Made some progress after forcing a few locknuts with 2 screwdrivers jammed to stop them moving… Then they are replaced with regular nuts and 4mm shorter screws that can actually clamp the bar. When drive belts gets tensioned the construction gets even stronger.
Now I have some drive belts and pulleys to add and extension of wires.
The infamous Crown test…this one is the “lazy” one…12mm .gcode from ESTLCam basics page…
A few tweaks must be done…shorter legs (pen don’t reach table) or elevated working area/spoilboards…hmmm might be an idea.
Moving around making measurement (draw rectangle) confirming square and level setup measuring diagonals/ using M666 to adjust endstop offsets and possibly adjust corners
Must print out a holder for my dial gauge in order to do so…
But all in all it is alive and moving…
This is for you who doesn’t know the symbol “Vegvisir” (Icelandic wayfinder)
It is also a cool symbol to test my MPCNC with so I added a border 20*20cm and scaled up the svg to fit (minor work in InkScape) Import into ESTLCam and select the only tool atm…my pen and off you go…
8 minutes later I have this wonderful symbol with a nice 20*20 rectangle that I can measure with my steel ruler and I bet it is spot on! Incredible, not adjustments at all…and it is also square so I don’t need to adjust anything there either…cannot wait to get my wires sorted so I can start using my router.
I couldn’t resist… Wires are still a mess, only Z sorted.
A test in a bent impregnerad piece of wood and a drillbit (no mill)… It was the only thing I found that fits…
So with that in mind, not that crappy engraving… 10 by 10 cm.
Somewhere in the middle seems to be a good depth for this tool…
Will power made that happen, bad wood and bad bit=awesome job at getting it dirty! That is something I would have tried for sure.
With a good endmill all of that could be solved and is much easier to gets a little more depth. You should have no issues with proper gear.
Noobie mistakes has been made 
I downloaded a random logo and tweaked it in InkScape (added a frame/border around it)
Open up ESTLCam and start working with the holes to leave logo but mill out the area around it to the border I made…and set a depth…save as Gcode, move to SDcard, change tool, start vacuum and spin up router…all fine and dandy, worked just great if you want a wooden sign 83mm wide and 3 mm depth and pick a 3.2mm bit instead of a 3.0mm that was set in ESTLCam…
So all in all - great experience - nothing broken. Back to ESTLCam and size carving properly…how about 20cm instead so you can actually see the finer details and change tool in ESTL to 3.2mm as well…reduce depth to 1mm instead. and we will see what happens. Back to the garage…
Ill even try to add a gauge to level the board out a bit…Too bad it always requires tool changes…Pen, Gauge, Router…
Failed attenpt #1
Failed attempt #2
ESTLCam
At least size is OK but what the heck happened in the end at E and R router did not go up and after creating bounding box it went routing at same depth back to home…
Must troubleshoot more but connectors are fine and I can move Z up and down from LCD…and voltage are correct to my motors, steppers are cool by touch and chilled with 60 mm fan.
Darn it…so close to an OK carve…
That is odd - it must have lifted the Z-axis for the other moves, just not the ones at the end. When you say your steppers were cool, do you mean the drivers?
If you look through the G code, can you find the G00 moves and check the height? (select the tool path for the ‘er’ in estlcam and see what it’s called, because each block of code is labelled).
Yes, I think I found the issue that must be a bad solder on the Z axis extension wires.
Like you said it looks fine all way up to the last 3 Z-moves but it was too late to sort out (01.40)
Now it’s all good again.
I’m pleased with the result. 1.5mm depth on the letters and 22mm to carve out the sign from the board, 2 holding tabs on each side.
The squarest Stratocaster I have ever seen!
A quick RPM meter with Arduino and an OLED display…
Seems the specs on my chinese 500W router are fairly accurate, they claim up to 12.000 RPM.
The Instructable for this cheap RPM gauge is here:
Hmm, if you’ve got an arduino and an RPM sensor, you just need a speed controller to run the router at a constant RPM and adjust for changing load.
I guess you could use a servo to turn the knob of a router speed control, but there’s got to be a better way!
There is input to control with PWM if desired, but I see no need for it as is.
I have been having more fun with my MPCNC. This is a new lid for the cyclone-bucket.
It would of course be a 5minutes job with a hacksaw but that’s no fun when you can mill out your own stuff…
Initial tests with cyclone is that either my shop-vac is to powerful or the cyclone only separates larger debris.
Upcoming modifications:
1 new table, this one is not up to the job.
2 shorter legs.
3 shorter leadscrew.
4 complete overhaul with loctite.
5 dust/vac-holder
6 lcd mount
Interesting to hear about your setup, and how only larger debris goes in the bucket. Are you able to turn the power down a little? Does it change it? Does any of the tubes have a small opening that you can slide open to ease the suction?
I think we have quite similar setups, but I use an in-house vacuum to run the cyclone, which I assume is weaker than a shop-type. Even the finest dust end up in the bucket, and next to nothing in the vacuum itself.
I will try to mount a dimmer on a cord and see how the vac reacts to that. It is a Karcher unit…
Almost all finer dust goes thru to the shop vac and I have to clean the filter after every session.
Might make a hole on a pipe where it can suck air in from… A 3d printed closing mechanism
