Never milled before

Mostly Printed CNC - MPCNC Troubleshooting
1

Hi all,

As the title suggests - ive never used a milling machine before. Ive plenty of experience with 3d printers and laser cutters, but the cnc mill has eluded me up until now.

Before discovering the MPCNC (which I think is awesome) I actually designed and made myself a little toymill-thing from lasercut MDF, guide rails, leadscrews and nema17s that I literally had laying around from other projects ive done in the past.

So the machine is built - the spindle I went for is a dremel flex shaft (again, had it laying around). The plan/goal is to mill some parts out of Acetal that ive 3d printed in the past, but want something a little more robust.

Im having a nightmare trying to figure out how to actually send my cad files to the machine.

Ive given up on 3d files and have gone to 2d-files to start with (just like I do with the laser cutter).

So:

Sketchup > SVG > Easel > RepetierHost > RAMPS board (with repetier firmware)

This is what I have been recommended. Problem is that getting an SVG file from SketchUp requires processes of its own. So can someone PLEASE help make this more transparent for me?

  1. What tool-path generator should I use? - something that will import STL or DXF/EPS, something I can input the cutters that fit my dremel

  2. What firmware do I put onto my RAMPS board?

  3. Have I missed anything, and what? :wink:

A massive thank you in advance to anyone that can help get me started!

2

Try estlcam, I have 2 how-to posts with example files.

For firmware, I am most fluent in Marlin so I use it, accelerations much slower than 3D printers but the rest is the same.

I send the file either to a memory card to be used in the lcd screen or directly from repetier.

All of this is shown in the walk through.

https://www.v1engineering.com/software/

3

Thats great, ill take a look over all of it now. Thank you!

I have been pointed in the direction of SketchUCam - a plugin for sketchup that so far im really liking.

It exports g-code.

So im hoping ill be able to open that g-code in this modified marlin?