That’s not my name!
The ‘Hello world’ I drew first was on my fridge for a really long time. I only recently lost it the space for something my kid made.
Looking forward to “Crockett and Tubbs” getting dirty. 
Awesome, thanks for the compliments. I love these first move videos, probably makes me as excited as you were as well. Can’t wait to see what’s next.
Next up is waiting until after the 1st of next month so I can order the spindle.
I also need to get some more filament to print the spindle holder.
Until then, I’ll start working on modeling some of the stuff I plan on cutting and playing more with Inventor and HSM.
One step closer.
I printed the mount for the DW660 and ordered it this morning.
I also printed a case for the LCD and I’m working on a case for the Ramps 1.4 board. There’s a lot of cases on thingiverse for the ramps, but I don’t really care for any of them.
I’ll post my version up once I have it finished.
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Woohoo! It Cuts!
I made a square out of 3/4" MDF
It was supposed to be 100mm x 100mm
Actual size came out 99.67 x 99.61
I need to work on my feed rates. I just let HSM pick it’s own rates.
It cut at 762 mm/min and I did 1mm DOC.
I need to go find my phone so I can take pictures.
Sweet! You got it dirty, welcome to the family!
Pictures. When I made the torsion box, I left a panel off. There’s just enough room inside for the Ramps 1.4, power supply, and LCD. I’ll mount a power switch on it when it comes in. I also plan on putting a spoiler board on it (that’s why there’s so much height)
Looks sharp. Is that a table saw under there?
Looking good David. I am also from Texas and will be starting on my MPCNC in the next month or so. Your initial build size is what I want to do as well, 24x36x4. Looks like you opted for the 24x24x4 route as suggested by Ryan to start with. I too want mine a bit longer for the option to do sign work. Look forward to seeing your progress.
Yes. That’s a Table saw under there. It’s not a very good one, but it still somewhat gets the job done. The spindle that’s supposed to lift the arbor no longer works, so you have to reach down and pull up on the bottom of the blade while turning the knob to raise it.
For most panel cuts, I just use a circ saw and a straight edge. The CNC machine can be lifted and moved easily by the wife and I, so if I need the table saw, we’ll just put it onto a pair of saw horses.
I got more cuts done on Sunday. I’ve started building a Kalk reactor for my reef tank. The initial cuts are all in MDF. Once I have the design finalized, I’ll order a sheet of 3/4" thick PVC and recut everything out of plastic.
I am having one problem with the CNC machine. It seems the gantry is a little loose in the X axis. If I grab the top of the Z and push, it will rotate about the Y rod. Looking closely at one of the bearings, you can see there’s a slight gap between it and the bar. I need to go look at the instructions and find those 3 bolts used to adjust the gantry. I’m sure it’s just that one of those needs to be tightened.
Here’s a rendering of what I have designed on the Kalk reactor so far, and a picture of some of the test pieces in place.
[attachment file=32450]
[attachment file=32451]
Looks great! It’s inspiring to see a fresh build fire up.
I did my first cut today that required a tool change.
I used spring clamps on the X and Y axis to set my 0 point. They worked really well.
The rough work was done with a 1/8" end mill, then I switched to a 1/16" to finish out the finer detail around the letters and the triangle-shaped holes.
Not sure why the 1/16" cut didn’t go all the way down around the letter A. Maybe I clicked the wrong path when creating the tool job in HSM.
Here’s what it will look like done, and the part I have cut out.
[attachment file=“On-CallRender.png”]
[attachment file=32985]
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That looks super clean. I didn’t expect that kind of detail! Thanks for sharing.
Did the first project for the wife last night.
She’s in the process of making a wreath for her mom for mother’s day and needed a donut. She kept trying to explain what she needed and I finally convinced her that I could just whip one up with the CNC machine.
I had her lay out her design on the table and what we ended up with was a simple donut with a 13" outer diameter and a 10" inner diameter.
I threw it together in Inventor, CAM’ed it up and cut it out of 1/4" plywood. Took about 15 minutes for both design and cut. I should have reduced the number of tabs as cleanup took a little longer than it could have, but she was happy with the results.
Up until that project, she was having a hard time understanding what the CNC could be used for. It took her about a month to understand what the 3D printer could do, and then she started loading me up with print jobs… we’ll see how long it takes for the CNC jobs to start coming in.
Sorry no pictures. Cutting two circles out of plywood didn’t feel special enough to warrant finding my phone. I will note that they were in fact circles and not eggs or ovals.
Nice. I was dog sitting a while ago, and the dog is old, and couldn’t see very well and kept tipping his dog dish over. It was one of those stainless steel ones that was bigger on the top than the bottom. So I cut a donut that fit snug on the bottom, but was wider than the top, so that if he stepped on the top, it was still stable. A crapton of hot glue later and it was fixed. It’s nice when things are just easy.
Also, I’m sorry to hear that you lost your new toy to the Mrs.
It’s not that big of a deal. If it becomes an issue, I’ll just build another one
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Then you’ll have to teach her how to cam…
She’s an Art teacher with a bachelor’s in Graphic Design. She’s a wizard with Adobe products. Teaching her how to get from a layout to gcode wouldn’t be difficult… unfortunately 
I finally got my RAMPs board mounted in an enclosure. I gave up on trying to design one as I finally found one on ThingiVerse that fit my requirements.
I went with the dual 40mm fan version of this one
I can put the case on its side and it slides into the slot on my table perfectly. The dual fans provide more than enough air flow to keep the drivers cool.
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Did you ever have one of those days where nothing necessarily went wrong, but nothing really goes right either?
I guess I’m having one of those weeks. I recut some of the test parts for the kalk reactor Monday night. When the CNC machine was done, I was looking at the parts thinking something didn’t look right.
Took another look at the SD card and sure enough, I recut the original design pieces instead of the updated ones. I thought I overwrote the original file name with the new one but nope… there was a second file with a slightly different filename sitting on the SD card.
I just turned the machine off and went inside at that point.