New 6040 owner looking for advice from others with a chinese 6040/3040

[Boyan Silyavski]

Hi,
congratulations!

I was there some years ago, so lets see how we can make your learning faster.

Here are some tips for you , i will try to order them like steps:

1. Mach3
-Buy it if you haven't done it already. Dont use cracked version. You will need help and will have a lot of questions, use their forum also. It quite worth the money.
-read profoundly the Mach3 manual again and again. there are the answers to most of your questions. You don't need limit switches, you could use software limits, but you should have known it if you read the manual

2. Buy some good and cheap router bits. Not Chinese, they are crap. Look at ebay for a seller called Drillman1. he sells Kyocera microtools carbide router bits , buy some 2 flute and single flute 1/8 and 1/4 which not only are the best price around but most of them are best quality

3. Read forums and find your speeds for different materials with the router bits and your machine
I have similar machine, its not strong but does the job. As a starters do same depth of cut as your bit diameter and you will be OK, you could do maybe even aluminum, but you have to scratch it.

Here are some speeds and feeds which can serve you as starting points.I lost with these a couple of weeks and a lot of broken bits. For this type of machine they are OK, even if many may disagree:

everything in imperial,1/8 or 1/4 it doesn't matter as usually the machine is the limiting factor here , not the bit , though more careful with longer or thinner bits :

soft plastic , its scratching but if you go deeper with flimsy machine, it melts, better use single flute if speed is needed.


plexiglass


MDF,wood, works for phenolic plastic also, composite panel


Harder wood


Aluminum, i told you its scratching. You could change the depth of cut. 8000rpm is pretty the perfect speed for this material

with 2 flute


with 1 flute, which is better in my opinion



Surfacing with a big 2 flute cutter




This should keep you busy for a couple of weeks !

[Newbie]

Im new to this too and have £1500 to spend on the complete setup i too am looking at the ebay versions because i want to be able to plug and play I'm looking at making small embellishments for crafts and the odd plaque like you see on horse stables will this kind of machine do this? also how much is mach 3 ?

Chris