Appolgies that it has taken so long to get this video out, and thank you to everyone that has reached out in emails and in the comments to check that I am okay. The only reason that I have not posted in a while is just because I've been too busy to put the work in and edit this video, it feels great to finally get it out. The engineering degree gets quite difficult and time-consuming towards the end. When I'm on a computer all day at work or in university, it is difficult to find the time to sit down and edit a video as long and complex as this. I also didn't want to rush this video and not do it justice just due to the amount of work that it took. Thankfully for the first time in a while, I've got some time off this summer before I start my master's, so I'm going to be making videos again. And if you're still around thanks so much for all the patience, see you very soon with the next video.
So great. Finally someone talking about flatness on a CNC router build and not just slapping the parts together and saying "look how great this build is, it can even mill some steel!" I love the attention to detail.
Loving the "just making do with what I got" and "learning as I go". I'm learning here so thanks for sharing and keep it up! Good job, no need to apologize.
Hey man, glad to see you're still around :) Your channel along with Grant Thompson was what really kickstarted my interest in building stuff and engineering when I was younger. Today marks the middle of my 3rd year of mechanical engineering! Thanks for the inspiration, channels like yours really helped show a 12y.o. me that building stuff is super fun and not impossible. I wish you all the best with your studies and future endeavours!
No need to apologize...Its great to see that you are still amongst the living...I can completely understand the dedication one must put into the education to get the desirable outcome...Been looking forward to your finished product to see what you have accomplished...Welcome back...As have been expressed cant wait to see what the finally is going to reveal...
LOL it has been a minute or two. As an apprentice I spent a month making a perfect cube. All 6 faces scraped and at 90 degrees to each other. I was so happy my apprentice was not training to be a machinist. 😂 getting close to a cutting CNC router. Interesting video 2x👍
It's kinda funny that when I first discovered your channel I was in the middle of building my own CNC at what I thought was a very slow pace, but then I ended up finishing mine long ago and coming back to check your channel every now and then to see if there was an update. Looks like you have pretty much finished it now, but one tip I got from a subscriber was to get a stone (or synthetic stone) bench-top offcut from a kitchen design company to use as a budget surface plate. It will not be engineering grade flatness but most likely good enough for us home-builders and way cheaper,, and the fact that it's larger than your rails makes like much easier. I also used it to flatten my gantry and z plates. My machine has the same basic layout as yours, and I too ended up taking a bite out of the blocks the gantry sits on to allow a couple more cm travel, and I also had to machine an area on the gantry plate for the x-rails to sit co-planar. I don't have a mill but I made an MDF mock-up of my machine that was surprisingly capable, so I used it to machine the gantry and to make some other parts too. All documented on my channel about a year and a half ago if you ever have the time to watch :)
I'm not dead yet. Kudos for doing this while at school. I definitely wouldn't have tried to do this while I was getting my engineering degree. It was more than enough just trying to get through my coursework. I built the PrintNC, which looks similar to your design but since I'm using it for word, I definitely didn't try to put it together as accurately as you are with yours. I do very much appreciate the X-axis gantry design and with the PrintNC design was this robust. Thanks for continuing the project and providing these videos.
Just found your channel by searching "how to etch steel with vinegar" 😂 9 year old video of yours taught me roughly, not surprised to see your making a cnc router now, cheers 👍
Great video. I really appreciate you showing your methods of “making do”. I’m glad to hear school is going well and you’re going for a Masters. Keep doing videos on your own schedule. We’ll be here whenever they are done. Take care
This is great. Your project is coming along, but this video also demonstrates why precision in manufacturing is very expensive and throwing a lot of labor at it can't be a substitute, especially when constructing tools. I appreciate your detail in documenting your journey. It must have added considerably to the build time. Thanks.
I remember now I was watching your video series, so Im glad I got recommended this video today. Thanks for your effort. Ive learnt a couple new things :)
I've been watching since the slingshot videos when we were both much younger. I just completed my BS in MechEngr last month. It's awesome to see you pursue your masters man. Congrats and love the content.
Glad to hear from you and know you are doing well man!!! this series is awesome and been waiting on the completion of it. Cant wait for the next video !! Cheers man
I can see that you are making this CNC machine super accurate. If you had a flat stone the size of your cutting area you can run your machine with a gauge to touch off the flat stone to see where you have peaks and valleys. But that is too difficult to achieve.
man, we follow you from before you get your adult voice :D don't worry, take your time! i would rather wait more and been surprise with such gems rather than the usual meh quality of many other channels out there. also hats off for your dedication and passion :D i remember finding this channel so many years ago thanks to the slingshot pattern of our beloved joerg sprave!
I saw a surfacing technique where you use both of the rails to surface each other with some grit in between, I don't think that would be good for anything beyond final lapping though. Since mounting them parallel is also a concern, I was going to float the tops of both of my Y beams using the self levelling epoxy resin technique, but that seems like too much work considering that what you are doing looks like a good alternative. Some of my machinist friends have purchased old granite pool tables for a large but inexpensive surface plate. I ran across Brian Howard's videos as well when I was considering a PrintNC build, they are great. Your videos coupled with his will be the most useful to me as I build the upgraded PrintNC type from the beginning.
Good job, really. Congratulations. There is a confusion between flat and straight. Actually, a tool machine bed needs to be straight and flat. However, you did great.
Really nice design of the machine! Very clean and well thought. Kudos! However there is one issue with your approach. When you weld the frame the whole flattening job you did with the Y beams will be gone. Since it is quite a small machine I would really advise you to find someone with a big professional machine nearby and flatten the whole frame when it's welded. It will cost you no more than 50$ and you will get great results. For the easier transport I would put the machine on the separate table and fix it by screws through shims. (the legs you designed looks quite skinny and narrow)
Great video. If you wanted to add more stength and rigidity to your y axis could you put two M12 tie rods through and pull the whole beam into compression?
would have saved time buying extrusion seeing as the box section expands and contracts like crazy with temperature differentials anyway. still a good job and well done
Why did you decide to try to save weight on the gantry? That is important for high feed rates on no load devices like 3D Printers but many people actually fill the gantry with epoxy granite to dampen vibration and improve accuracy. Your thoughts?
Was about to embark on making my cnc machine, until I see this machine.Need so many machines to make one machine, then I decided just to buy a machine 😂
Good job making due with the tools you have 👍 Drilling a bazillion holes to cut the alum plates looked like a bunch of fun 🙃, but I must ask.... You have a milling machine but not a sawzall, circular saw or even jigsaw????
Welcome back! What a cool surprise to see this series continued! Btw, did you happen to look into epoxy surface leveling when planning out how to flatten your linear rails? Just curious.
"The reason I am not welding this"....The flat bar is aluminum and the box is steel or do I have that wrong? Is there a way to weld those metals together that I am not aware of?
Your machine looks similar to mine except my y gantry is made of aluminium box section in a C configuration. I'm not sure if you tried any other methods for straight rails but I used piano wire and a cheap digital microscope, put the wire under enough tension and it should be straight, then attach the microscope to your linear rail bearing focused on the wire. BTW, it took me over three years to make mine 😂
TAOW...I was curious as to why you added the flat bar under the rails...If you would plz explain in laymen terms but from an engineering view as to why...I'm about at this stage of my build and if It makes sense to add then I'll add...In a roundabout way It seems like it would but I'm unable to see it completely...thanks
Use flat aluminum to correct the unevenness of the base of the guide rail to ensure that the guide rail is not tilted. If you want higher machining accuracy, you must do this
If you had used the 3 plate method with the 3 rails you could have made them all completely flat without much more effort than the comparative scraping. Then use them for x and y.
Good video, but this design shows a big flaw right away that I always try to avoid is having the linear rail open and up top. Bit collect dust and go out of wack pretty quickly
I was thinking the same thing - having rails and ball screws open to dust and chips can’t be a good thing. However literallly evey video out there ignores that, I could not yet find a design that avoids this problem.
I gave up on steel as main structure, too many machining. Custom parts are too expensive. Now i use forged carbon, cheaper if you made it yourself and doable with limited tools. Gravity and heat is your friend for flat surface. I use pvc foam as core material, and to save cost. I am okay with bigger and thicker parts. My gantry is forged carbon and aluminum. Fiberglass damp vibration better than carbon, kevlar just too expensive. I only use steel for main frame and reinforcement, aluminum to attach bolt and for getting precise 90° angle. Teflon as linear bearing.
That fly cutter is giving you a lot of problems. I suggest you replace that insert with hss one that you can grind to your needs. You shouldn't have that bad of a surface with a working cutter. Might have even been better to use your end mill to flatten with how bad that fly cutter was.
Very nice work. Brace yourself, though, for the machinist police who will chew you out for using calipers to scribe layout lines. As far as I'm concerned, this is no problem at all. It's a tool, not a holy amulet or magic wand. Not once in several decades have I ever used the very tip of caliper jaws to measure anything, so if there was some wear from scribing--and there isn't--then it would have no practical effect on the use of the caliper. And by the way, who uses calipers for super-critical measurements, anyway? I think what's happened is that shop foremen put the fear of God into these guys when they were apprentices as a way of throwing their (sometimes considerable) weight around. Add to this the fact that's there's just a certain number of people who are sanctimonious either by nature or as a long-practiced hobby. They're sort of the "Karens" of the UA-cam machinist world. They should mind their own damned business. If they pounce on you, just delete their comments.
Appolgies that it has taken so long to get this video out, and thank you to everyone that has reached out in emails and in the comments to check that I am okay.
The only reason that I have not posted in a while is just because I've been too busy to put the work in and edit this video, it feels great to finally get it out.
The engineering degree gets quite difficult and time-consuming towards the end. When I'm on a computer all day at work or in university, it is difficult to find the time to sit down and edit a video as long and complex as this. I also didn't want to rush this video and not do it justice just due to the amount of work that it took.
Thankfully for the first time in a while, I've got some time off this summer before I start my master's, so I'm going to be making videos again.
And if you're still around thanks so much for all the patience, see you very soon with the next video.
your voice has gotten deeper
No apologies are necessary, especially for something you’re giving us for free. Thank you for sharing at all!
I HAVE BEEN WAITING SOOOO LONG! FINALLY!
hell yeah, missed watching these forever ago, glad to see you're doin good dude :)
So great. Finally someone talking about flatness on a CNC router build and not just slapping the parts together and saying "look how great this build is, it can even mill some steel!" I love the attention to detail.
He has returned.
Wow... Nearly 2 years since the last video.
I imagine doing your engineering degree takes up all your time. Welcome back. 😃👍
Loving the "just making do with what I got" and "learning as I go". I'm learning here so thanks for sharing and keep it up! Good job, no need to apologize.
Hey man, glad to see you're still around :)
Your channel along with Grant Thompson was what really kickstarted my interest in building stuff and engineering when I was younger. Today marks the middle of my 3rd year of mechanical engineering! Thanks for the inspiration, channels like yours really helped show a 12y.o. me that building stuff is super fun and not impossible.
I wish you all the best with your studies and future endeavours!
Ahh thanks, that's so nice to hear, good luck with the degree!
No need to apologize...Its great to see that you are still amongst the living...I can completely understand the dedication one must put into the education to get the desirable outcome...Been looking forward to your finished product to see what you have accomplished...Welcome back...As have been expressed cant wait to see what the finally is going to reveal...
I remember watching your videos when we were both younger 😂 nice to see you still here
woot woot! glad you're still around! This channel is one of the very few (less than 5) that I still have the bell notifications on. :)
Can't wait to see the first thing you make on the new router in 84 years!
Delighted to see another video from you. The wait has been worthwhile.
LOL it has been a minute or two. As an apprentice I spent a month making a perfect cube. All 6 faces scraped and at 90 degrees to each other. I was so happy my apprentice was not training to be a machinist. 😂 getting close to a cutting CNC router.
Interesting video 2x👍
I haven't scheduled much yet for 2025 so I'm looking forward to the next installment of this series!
Still one of my favourite channels!
This is what i love seeing what people can do with minimal tools its looking great.
It's kinda funny that when I first discovered your channel I was in the middle of building my own CNC at what I thought was a very slow pace, but then I ended up finishing mine long ago and coming back to check your channel every now and then to see if there was an update. Looks like you have pretty much finished it now, but one tip I got from a subscriber was to get a stone (or synthetic stone) bench-top offcut from a kitchen design company to use as a budget surface plate. It will not be engineering grade flatness but most likely good enough for us home-builders and way cheaper,, and the fact that it's larger than your rails makes like much easier. I also used it to flatten my gantry and z plates. My machine has the same basic layout as yours, and I too ended up taking a bite out of the blocks the gantry sits on to allow a couple more cm travel, and I also had to machine an area on the gantry plate for the x-rails to sit co-planar. I don't have a mill but I made an MDF mock-up of my machine that was surprisingly capable, so I used it to machine the gantry and to make some other parts too. All documented on my channel about a year and a half ago if you ever have the time to watch :)
I'm not dead yet.
Kudos for doing this while at school. I definitely wouldn't have tried to do this while I was getting my engineering degree. It was more than enough just trying to get through my coursework. I built the PrintNC, which looks similar to your design but since I'm using it for word, I definitely didn't try to put it together as accurately as you are with yours. I do very much appreciate the X-axis gantry design and with the PrintNC design was this robust. Thanks for continuing the project and providing these videos.
Just found your channel by searching "how to etch steel with vinegar" 😂 9 year old video of yours taught me roughly, not surprised to see your making a cnc router now, cheers 👍
Glad to see you’re still kicking ass. Can’t wait for the next part.
WOWWWW WHAT A SERIES... My hands went to subscribe the moment I finished the first part. I am eagerly waiting for Part 4.
Great video. I really appreciate you showing your methods of “making do”. I’m glad to hear school is going well and you’re going for a Masters. Keep doing videos on your own schedule. We’ll be here whenever they are done. Take care
This is great. Your project is coming along, but this video also demonstrates why precision in manufacturing is very expensive and throwing a lot of labor at it can't be a substitute, especially when constructing tools. I appreciate your detail in documenting your journey. It must have added considerably to the build time. Thanks.
I remember now I was watching your video series, so Im glad I got recommended this video today. Thanks for your effort. Ive learnt a couple new things :)
I've been watching since the slingshot videos when we were both much younger. I just completed my BS in MechEngr last month. It's awesome to see you pursue your masters man. Congrats and love the content.
Glad to hear from you and know you are doing well man!!! this series is awesome and been waiting on the completion of it. Cant wait for the next video !! Cheers man
Don't apologise for living your own life... we all have priorities we have to adjust over time.
It was well worth the wait. Thank you. 👍😊
Welcome back ! There are dozens of us watching your videos 😃 and good luck with school hope it gets easier and better
I can see that you are making this CNC machine super accurate. If you had a flat stone the size of your cutting area you can run your machine with a gauge to touch off the flat stone to see where you have peaks and valleys. But that is too difficult to achieve.
Good to see some life again:) I've missed this series!
Always love to see a new video from you!
Great series indeed. Thankyou.
Looking forward to the final instalment.
man, we follow you from before you get your adult voice :D don't worry, take your time! i would rather wait more and been surprise with such gems rather than the usual meh quality of many other channels out there. also hats off for your dedication and passion :D i remember finding this channel so many years ago thanks to the slingshot pattern of our beloved joerg sprave!
What amazing timing. I literally just commented on your last video a couple of days ago wishing you well.
Okay it was 2 weeks ago but still felt like a couple of days ago.
Well, I know who I want to build my cnc table...
Excellent 👌 exquisite craftsmanship and work-throughitness (homemade word).
Thanks for sharing.🎉❤
holy shit dude, i thought you died. im glad you continued with the project gl
solid work! thanks for sharing. i especially like how concentrate on the problem solving parts.
Welcome back and thnaks for the video, you are doing great! Hope to see more from you in future
Nice to see another video. Keep up the good work!
Been with you since the very begging good to have u back mate 👍🏽
Glad to see another video!
Glas you are back!
I saw a surfacing technique where you use both of the rails to surface each other with some grit in between, I don't think that would be good for anything beyond final lapping though. Since mounting them parallel is also a concern, I was going to float the tops of both of my Y beams using the self levelling epoxy resin technique, but that seems like too much work considering that what you are doing looks like a good alternative. Some of my machinist friends have purchased old granite pool tables for a large but inexpensive surface plate. I ran across Brian Howard's videos as well when I was considering a PrintNC build, they are great. Your videos coupled with his will be the most useful to me as I build the upgraded PrintNC type from the beginning.
Good job, really. Congratulations.
There is a confusion between flat and straight. Actually, a tool machine bed needs to be straight and flat.
However, you did great.
Really nice design of the machine! Very clean and well thought. Kudos! However there is one issue with your approach. When you weld the frame the whole flattening job you did with the Y beams will be gone. Since it is quite a small machine I would really advise you to find someone with a big professional machine nearby and flatten the whole frame when it's welded. It will cost you no more than 50$ and you will get great results. For the easier transport I would put the machine on the separate table and fix it by screws through shims. (the legs you designed looks quite skinny and narrow)
Welcome back!
Great video. If you wanted to add more stength and rigidity to your y axis could you put two M12 tie rods through and pull the whole beam into compression?
Glad to see u again : )
Always an inspiration. Never mind how long it takes to make a video. Cheers mate
Awesome video ! Great skills , looking to the next one
would have saved time buying extrusion seeing as the box section expands and contracts like crazy with temperature differentials anyway.
still a good job and well done
Very nice!
Although…did you consider having aluminum extrusions instead of box sections? Flatness problems would be much easier with the extrusions
So awesome. Great job.
welcome back!!
You should consider making vids on the process of constructing your CNC in Fusion 🙏
Well worth the wait, mate :)
Why did you decide to try to save weight on the gantry? That is important for high feed rates on no load devices like 3D Printers but many people actually fill the gantry with epoxy granite to dampen vibration and improve accuracy. Your thoughts?
My man had us waiting for 2 years😅😂
True, Fr Fr, No 🧢
Also nice cnc CAD design.
The Man the Myth the Legend 🙏
Was about to embark on making my cnc machine, until I see this machine.Need so many machines to make one machine, then I decided just to buy a machine 😂
Excellent video, thank you!
One up Howard and fill your square beams with epoxy resin and granite ships.
Amazing! Looking forward to your next video. Notifications are on! :D
Good job making due with the tools you have 👍 Drilling a bazillion holes to cut the alum plates looked like a bunch of fun 🙃, but I must ask.... You have a milling machine but not a sawzall, circular saw or even jigsaw????
Welcome back! What a cool surprise to see this series continued! Btw, did you happen to look into epoxy surface leveling when planning out how to flatten your linear rails? Just curious.
Is that piece of uneven steel made of manganese by any chance?
Cool build
"The reason I am not welding this"....The flat bar is aluminum and the box is steel or do I have that wrong? Is there a way to weld those metals together that I am not aware of?
Your machine looks similar to mine except my y gantry is made of aluminium box section in a C configuration. I'm not sure if you tried any other methods for straight rails but I used piano wire and a cheap digital microscope, put the wire under enough tension and it should be straight, then attach the microscope to your linear rail bearing focused on the wire. BTW, it took me over three years to make mine 😂
TAOW...I was curious as to why you added the flat bar under the rails...If you would plz explain in laymen terms but from an engineering view as to why...I'm about at this stage of my build and if It makes sense to add then I'll add...In a roundabout way It seems like it would but I'm unable to see it completely...thanks
Use flat aluminum to correct the unevenness of the base of the guide rail to ensure that the guide rail is not tilted. If you want higher machining accuracy, you must do this
Nice work. We shared this video (and the previous 2 parts) on our homemade tools forum this week 😎
If you had used the 3 plate method with the 3 rails you could have made them all completely flat without much more effort than the comparative scraping. Then use them for x and y.
Can you explain it please
Super precision ❤❤💪👌👍👍👍👍👍
One of your first projects had better be a slingshot. :)
Holy shizzle dude, welcome back, guys prob married with kids now haha
It's been 2 years, not 2 decades 💀
Are you able to give me details on your X axis extrusion? I can't seem to find any profile that matches what you are using there.
Wow 😮 amazing
Super nice, where did you get all your tools ?
Some guys pour epoxy level, then do minimal milling for Y.
Use a grinder with thin cutting disk to do your scraping
that's a great way to hurt yourself. cutting disks WILL break if you give them an axial load. grinding disks are thick for a reason...
Nice video
Good video, but this design shows a big flaw right away that I always try to avoid is having the linear rail open and up top. Bit collect dust and go out of wack pretty quickly
I was thinking the same thing - having rails and ball screws open to dust and chips can’t be a good thing. However literallly evey video out there ignores that, I could not yet find a design that avoids this problem.
Awesome..ya goofy m8te from Australia
It's better to leave the video long than it is to leave a 2 year gap between them.
I'd love to hear what job opportunities have been offered to you and whether you are actually working in some industry?
Holy shit he came back with the milk
Long time no see
I've seen video on how epoxy resin could flatness the uneven surface, i think it's much more easier method
yoooo it has been a while
Bro are you not finding it hard to alight the x axis linear rails ...they give anxiety 😢😢
I gave up on steel as main structure, too many machining. Custom parts are too expensive. Now i use forged carbon, cheaper if you made it yourself and doable with limited tools. Gravity and heat is your friend for flat surface. I use pvc foam as core material, and to save cost. I am okay with bigger and thicker parts. My gantry is forged carbon and aluminum.
Fiberglass damp vibration better than carbon, kevlar just too expensive. I only use steel for main frame and reinforcement, aluminum to attach bolt and for getting precise 90° angle. Teflon as linear bearing.
LESSS GOOOOOOO
Did anyone count the number of times he said "flat" ❤
Asome work i make this Avery day your looks Asome nice day from Europa Austria
That fly cutter is giving you a lot of problems. I suggest you replace that insert with hss one that you can grind to your needs. You shouldn't have that bad of a surface with a working cutter. Might have even been better to use your end mill to flatten with how bad that fly cutter was.
To se uzmu originalni aluminijumski profili i samo se vodilice zavrnu
Very nice work. Brace yourself, though, for the machinist police who will chew you out for using calipers to scribe layout lines. As far as I'm concerned, this is no problem at all. It's a tool, not a holy amulet or magic wand. Not once in several decades have I ever used the very tip of caliper jaws to measure anything, so if there was some wear from scribing--and there isn't--then it would have no practical effect on the use of the caliper. And by the way, who uses calipers for super-critical measurements, anyway?
I think what's happened is that shop foremen put the fear of God into these guys when they were apprentices as a way of throwing their (sometimes considerable) weight around. Add to this the fact that's there's just a certain number of people who are sanctimonious either by nature or as a long-practiced hobby. They're sort of the "Karens" of the UA-cam machinist world. They should mind their own damned business. If they pounce on you, just delete their comments.
First
Great Job Taow🎉, how do I message you directly please
why not try using your car jack to get little pressure