That looks like an awesome space. I have a strong desire to use 2020 type rails for something, but I never have enough need to justify the price. I need to find a way to get them for free like Dui!
Hehe, yeah I was quite lucky on that. Don’t use 2020 though, it’s way too small so that won’t be sturdy at all, use at least 4040 or 3030 if it’s for some light load application.
Apparently it’s way more expensive in the US than in China, from what I can see on Amazon. One meter of thick 4545 profile costs around 20 bucks, while it’s usually around 7 or 8 here… I can understand your hesitation now, thats more than 500 bucks worth of extrusions just for the frame of my miter saw station…
I’ll soon get a new batch of fresh 4545 extrusions, possibly around 100 meters in total. Still don’t know what I’ll be doing with that but that will leave a lot of possibilities!
Try to discuss with people owning factories, they often use profiles to build temporary stuff like benches, jigs or fixtures, and sometimes they don’t need them anymore and don’t want to go through the hassle of disposing of them. They will happily give you the profiles for free or for a reasonable price. 
I just call the whole group 2020.
My MPCNC is finally back and running, yay!
To celebrate that, I printed quite a big part. This is a light difuser for a lamp I built a while ago but haven’t finished yet. This one is red because I needed to check first if it would fit, but the final one will be white so I’ll reprint one later. As you can see, the printer is very accurate despite the very long Z axis and the final result was perfect. I could have printed it much faster but I went with very conservative settings, around 40mm/sec. It took around 50 minutes to print.
Sorry, the video is a bit blurry sometimes, the autofocus on my phone isn’t that great.
I’m also almost done installing my little CNC machine, just need to build some doors for the enclosure, add lights and a few other minor details and it should be good to go!
[attachment file=120145]
All the electronics are fitted inside the drawer you can see under the table, so they are both well protected and easily accessible in case I need to make any mods. The screen wires are long enough to go through the table, I just need to print a little enclosure for the screen since I stupidly threw away the one I had. That leaves me with a clean space to put a keyboard and a mouse, and I’ve built a movable display using a broken laptop’s screen. The screen enclosure has been 3D printed with the MPCNC.
[attachment file=120146]
Almost ready to go!
3 Likes
Hello Everyone,
Since I came across the thread of our fellow member Armin Thinnes about the possibility of making a joytick controller for the MPCNC using the serial port (see here: https://www.v1engineering.com/forum/topic/manual-joystick-control-fro-mpcnc-2/ ) I decided to give it a try. (Thanks to you Armin by the way!)
After testing the electronics and the original code, I found it to be quite nice and convenient, so I decided I could use that base and design my own, adding a few functions I’d need.
I made a quick design for an enclosure, tried to make it look like a game controller, while making it printable easily without supports or anything:
[attachment file=“CNC controller Assembly 1 - Google Chrome.jpg”]
I printed it with my MPCNC big 1.0mm nozzle in order to be able to quicly put it together, so it doesn’t look very pretty but I was able to print the two faces in around 2 and a half hours. That helps a lot with rapid prototyping to check if everything fits like intended, before maybe printing a better version with a smaller nozzle. That thing has 2.5 mm thick walls so it is really solid, I’m sure I could throw it on the floor and it wouldn’t break.
Anyway, it turned out not too bad. Wasn’t really a great print though, I need to add some part cooling fans on my machine, especially for the screw tubes and finer details.
[attachment file=121272]
[attachment file=121273]
[attachment file=121274]
So basically I’ll have two joysticks, one will be for the X-Y axis, the other one for the Z axis. I’m yet to decide what I will do with the remaining axis of the joystick, if anyone has some nice suggestion I’d be interested!
The 3 LED above each joystick will indicate the selected “speed” for said joystick. By pressing on it, I’ll be able to switch between 4 distances increments, I’m not decided yet, but probably something like 50mm, 10mm, 1mm, 0.1mm.
Then, on top, there are 4 buttons, I guess I’ll keep the three first buttons like originally designed by Armin, so one is for Homing X and Y, one for Z probing and the third one to reset coordinates. I’m not decided yet on the last one, maybe some kind of emergency stop, here again I’m welcoming any suggestion from you guys 
I’ll have to work a bit on the original code in order to implement the second joystick, LEDs and the 4th button, that’s usually the part I totally suck at so I expect it to take me a bit of time.
Anyway, I’ll release the designs if it turns out to be any good, but I don’t see how it wouldn’t!
3 Likes
Wow. Amazing work as usual.
I might have to give this a try. Maybe the 4th axis could select speed instead of (or in addition to) the joystick presses.
1 Like
I thought about that but I’m a bit worry that I’d change the speed unvolontarily while jogging the Z axis. The consequences of that could be quite catastrophic…
4th axis for the extruder. Clearly, you need thr world’s largest, most expensive, hardest to use 3D pen.
You could control the progress bar on the lcd:
http://marlinfw.org/docs/gcode/M073.html
It might actually be useful to set the progress bar based on your speed, to get another visual indication.
The last button could be for playing joystick.gco from the sdcard or to pause playback from sdcard. These commands are all in the M23ish range.
http://marlinfw.org/docs/gcode/M023.html
http://marlinfw.org/docs/gcode/M024.html
http://marlinfw.org/docs/gcode/M025.html
http://marlinfw.org/docs/gcode/M027.html
You might have to read the feedback to see if you should pause or resume.
2 Likes
Oh yeah, Dui is back and in full mad scientist mode, heck yeah!
1 Like
Oh, that’s a really good idea, I’ll do that, thanks!
That can be a great help while changing filament, especially with my complicated double extruder setup, it’s always a pain to do manually.
I think I’ll keep the last button to select between two modes: 3D printer control for the MPCNC and CNC milling control for the 3040CNC, that way I can use only one controller for both machines.
I’ll need to start working on the code now, as usually it’s not really my strong suit so I expect it to take a while, but it shouldn’t be too complicated since it’s basically just reading buttons and potentiometers status, sending a gcode and switching on or off the appropriate LED. All the hard work of moving the step motors is done by the MPCNC.
Anyway, I did a few things this weekend:
- almost finished the wiring of the controller, I just need to insulate all that stuff with heat shrink tubes and hot snot:
[attachment file=121792]
[attachment file=121793]
2)I had a problem with my shower. Whoever installed it was a bit of a moron and didn’t account for the window. So as you can see on the bottom, the part that is supposed to stop water pouring outside the shower stops at the middle of the window, while the curtain was attach way further on the wall. So basically the curtain was about 20cm off, so the water was just pouring all over the bathroom. Clever.
Also, the original holes in the wall werent strong enough and the tube was very close to falling over, it was already tipping down by about 10 degrees… So I designed a big bracket, in order to solve both these issues. This has, of course, been printed with my marvelous MPCNC. This single part took more than half of a new PLA spool, so this thing is freaking heavy!! It’s been printed with a very high infill and took quite a long time, about 6 hours, but it is insanely tough. I’m 100% sure that if something fails here it will be the wall itself and not this part, the wall is not nearly as tough as this thing. It is attached with two very long screws on both sides of the wall, (which was quite a nightmare to drill), so it cannot be dragged off in any direction.
[attachment file=121794]
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[attachment file=121796]
I’m very pleased with this part, I wouldn’t be able to find anything off the shelf to solve this idiotic problem so the MPCNC was a great help here. Not sure I’ll keep it in red though, this was supposed to be a prototype since I wasn’t really sure of the dimensions, but since the prototype worked perfectly I don’t really want to reprint it, I’ll probably just leave it like that or just add some black paint.
1 Like
Haha, I like to electrocute myself in the morning shower, it gives me the necessary energy for a long day of work. Or to skip said day of work, depending how it goes.
Anyways, I finished the remote control, and apparently, for some very weird reason, my first iteration of the code worked flawlessly. Probably the effect of repetitive electrocutions, I don’t know, usually it takes me days to get a simple code working.
I’d say a big kudos/thanks to our friend Armin who did a great job at the original code, it was very easy to understand, even for me, and I liked the clever way he used to light the appropriate LEDs in the code, took me a bit of time to figure it out but it was neat. Basically most of my work was to copy paste his work and do a few slight modifications.
So, now I have:
-X and Y axis control on the left joystick
-Z and Extruder control on the right axis
-3 distance increment selections per joystick, so far 0.1/1/10mm. I’ll probably add more large distance increments, 50mm for X-Y, 20mm for Z and 100mm for E later.
-3 LED for distance increment selection per axis, green for slow, yellow for middle and red for high.
-4 push buttons for some other functions, home all axis, Z probing, Reset coordinates and a last one that I’m not sure yet what I’ll use it for.
I finished the wiring:
[attachment file=121967]
[attachment file=121968]
I still have to build the serial wire and add some quick connectors to both the 3040CNC and the MPCNC so I can switch easily between both. This part will be easy.
Tested it on the computer first to see if everything was ok:
[attachment file=121969]
Then I tested it on the 3040CNC and everything worked fine. The only thing I had to do was to invert all the directions in my controller firmware.
So basically it’s almost done and it works fine, so here are the current versions of the 3D files and of the firmware if anyone is interested!
[attachment file=121970]
3 Likes
Well I don’t know how to add attachments… I tried .rar and .zip and none of those seem to be allowed “for security reasons”. What should I do to share these?
Also, could there be some kind of warning of which files are not allowed before we upload them?
I think the discourse is going to be much better about this, and I think .zip should have worked. Maybe it’s time for you to get a github account? The stl preview (and diff) is freakin’ awesome.
Ok, well I ended up publishing it on thingiverse.
Here is the link, if anyone is interested: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3986022
I’m not a big fan of github. And actually that’s just a polite way to say I hate it. I find it everything but user friendly, anytime I have to go check or download something in there I get completely lost. Whoever did the user interface deserves a long and painful death.
1 Like
Menards has house-brand dremel tools for $9.88…that’s cheap enough to just buy a new one for the next project.
Hi Guys,
Still using my good old MPCNC for making stuff. Those past days I’m finally finishing my electric motorbike’s battery box, and I needed to build a big enclosure to protect the battery monitoring hardware. So I made a quick design and threw it onto my MPCNC.
I had a very weird issue and didn’t find the reason why this happened, but the print pausedweirdly somewhere after printing about 10 mm high. I waited for an hour but it never restarted. I managed to save the print by editing the gcode and restarting from the failure point, but since it did not acount for the bilinear bed leveling at the restart that wasn’t really a good print. Plus I ran out of black filament later, so this wasn’t really a smotth process this time.
Still no idea why it paused, I didn’t have anything weird on the Gcode, the printer didn’t show any error… Looks a bit like the SD card got disconnected for a brief moment, I don’t know. Really hope it won’t happen again.
Anyway, it worked fine in the end and the BMS box works as intended. I’ll print a slightly improved version later and cover it with carbon fiber.
Installed on the bike:
8 Likes
Bonjour,
Ton problème je le connais très bien il est du à la lecture sur ta carte sd.
En 2 mots rupture du flux du gcode à cause d’une carte trop faible en débit
C’est une possibilite, mais ce que je ne comprends pas c’est pourquoi est ce que ca arrive comme ca tout a coup? J’utilise cette carte depuis toujours avec ma MPCNC, c’est toujours la meme et elle a fonctionne sans souci jusque la.
Ca m’est encore arrive ce weekend lors d’une impression. Je changerais bien pour une autre carte mais pour une raison que j’ignore toutes mes autres SD cards refusent de fonctionner sur cette machine.
oui ta carte donne des signe de faiblesse prend une carte x10 minimum