Eating the Sleeping Elephant (Finally Waking our 4x8 CNC)
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- Опубліковано 31 бер 2022
- At long last we've (re)started getting our new (to us) CNC machine up and running! In part 1, we get a stepper motor to turn. It may not be much, but one bite at a time.
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Correction: we're using (2) 24V power supply to drive the steppers.
You'll be glad when it's finished!
Sweet Jeebus, yes!
On a more serious note, I can't wait to see this up and running! Love cnc. Wish I could convince the wife to put one in my 1 car garage 😂
What we go over here should really help someone build a CNC machine of any size...
Salacious always gets the crappy end of the stick! :)
Great to see your starting again on this project :) was already taking up space when I visited :D
It has been a *long* time.
@@matthewcharles7574 True true, it's a great old beast
You and me both!
@@GratuitousSets lol
I'm sure you are probably already well aware of it, but This Old Tony rebuilt his CNC not that long ago (think it may have been more of a milling machine now I think about it) with modern stepper motors etc, so I'm looking forward to Elephant Mk2 bellowing to life!
I don't recall that one. I'm gunna have to go back through his archives.
Sweet machine, there!
All I can hear in my head when Matt was talking was the opening line from the 6 million dollar man... We can rebuild him. We have the technology. We can make him better than he was. Better, stronger, faster. Showing may age now! All the time and effort is it worth rebuilding since the prices for CNC machines are relatively cheap? I am not saying you should not as it is awesome to watch and learn.
I am holding out for Mach5 when someone over there can build an interface that does not look like a 1973 xerox alto. I would rather sit at a command prompt and write 10,000 lines of g-code.
Dadadada... Tacacaca...
New, this machine would sell for the ballpark of 50K. Recent projects that require mechanical precision have come up against the limits of our old machine. So we'll be glad to have the sturdier beast.
Fusion 360 can generate your G-Code. Before that we've been using V-Carve from Vectric.
Matt low-balled that a bit. From what I can tell, this machine cost about 95K in 1999. In it's dilapidated current form it would go for around 30K at auction. Multicam machines are the Cadillac of CNC. Part of that is because the chassis is SOOO stiff and well balanced. The spindle motors are 4HP and go for about 8K!! It can probably run any operation about 10X faster than our current machine. I found this video of an SF series in action... --> ua-cam.com/video/FGePya4Och0/v-deo.html
Answer is yes, absolutely! You have to compare this to a GOOD machine, which is not even close to cheap! I bought a little ShopSabre 23 (30"x40") 1 year ago--base price was ~$6500. Today the base price for the same machine is $9500! And that price just gives you a milwaukee router. I was out the door at ~$14,000, but that was with HSD spindle, vacuum table, and a few other things. So what I'm saying is, a high quality, new, 4x8' machine, with a vacuum table, will probably cost $50k+. ATC will add atleast $10k. And then you need electrical to run it, probably 3phase for the vacuum table. And don't forget a "real" cyclone dust collector, because harbor freight just ain't gonna cut it!
@@GratuitousSets What cutting speeds are you expecting? I guessimated that the machine in the clip is running at only 125in/min. That is probably not full speed? (I regularly run at max speed of 300ipm on a much smaller machine).
@@fredygump5578, we run our old machine at 45 ipm. Any faster and we get rounded corners. I hear speeds of 100+ ipm tossed around and it sounds like sci-fi. But we'll dial it up until we see a loss in end quality.
You look so smart when you wear glasses
The lenses are smeared with I.Q. juice!
The beast awakens; hopefully it is hungry for manflesh!
That's terrifying!!! lol
More content!
Hooray!!! lol
Yes!!! I am facinated to see this come together, and at the same time I feel validated for my decision to just buy a brand new machine. Will this be capable of arcs in XZ and YZ axis (i.e. use g17, g18, g19)? That's a thing I didn't know existed until I learned that my new machine can't do it. It's helpful for 3 axis tool paths to get smooth curved surfaces without small facets.
I actually know embarrassingly little about G-code. When we used V-carve to generate it, it would make circles that were actually just N-gons with a *lot* of sides. Now that we use Fusion 360 I've noticed it generates G-code with actual curve commands. I'm content to keep letting it do the work on that front.
@@matthewcharles7574 If you were importing drawings into VCarve, the flat sides might have been from the file type you used? For example, SKP files make everything flat sided. STL files can be tuned to be much better. But I have also ditched VCarve...
Wonderful! Yes, it will. That is basic "ramping"
@@GratuitousSets I meant when the tool path uses arcs instead of line segments. In the coding, G17, G18, and G19 specify which plane the following arcs are drawn on. Then the code simply specifies the radius and end point of each arc. My machine will do arcs on the x,y plane only, which is the default plane. But if there is a g18 or g19 code, to change the plane from the default, my controller won't even load the file. It's a WinCNC controller.
I bet y'all will find tons of lost things in that pile!
It's like a freakin' archaeological dig!!! 🤣
Ok now I don't feel so bad about the CNC elephant I had delivered from China a few weeks before the pandemic started back in 2019.... That's also still waiting to be set up in my workshop under the house....
Martin!!! Where the hell have you been?
How hard did you work to find as awkward a methaphore as you could think of? :-D
Lol- It wasn't really that hard. We had options... 🤣
😳 first! Lol
Yes you are!