Maybe I should have posted before I started accumulating parts, but here goes…
Picked up the stainless steel 1" tubing (0.125" wall thickness) today. Plan is for a 28" by 40" build area, because that’s what will fit nicely on a cleared off spot on my work bench. I think the calculator said that will work out to about an 18 x 30 work area, which sounded pretty good to me. Not sure if the long sides will need mid-supports, but I’ll deal with that when the time comes, I guess.
Started printing parts tonight, using Geeetech Black Silk PLA+. Got everything batched up for about 10 hour print jobs, I think.
Picked up 5 Nema 17 motors, rated at 84 oz-inches. Decided to try the SKR 1.1 board as the controller, figuring I could use it in my 3d printer (Ender 5 Plus) if the CNC didn’t come to fruition. Got the 3.5" TFT for it as well, and have a 24V 500W power supply left over from upgrading my printer.
I think now I’ve got most of the hardware together, so it’s a matter of printing parts. In the meantime, I’ll be trying to get the firmware installed on the SKR board, and maybe connect up the motors to make sure I’ve got it worked out. Need to make a run to the local nut-and-bolt place for the fasteners, though.
Oh, and I’ve got a 500W spindle and 5.5W laser on the boat from China (BangGood). The spindle comes with a PSU and potentiometer. Hopefully these will come in by the time I’m done printing, so I’m not stuck printing things with a felt pen. I do have a couple Porter Cable routers in the garage, but they seem like they’d be over-sized for this build.
Thanks, Chris! Looking forward to making some man glitter with it!
Jeff, this is my first 3D printer, and I’m liking it so far (got it in September). Seems to be a bit of a hit-and-miss on different forums and groups, though. Most people manage to work through any issues. Since I got it, I’ve replaced the extruder mechanism with a metal one, the Bowden tube with a Capricorn tube, the main board with an SKR 1.3 board, and the PSU (put in a Meanwell). All were done as “upgrades”, not fixes. I also set up Octopi right away, and have been using that as my print interface. Liking that quite a bit too. All in all, I don’t know what else I would have ordered with this same print volume for this price.
Oh, and the first batch is out of the printer… 3 out of 4 of the Bottom corners printed great, one not so much. Now I’ve got to try to figure out if it’s a mirrored piece or a regular one… Any printing problems I have, I’m blaming on the fact that the room the printer is in is only 12 degrees (C) (53F), due to our current cold snap.
1" tube with 0.125" wall is awesome. I doubt you will need mid-span supports. It will barely deflect, and even if the slight deflection matters, if you surface your table and firmly clamp your workpiece to the table, the workpiece will take that slight bend too and you will get consistent thickness. If you were milling a 30" pcb for example
You don’t think the 1/8" walls will be TOO heavy? I’m a bit concerned about that, to be honest… Worst case scenario, I use the heavy tubes for the bottom frame, and buy new 1/16" wall tubing for the upper frame pieces.
In any case, I’m plugging through with the printing… On my 4th “8 to 10 hour” batch of printing, so hopefully can get to the halfway point by tomorrow morning.
Been plugging away on the electronics. Got my SKR board flashed with Marlin, got the TFT screen running (not sure how useful it will be), then found out I’m missing 2 fuses for my PSU that I was going to use. So can’t play with the motors yet to make sure all that’s working. Need to stop by somewhere and pick those up. But it’s been -30 here for the last week, so running around wasn’t something I was really into doing. Picked up the tubing to make sure I had the right diameter, but that was about it.
As long as your speeds and accelerations are in the normal range, it will be good. If you wanted a 3D print head or a plotter to go as fast as possible, then yes, lighter would be more nimble but for milling applications you’re far from the range where weight is too much.
sigh Still printing parts. Had a couple failures (layer shifts, I think), so I did some maintenance on the printer (wiping down rails and lead screws), but for the most part, it’s going as planned. Still too cold to go mucking around setting stuff up in the garage. Can’t set up my PSU because I’m apparently missing 2 fuses for the switch. So instead I’ll browse the forums, and think about what other issues I might come up against…
Well, printing out the last piece of the puzzle tonight (tool mount). Got the PSU for the motors and controller board set up, and by using the TFT screen, am now able to get the dual-x, dual-y, and z motors to all work ask expected (one reversed on each of the dual axis). Turns out things work much better when you edit the Configuration_adv.h file in the main directory, instead of the one in the default folder. Beat my head against the wall for most of the evening on that one…
Now, to try to remove some of the useless menu items off the TFT screen, as well as starting to assemble some of my pieces. Who knows, I might be able to draw a pretty picture by the weekend! It’s warmed all the way up to “almost freezing”, so the gara/shop is habitable with a heater going.
Banggood reports my spindle and laser have cleared customs in Vancouver, so it’s time to get serious about slapping some stuff together!!! Started my assembly, found out I missed printing 2 of 4 pieces, waiting for more filament to complete.
Things got put on hold due to life reasons, well before all this global pandemic thing hit the fan. Then I did some assembly, but got stuck on way too much friction moving my X/Y axis around. So I put things on the shelf again for awhile, and then found a FB post from the V1 group where someone else had the same issue, so they drilled out their bearing holes on the middle assembly with a 21/64" bit, so I figured I’d give that a pop. That seems to have done the trick, easing it up enough that it can be moved around without having to move the whole table. That happened just last week.
So then it was time for some wiring. The wires on all the motors (with the exception of the motor nearest to the control box) were too short, so I snipped the wires close to the motors, soldered on extensions, and then put aviation cables on the end of the extensions. And then wired up the snipped off connection from the original cables to the internal side of the aviation connections. That all seemed to go fine. So now I have movement on the X/Y axis, as of last night.
Today… I need to wire up the extension for the Z axis, which shouldn’t take too long. Then I’ve got the gcode generated for the ubiquitous Crown test. Hopefully can run through it tonight once without a pen in place, and then try it with a pen.
Next step after that will be trying to get my spindle attached. And/or the laser. Not sure which one will be easier; the spindle has it’s own power supply and has the speed controlled through the knob on the PSU, whereas the laser I still need to figure out how to control the intensity. So probably the spindle will come first.
Oh, and for some reason my TFT screen isn’t responding to input from fingers. Not sure if it’s broke or damaged, but it was working fine, now nothing. Might order another, as I liked the way it was working when it did. Or I might try to hook up my XBox/Windows game controller to my Pi; I think that’s a control option.
Ran through the Crown test last night, and had much grief. Turns out the default values in the Marlin config.h weren’t correct for my setup, and I had to change the default steps per unit for the Z axis from 4000 down to 400. And life is good…
Oh, that, plus I had one leg that wasn’t fully seated. I was noticing that while it was drawing, it would be good on the one side, but as it moved from left to right, the line got fainter and fainter until it died off entirely. Didn’t think it was my base being warped, so re-checked the legs.
Next step; printing out the 52mm spindle mount for the Universal Tool Mount from Thingiverse. Should be ready tonight. And then wiring up my Chinese spindle.
Ended up making a new home for it today, instead of it taking up my tablesaw top… Should be much more productive!
Need to clean up some wiring, and make an enclosure for the Raspberry Pi and SKR 1.1 Pro board that’s currently on the right side. Picked up some t-track today, and will use that with some strips of 3/4" MDF to make a spoilboard. Thought about using slatwall for a spoilboard, but went with t-track instead. Also picked up some more bits; in particular a couple v-bits to try some engraving type work.
The current plan is to rig up a dust collector hose that hangs from the shelf above it. Should come down right about in the middle of the work area, and then it should be able to swing relatively easily all over the table. The control wires for the spindle and Z-stepper motor are already (kinda) hung from the same spot.
Will likely also lift each of the feet by at least the 3/4" I am going to add for the spoil board. But if I’m not using the Universal Mount, it might not be as big of a deal, since using the regular tool mount seems more adjustable.
I also need to find a better way to control the spindle speed… The potentiometer is on a pretty short cable, and while I could extend that, it still doesn’t seem optimal.
Plus, the laser… Now that the electronics are out in the garage, it becomes somewhat more of a pain in the butt to try debugging what’s going on, but still something on my list of things to iron out.
One thing that I would note is that I wasted a significant chunk of time (more than I’d like to admit) troubleshooting an issue with what seemed like my Y motors getting out of sync. Checked my belts (and retightened them), checked my voltage on the drivers, etc. Finally figured out that it was an aviation plug that wasn’t tightened properly, so it was only getting an intermittent connection. So I said some bad words, and things went much better after that. Just in case my experience can help shorten anyone else’s woes.
Ok, after days of scouring the Interwebs and bugging some people in here, I think I’ve got a handle on my laser. Feels like cheating, but because my main board (an SKR 1.1 Pro) can use multiple power sources (one for stepper motors, one for heated bed, one for main board and fans), I hooked up a spare barrel connector to the barrel connector on the laser’s PSU. It just looks like a small cheap laptop power supply, but puts out 12v @ 5A, which seems like it should be enough for a 7.5W laser and processor.
After that, I could put on an extension on the other wire that came with the laser to connect to the PWM/power plug, and just used the power pins. Was able to turn the laser off with an “M106 P1 S0” command, and turn it on (hopefully) fully with an “M106 P1 S255”. M107 P1 also worked to turn it off. Got my focus distance set to 5.5cm, along with a stop block to help set the distance.
Went to hook up the laser to the tool mount, and found out that that the tool mount I printed for it is too small for the laser I have, so I’ll need to re-design something for my tool. I also realized that I put a quick connect on the end by the PSU/control board, but didn’t put one on the tool mount end. So that was another 15 minutes of hacking and soldering. On the plus side, my soldering skills are improving…
Next step… After designing my first MPCNC toolmount (tomorrow?), I’ll have to actually test the laser in action. If anyone has a starting point for Fusion 360, that would be handy!
Took the laser mount that didn’t work (they had conveniently provided a Fusion 360 file), started with just a “mount plate” to act as an interface between that mount an my laser. Realized that it would be a pain put together in place, and realized I could just merge a new body onto the existing one.
So I built a drop-in mount for the laser based on its dimensions, and joined it with the old mount. Removed a couple of extra holes, extended other holes through the new mount, and bingo!
Ok, trial by fire is done, mostly… Still some tuning, I think.
First result wasn’t so good. See the top burn in the image below. Remembered that there was a long thread about the firmware changes need to make the lasers work properly with Marlin (https://forum.v1e.com/t/laser-engraving-not-really-getting-great-results/). Went in there, applied the source code change, and burned the text in the bottom portion of the image below. So yay! Thanks to all you guys that have come before me!
I’m glad I found this thread. I’m in SE and wanted to build one of these. Thank you for your excellent documentation I will be copying everything you do.
