FridgeFreezer Posted December 23, 2018 Share Posted December 23, 2018 Some time ago as something of an extravagant eBay impulse purchase I bought a small Proxxon MF70 with CNC conversion as the "missing link" in my tool collection, figuring with a mill & a lathe you can make anything. Life got in the way but I've finally dug it out and set it up - as you can see it's small enough to have on your desk which is part of the attraction for learning: I downloaded LinuxCNC and am currently running it inside a virtual machine (which is a terrible idea and should not be attempted by anyone) on my indoor PC just to get the hang of it, lo and behold I actually got it to do a thing: I'm not about to actually mill stuff in the house as it will throw carp everywhere, but I can at least work out the toolchain before moving to a dedicated PC and moving it all to the shed where mess can be made. I'm hoping to get a bit of tinkering time over the festive period so will post updates. 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paddy_SP Posted December 23, 2018 Share Posted December 23, 2018 Excellent stuff - let us know how you get on! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
elbekko Posted December 23, 2018 Share Posted December 23, 2018 Ooh. I've been thinking about getting something like that at some point, seems more useful than a 3D printer really. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TSD Posted December 23, 2018 Share Posted December 23, 2018 (edited) Coincidentally, I spent yesterday afternoon cnc milling ali parts to upgrade my 3d printer (... and just to give FridgeFreezer a laugh, cos he's seen me do this before, the spring from the mechanism that I spent 3 hours looking for turned out to be sat on top of the circuit board when I turned it on Oh well, at least it wasn't shorting the mains this time Edited December 23, 2018 by TSD Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cynic-al Posted December 23, 2018 Share Posted December 23, 2018 My cnc converted mill has a steel tub around it with a polycarbonate front for access. It catches most of the chips and if you fit coolant that as well. Plus it makes a Taiwanese mill look much more serious! With a mill that size maybe you could put it in a large plastic box or something? I run mach3 because everyone runs mach3 and I've learnt it's much easier to follow a trodden path unless you have the energy to go to anorak levels of understanding. Its been fun and I've learnt a lot. I got the hang of aluminium so have moved onto steel. Im using some tool steel backplates to try mill loco wheels. The poor hobby mill really isn't happy and I'm on a whole new learning curve. I'd like to cnc convert the lathe sometime too. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FridgeFreezer Posted December 28, 2018 Author Share Posted December 28, 2018 Al - yeah, everyone uses Mach3 but I kinda fancied the challenge of doing it as free and open-source as possible from the ground up. Ben - it depends what your target is - I've done some 3D printing thanks to TSD's "spare" printer and you can make more complex shapes than a 3-axis mill could manage, but even with the more robust filaments etc. you aren't going to beat a nicely milled aluminium or even nylon bracket. Dave - now you've upgraded your 3D printer using your mill, are you going to upgrade your mill with any 3D printed bits? In other news, I managed to get a shape from Inkscape via PyCam to LinuxCNC to a post-it-note, possibly the least efficient computer printer known to man but it proves the "other" use of the mill, which is my better half using it for jewellery designs - an ideal fit and it generates a lot of extra brownie points Oh and I definitely need to fit some limit switches as the first mod! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
landroversforever Posted December 31, 2018 Share Posted December 31, 2018 Depending what materials you’re machining/engraving, you can easily hook up a vacuum to the end. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FridgeFreezer Posted January 1, 2019 Author Share Posted January 1, 2019 Yeah, but being a small high-speed mill the spindle's slowest setting is about 5000rpm so something's bound to escape! Also it's quite noisy for indoors either way round - long-term I'll build a little enclosure for it but that's a glory project for later. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
landroversforever Posted January 2, 2019 Share Posted January 2, 2019 Sounds like the engraver we had in my old department.... annoying the 5K minimum RPM made it pretty useless for anything other than engraving part numbers Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
simonr Posted January 2, 2019 Share Posted January 2, 2019 19 hours ago, FridgeFreezer said: Yeah, but being a small high-speed mill the spindle's slowest setting is about 5000rpm so something's bound to escape! Also it's quite noisy for indoors either way round - long-term I'll build a little enclosure for it but that's a glory project for later. It will be possible to add speed control to slow it down. However, if you're using small cutters <6mm, 5k rpm isn't far off what you should be running. People always run mill cutters too slowly with too shallow cuts. Cranking up both gives you a better cut finish and makes the tools last longer (surprisingly) so long as you have decent cooling (which could just be an air blower). Si Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cynic-al Posted January 7, 2019 Share Posted January 7, 2019 On 1/2/2019 at 4:23 PM, simonr said: It will be possible to add speed control to slow it down. However, if you're using small cutters <6mm, 5k rpm isn't far off what you should be running. People always run mill cutters too slowly with too shallow cuts. Cranking up both gives you a better cut finish and makes the tools last longer (surprisingly) so long as you have decent cooling (which could just be an air blower). Si I think the tools last longer because your moving more mm per cut. However I find I can never hit the theoretical speeds without problems like snapping cutters or breaking tips. I think it's because my machine isn't rigid enough for it so I end up with uneven loading etc but I'm no expert at it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FridgeFreezer Posted January 7, 2019 Author Share Posted January 7, 2019 It's kinda academic as I'm not running a CNC mill in the lounge no matter what mods it has! We try to keep tools and stuff in the shed / garage and keep the house relatively normal otherwise it would get out of hand... 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cynic-al Posted January 10, 2019 Share Posted January 10, 2019 (edited) Meh it'd be fine, just get some noise cancelling headphones and you won't even know it's there. I have learn't that women don't like masses of swarf trodden into the carpet. Edited January 10, 2019 by Cynic-al Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cynic-al Posted January 11, 2019 Share Posted January 11, 2019 My new 'CNC' project arrived today for work. It's a 2013 robot, it can lift 130kg at it's full reach of 3.2m so could probably do an engine change . It's retired from a BMW standby production line so has less than 5,000 hours, the company we buy off buy in bulk and refurbish. You can buy just the bare robot or they will build a full production cell or anywhere inbetween. I got them to add a 7th axis as a turntable and if I can get the better of it it will use a variety of tools to shape foam. I have a piece of CAM software which will write the paths as native language, then run it through a post processor to add the extra bits, then load onto the robot... hopefully 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FridgeFreezer Posted January 11, 2019 Author Share Posted January 11, 2019 OK now you're just showing off, swanky barsteward! Just a little bit jealous! Would love to see some of your output though. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maverik Posted January 11, 2019 Share Posted January 11, 2019 Hehe, are we playing top trumps here? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cynic-al Posted January 11, 2019 Share Posted January 11, 2019 Well the difference is I don't have to pay for this as it's work The concept will be something similar to this but customised to what we need to make Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FridgeFreezer Posted January 11, 2019 Author Share Posted January 11, 2019 I could break so much stuff with one of those! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cynic-al Posted January 11, 2019 Share Posted January 11, 2019 It's breaking me that I'm worried about. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FridgeFreezer Posted January 13, 2019 Author Share Posted January 13, 2019 You know what must be done! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cynic-al Posted January 14, 2019 Share Posted January 14, 2019 LOL. My favourite I've seen was at an exhibition where they had one chipping a gold ball into a hole. It did it every time. ABB do a program called robot studio where you can link robots to get them to do that sort of thing more easily but I'm not that into it. I can do a program that moves to a position, picks something up, puts it down elsewhere and that's about it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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