I am interested in tinkering with a CNC and ran into this project, and like what I see so far! I’ve been trying to read up on various CNC related things and one question that popped up was the question of the plastic parts used to create the MPCNC and heat. I am in the middle of the northeast US and it’s pretty hot out here now, up to the mid 90s or more in the day and down to the 60s at night, not to mention the swing during the rest of the year.
The MPCNC will reside in a garage that is not insulated (or well insulated anyway) and does not have any air conditioning or any form of cooling and can get quite hot during the afternoon. Will the plastic parts hold up without warping or breaking? I do not have a 3d printer but will be relying on the parts bought from the store on this site, and do not want to purchase another set because one part broke.
If I could ask a follow up set of questions, is the dual endstops better/necessary? Or would the mini Rambo and regular setup be just fine?
Also, if you use the LCD screen add on, it would have the sd card reader so really everything can be done from that without a computer, correct? Granted I’d have to use a computer elsewhere to do the cad and cam portion of it and generate the gcode.
Depends on what you are doing, In my opinion the best way to do it is use a full Rambo with series wires, if you find you want the dual, you just have to re-flash and swap the wires. Dual can make some things really really easy, at the expense of a little more planning on each cut on the computer end of things.
My goal with the mpcnc is to start off by doing more 2d stuff like signs, text vcarve, cutting out shapes, parts and things of that nature and then possibly moving on later to more 3D stuff with fusion. Would dual endstops only help if running multiple jobs on the same piece? Or would something like putting in a manual stop point like a piece of tube be good enough?
Also, what did you mean about needing more planning for each cut on the computer? Is that referring to doing the offsets and such?
Yup, the standard way is to just mount your material, move the head over to it, and hit start. Perfect for what you plan on doing. With dual you need to plan on exactly where the material is ahead of time (not too bad because usually have lots of extra material around your work). Start with the standard, not doing any critical tool changes got us all by for 3 years, so no big deal.