freely but im probably pushing my luck
On the MPCNC there is a lead screw for the z axis. I have only lightly greased it once and it works great 2 years later.
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Is there anything useful that can be done with sawdust? Now im just asking every random thought that has crossed my mind
Hereās a great machine thatās affordable and gives great results:
< $250 - BIQU 3D Printer, B1 SE Plus Auto Leveling 3D Printer
And itās a newer ābig brotherā to this more affordable predecessor:
< $200 - BIQU B1 FDM 3D Printer
ā¦But of the two, I recommend the newer, bigger one, as it comes with nice features added on, that donāt come on the smaller one, and would have to be bought separately. An auto-leveling thing comes stock on the bigger one. To get auto leveling on the smaller one, is usually done by buying an after market product called BLTouch, and installing it. Just that one item has the smaller one costing about as much as the bigger one.
With a shop vac hooked to a LowRider, you can suck up the sawdust before it flies loose in your shop. And with my āFloating Z dust shoeā mod, the performance of the dust collection is pretty impressive.
I eventually shelled out for a big Harbor Freight dust collector thing (advertised as 2HP). Shop vacs are āhigh pressure, low volumeā whereas the big dust collector is ālow pressure, high volume.ā Thatās a whole debate. Both can work.
EDIT: just realized you were likely asking about recycling it somehow as opposed to collecting it. Sorry. No successful ideas there yet.
Iāve seen a few quite outlandish things but when Iāve dressed a bunch of untreated timber in the past, Iāve emptied my dust collector onto the garden beds as mulch/carbon. Sprinkling it into a compost bin is also a great way to improve carbon material in the compost if youāre typically only producing kitchen waste or if you have a lot of green matter like grass clippings. Not 100% sure Iād do this with plywood chips, havenāt looked into that personally.
Not a bad idea to keep a bucket around for dealing with oil/coolant spills, too.
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Welcome to this community. Our forums donāt work like that. You wonāt get flamed, even for the most noobie of questions.
Thank Ryan for this. He fostered this community around the awesome set of machines that heās designed, shared, and which he sells kits and parts for, and supports.
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Thanks man, much appreciated. Im currently working on a collection system using using a 200cfm inline fan from an oldā¦ carbon filter setup i needed. runs quiet, think it will do the trick
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oh, i like the ākitty litterā idea, i spill alot more oil than id like to admit
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Not sure you would know but how do you think that jackpot board would compare to the board that came with this fox alien? Im starting to get the feeling my board is a piece of shit. Pardon my french.
Wow. Fast threadā¦
We try to be not so much that way here. Pretty mellow overall, and āuse the search functionā is pretty much never a reply to a problem. āUse the search functuon to find the way Doug solved thst oneā might come up, but usually with a quick overview at least.)
Not familiar with your machine specifically, but in general, my position is āif it aināt brokeā¦ā Well, I say that but did some of that upgrading.
Different boards might have different capabilities. I built my first CNC on a Mega 2560, and it had some trouble with the math for arcs and curves, resulting in some jerky performance on some tool paths. 2 solutions were to upgrade to a 32 bit board with better floating point math, or change my software workflow to just use straight segments (also perfectly valid.) I chose a new board with firmware more familiar to me.
Which of course is the other side. The Mega 2560 ran.Marlin, and I didnāt like needing to recompile firmware to get config changes. I am quite familiar with RepRap Firmware, so I chose a Duet 2 Wifi to run my CNC, and now I have 2 CNC machines and a laser running on Duet boards (as well as 3 3D printers.)
Mostly though if your software chain works for your machine, and performance is adequate, there really isnāt much reason to upgrade.
If you want support from specific software, then that can be a reason.
Around here, nost people currently run Marlin, which is primarily a 3D printer formware, but we are increasingly moving to FluidNC (compatable woth GRBL.) If you donāt know what that meansā¦ it may not matter, but GRBL is a very widely supported firmware, so if other application support is a problem, this can be a solution.
Beginner upgrades? Again not as familiar withnthe FoxAlien, but anything that makes for a stiffer, more rigid machine will be helpful. The router will also be helpful, more cutting power means less strain on parts.
For here, that means LowRider.
The table is possibly the biggest cost, and the biggest variable. Itās not hard to get in under the $500 USD mark, particularly if you already have a good router (and the Makita is excellent.)
Heavily depends on your confort.
I use Fusion360 most of the time for design. There are good tutorials for Estlcam on the v1e site.
Most of my Fusion360 learning was from youtube, there are some decent beginner series out there. I have a pretty basic grasp myself, but enough that I can usually figure out how to do what I want to do.
I do not know about the board in the Fox Alien. Iām impressed with the Jackpot.
@Ed_Machine
Yes, and I should have mentioned, my earlier quote / estimate did not include a table. Machine only.
And being you mentioned you already have a Makita routerā¦ Probably less than I quoted, I think.
A āLowriderā is the term applied to a car or truck that has an extreme pneumatic or hydraulic suspension, often allowing it to look like the chassis is sitting directly on the ground.
The LowRider CNC machine consists of a chassis that uses stepper motors to move the whole machine up and down to get Z axis functionality sort of emulating the way that a low rider car lowers itself down to the ground level. This has been common to all 3 generations of the machine and will probably continue as a common theme as new parts and versions develop.
This differentiates from the Primo CNC which has a fixed X/Y plane and lowers the tool from that position.
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Looks like the board you have is a GRBL 32 Bit board?
Jackpot is derived from Bart Dringās 6-pack designs. These run FluidNC, which is a next generation of what started as GRBL. Jackpot ships with 5 TMC 2209 stepper drivers, and can support up to 6.
In a 30 second comparison, Iād say jackpot is capable of everything that board can do, and probably can do a bit more- but would require a bit of cabling work to swap for what you have.
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The board thing is every time i look into and upgrade, like larger stepper motors or larger spindle, the board cant handle it. Down the road, it would be nice to have a powerful spindle thats software controle without the extra box and the dial. Larger stepper motors require redoing stuff, etc. granted, i dont know what i dont know, maybe they are all like that, but it seems odd that i gotta add a bunch of extra stuff when im not adding extra stuff, just upgrading stuff thats already there. Anyway, thank you for your time, ill probably get back to you when i have a better knowledge base and know what to ask if thats okay, have a good night!
Re. larger stepper motors
Usually itās the drivers that are at issue here. The Jackpot uses TMC2009 drivers, which do really well powering NEMA17 steppers. Nearly everyone who makes either a LowRider or an MPCNC, uses NEMA17 steppers.
If you were thinking of something bigger than NEMA17, such as maybe NEMA23, first, itās likely overkill (more than is needed), but youād perhaps need some other driver arrangement. TMC2209ās can power NEMA23 steppers, but perhaps not with enough power to take advantage of their larger size.
I use the chips in a wiskey smoker but 30 seconds of cutting gives enough chips to keep me happy for weeks. The oter 50 or so 39 gallong bags mostly spread in a local farmers field with permission 