For me, that sort of thing happens a lot with printing parts the wrong color. Keeping 4 machines worth of files and their associated colors straight even with a diagram is not easy. I just set them aside and wait until I screw it up again and someone gets a “limited edition” set of prints. Shrug it off and keep on trucking.
Can’t wait to see that thing done. I have had a few saltwater tanks in the past and used to really enjoy them. Just the right level of tinkering maintenance and I got many hours of relaxation staring at them.
My last one was poisoned on purpose by my roommate…He ended up dialing 911 because he was so scared.
It’s a tad out of date on some of the current critters, but it shows what I went through building my latest setup.
Regarding the Kalk reactor… it’s in a stalemate right now. I’m having to wait for funds to order the thread mill and the sheet of PVC. It’s only about $100 worth of stuff, but my next allowance doesn’t show up until the 1st. At $45/sheet on the plastic, I’ll be cutting up a lot more particle board before putting the cutter to the plastic.
I also have a sheet of acrylic I need to do some practice cuts on to see if I can dial in the chip breaker mill and get closer to the correct mill feeds before trying the PVC.
It was a very ugly few days that I am not proud of.
Hopefully it works out and maybe you can make a few and sell/trade them. In San Diego the Reef trading was amazing. It was so cool always fair trades, extras thrown in and you usually got to see someone’s tank or show yours off to someone in the know. I really enjoyed that hobby. You could go to the scripps pier and get filtered seawater from the birch aquarium from a fire hose sized tap. you have never seen such a healthy tank live sea water is full of all kinds of good stuff.
I am not going to look at your site until I get todays orders out I have a feeling I will get stuck and have a million questions…Can’t wait.
Wife needed some letters for school. She picked a TTF off the web, and away it goes.
1/16" end mill
15 in/min
.09 DOC
Mental note. When selecting contours to cut… make sure and select inner cuts separate from outer. Inventor HSM doesn’t care and assumes you’re smart enough to have solid hold downs. I ended up having to manually hold down the letters to let the CNC cut the inner parts on some of the letters.
Man. I feel like I spent all weekend with the CNC.
My Z axis stepper motor is getting hot about 30 minutes into a cut… Looks like I need to verify and adjust the stepper driver.
I was able to get most of the parts finalized for the Kalk Reactor. Now I just need to order the plastic. I took a bunch of videos, but it’s just cutting a bunch of circles. Nothing exciting.
Unfortunately, I had already adjusted the design for the difference and I don’t want to go back and do it again.
I’ll try that on the next design.
I’m using HSM in Inventor… so from what I’m reading, the recommendation is to do a 2d pocket with the stock to leave value set, and then go back and do a full depth 2d contour to clean up the edges.
What I figured out happened was the first few designs I did all had just 2d contours. The 2d pockets set the stock to leave by default.
Took the time hit and re-did the designs for proper size and fixed the CAM settings.
I finally have my first fully finished designed part for the Kalk Reactor. This will be the clean out lid. It has the electric motor mounted to it and a 3/4" NPT hole for adding more Kalk as needed. I changed my mind on trying to make it a screw on lid with milled threads and went with multiple M3 bolts to hold the lid on. It won’t be pressurized, so there shouldn’t be a need to seal it, but I can always add an o-ring or gasket if needed.
Ignore the random cuts in the top of the piece. I used scrap for the test pieces.
Now to finish finalizing the rest of the pieces.
I also got around to fixing the Z-axis stepper voltage. The driver was set to 1.7V! No wonder the stepper was getting hot.
This is an awesome thread. It gives me hope that I might actually be able to use my mpcnc. I had a 50w laser for 4 years and loved it but decided to sell it. Used some of the money to get an mpcnc machine. I have it running (will do the crown) but it is frustrating. I cannot get grasp the depth part. I created a file from my ranch logo and it will cut it kinda. But it is a single depth it does not pickup the tool.
Thank-you for the compliment. Unfortunately, I am no where near an expert with these machines. I started that Kalk design back in June and still haven’t cut the final PVC pieces. All the parts are sitting on my work bench waiting for me to finish it.
Regarding your issues, I’d start a new post so that the other, smarter, guys on the forum can lend you a hand.
It’s been a while since I’ve spent some time with the CNC. I’ve always made recommendations on good ways to level a spoilboard, but I never did it myself
I finally got around to doing it this weekend. I used a 1" end mill running at 300mm/min. My 24"x24" board too 2hrs and 10 mins to fully surface.
I also noticed my Z isn’t perfectly perpendicular to the board. Never noticed this with the smaller bits, but the 1" end mill left a nice stair step in the Y axis.
I took a bit of video, but not much. There’s something very Zen like about watching a CNC machine clean itself.
I was hoping to get the vinyl cutter working this weekend too, but life got in the way. I also bought a new brand of filament for the 3d printer and I’ve been having a heck of a time getting it dialed in on the extruder. It keeps wanting to clog the hot end.
