Carbide 3D er11 makita clone
they arent as loud, they feel really nice, have Soft start. and they send you: 2 extra pairs of cabon brushes AND 2 collets (1/8 and 1/4 and if you want more, just buy standard ER11)
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So I am seeing this post go all directions.
I myself am much more happy with my lr than I was with my mpcnc. (sorry, just the fact.)
But, I think for this to start, you need to set goals
A) Pricepoint, what do you want
B) Main point to achieve, what do you want it to do.
B) is going to relate to a)
If you want it the most rigid small machine, like Ryan showed for 2500, then that will be a complete redesign, but what is the mpcnc missing? How does it need to be in the future.
Maybe run this like a Project Manager would run it. Goals, then design.
We are a VERY diverse group, Nothing satisifies everyone. I was very grateful to watch the LR4 proceed, although late in the project, and there were times were project creep really caused tough times.
What if you were to take the LR4 and take some of the printed and mill it to make it smaller, tougher and more like a mill? Would that be a place to start? What are the goals for a router? Is the project going to stay with a Router like the Kobalt/Makita, or a smaller one like the Dewalt or even a smaller rotary tool?
Just my thoughts, sorry.
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I like that idea
Different motion setup, but I like the Linear rods used on Maslow4, they seem to be 50% cheaper, or less, than Linear rails? Maybe theyād be compact enough, and good enough for a Light duty CNC build?
e.g.
10mm shaftsā¦ https://www.maslowcnc.com/shop/p/linear-shaft
https://www.maslowcnc.com/shop/p/linear-bearing-bag
$15 4pcs 8mm x 200mm Linear Motion Rod
$12 12pcs Linear Ball Bearings
EMT + bearings, or 2020 + POM rollers are even cheaper, but I donāt know if they meet rigidity requirements for a Light Duty build. Am mentioning incase one goal for TNG is to make a scalable CNC design available to more people, at an even lower initial build cost, even though todayās bang for buck is very impressive already.
Am also hoping to see fully pimped out LR4 āProā mods/builds to come from Ryan and/or the community in a separate topicā¦
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That has been an objective before. Ryan is very against waste. So he has a hard time making something that expensive.
The hard part is adding $1500 worth of stuff is that it has to add value.
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Okay, Iām ready. Can we start printing the parts or whatās next?
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I just look around my garage, and I am a pretty handy person, I have a bit of a tool addiction. The CNCās are already the most expensive tools in my shop. I am just not seeing the value of a super expensive CNC that cuts 10-20% faster. Until you use your CNC full time for large projects at least. If you do small carvingsā¦4-5 primoās will run circles around one āproā machine for 1/5th the price.
I do have a craving to make a better machine but there is just something odd about throwing money at a problem unless I see a clear value. Donāt get me wrong, ball screws feel amazingā¦but what is to be gained? If you didnāt know already the linear rails in the LR bug me so much because I am not sure if they are worth the price.
This thread has given me a lot of ideas. I am starting to see trends in what all of you are saying on both sides of the fence. I like that. I have a few ideas that hit me this morning.
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Printing is a rigid diy built that can cut metal and come is at $900-1200 USD last time I checked. I contemplated building one, but there are many parts that are not well defined and left to the user to troubleshoot/solve with the aid of a good online community. One of the short falls to the printNC project, in my opinion, it is lacking a clear robust step by step build that works. The MPCNC has this.
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To a point. Now I know nothing about the other machine except for the name.
It has been said before in this thread but it would be real nice to see a more finished machine. Dust collection and better wiring routing. The community came up with the wiring stuff but it would be nice to see that come in from the start.
As someone who does mostly plywood projects the Primo began collecting dust real fast after I built my LR3. I was about to just take it down or try and sell it when I decided to give a laser a try. And Iām glad I did. It has worked real well for that. Now if I could just make it faster lol.
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Need to skinny it down to up the accelerationsā¦
I cheat and just use larger overshoot. That lets me rip around with raster stuff.
I do that too. Still not CO2/Fiber fast though lol. Not the Primoās fault. I think I can get about the max it/the jackpot can handle for fine engraving. My laser has such a fine dot that I cant go as low on the dpi as you can or I get lines in the raster
I had a silly idea the other day thinking about what would be fun to build.
If i took two LR gantries, and stuck a third between the first two, i could basically build a LR style Onefinity machine.
It would be really easy to make the first two lr āxā function as the y. Then when i slap the third lr between the first two cores, it would just act normal. Hereās the thingā¦ useless.
Woodworking machines are less accurate with more speed than a steel machine. The belts vs ball screws, router vs spindle etcā¦ by the time i could accurately cut metal parts out of steel stock (not sheet material) , the machine would be way more expensive and not worth it to build.
But if i were looking to build a mostly printed, easily sourced, sturdy af machineā¦ stuffing 3 lr4s together would be hard to say no to.
Then put the whole thing on the table rails to do a full size sheet in 2 or 3 segmentsā¦ 
This.
I do think the reason there isnāt a more singular thread in these posts is because the MPCNC is a pretty refined version of the initial vision. I think several of us ended up āwishcastingā future work for Ryan. (Iām guilty) While Iām sure he appreciates the job security, I also think he should be proud of the machines heās designed.
For the MPCNC specifically Iāve settled on:
- Keep it cheap and keep the costs low.
- Consider sustainability and common upgrade paths
- Perhaps a mounting system on the core that is amenable to frequently switching tools.
I enjoyed such a journey that started with the Primo, and Iād love to see others share a similar experience. I do think its important, since I think there would be a lost group of interested people that would not start a LR4 without some experience.
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Mpcnc is the gateway.
That exchanges a basically fixed solid rail (Y) for two floating rails.
The key to the LR3-4 is that Y rail is affixed to the bed. This makes in infinitely rigid in our use case. That rail flex is not even considered. So many people do not realize that. Now the issue with that design, that most people do seem to understand intuitively, is we are only using one rail. The one rail is not the weak point though, the connection from rail to gantry takes all the load, it is not divided to both sides. The X min side could very easily be a 6.35mm printed part, it does nothing but lift that Z, it very much is a consideration for a lower priced kit.
With that said, until I test this further I still do not think that is the actual weak point of the LR3-4 system.
When I finish up this full sized build I will be doing a little deeper dive. I will be testing the LR and MPCNC to see what the lowest hanging fruit are.
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I helped a friend with a really low cost laser engraver over the past weekend.
One notable element of the small cheap ones is that they are cantilever designsā¦ Essentially, the machines are āTā shaped.
This would be a terrible idea for a CNC router of any size, but hear this out.
What if the MPCNC TNG was built with smaller EMT, but in LR4 style with changes.
The Constrained Y rail could be similar to an LR4 gantry, except instead of having a core it would have something similar to an LR4 YZ plate captured top and bottom between the smaller EMT top and bottom. The whole Y rail would be inside a box structure similar to an MPCNC frame.
The X gantry then would mount to the Y, and again have an unconstrained opposite side running on bearings to a Y rolling surface.
How to differentiate the MPCNC NG? Make the X gantry have itās structure be relatively high above the table, and then the core provides a moving Z axis similar to how an MPCNC works, except make it a box structure with wide-ish bearing spacing. The Z could have provisions for up to a couple of hundred MM of travel.
You might be thinking ābut, this is all wrong- it inherits the MPCNC flaw where it is least rigid at the surface of the work piece and most rigid all the way up at the top of travelā.
True, but you now have a machine that can do deep carves, mount a laser or a spindle, drag knife or pin cutter, or even an extruder- maybe even a fancy tool changer like I described up above.
You could even have the X gantry be a modular design with standard interface points on the Y rail side. If you wanted to make a fully constrained machine, mirror the constrained Y rail for the opposite side, etc.
Want to drive the price lower? Eliminate the linear rails and reduce the stepper count. Only one stepper for Z, and instead of leadscrews make the Z axis belt-mounted and have the +/- travel be a flying Z like the MP3DPs. Make the belts be a square arrangement, like 1/2 of a CoreXY and just a single closed belt. Instead of fixed belt length, make a belt joiner that doubles as an endstop mount.
Key elements- more āmostly printedā, which means easier to source parts that donāt require any expensive motion components. Modularity, make it easy and fun to modify or change out parts.
Provide spec definitions for all the interface points so if someone wanted to make a custom gantry or fully constrained machine they could refer to the interface points without needing full CAD.
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I think I am understanding that. This almost sounds like combining the MP and LR, with a configurable core?
My entire drive to work this morning I have started to reconsider all the parts we are using these days. I need to poke around and see what new low cost commodity items there are.
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Being very new to this community, and with only a lightly used Primo to my name, my opinion shouldnāt carry much weight. But here it isā¦
I think the major differentiator between the MPCNC and the LR series should be size. LRs are naturally orientated around large sheets and scale readily. The MPCNC scales poorly (as we are warned in the instructions - although every other build here seems to be about 3 million sq ft!) but instead offers more vertical capability and perhaps a broader capability in a smaller area (I donāt recall seeing an LR3/4 cutting Al, but I could be wrong).
Why not embrace that? Let the LR be orientated towards large board cutting, the workshop/garage floor machine, and drive the MPCNC towards a bench/desktop use for smaller projects.
The thing that prevents the current MPCNCās optimization towards smaller builds is the primoās ratio of overall volume to cut area, which gets worse as the machine size reduces. This means that smaller MPCNCs are naturally less volumetrically efficient.
Key to improving this would be educing the structural āoverheadā, ie achieving similar stiffness with a more dense architecture. Iāve often wondered how mild steel angle iron would compare, in stiffness, to the 1" tube/conduit approach? A quick comparison suggests the price is comparable. Because the truck wheels can clamp either side of the vertical web (say, 2 or 3mm thickness), every tube/truck equivalent can be 20+mm narrowerā¦
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