Ruffel's cnc cutting journey

[Boyan Silyavski]

I Never left Boyan.! . . Was more unjust put in the naughty corner.!

The other voice in that video sounds like a Yorkshire Man.?

Its my friend Jeff Potter. he happens to live nearby, we became friends from here, the forum. We are in his workshop making my Z. No idea where is he from exactly. On all pictures on Facebook he wears a red white vertical stripes T shirt, so he should be from somewhere there, i dont know the team name though...

[DuffelBuffelWuffel]

I replaced the aquarium air pump with AS196 compressor with one paint/air gun.
When this all works out than I will make me a decent "fogbuster" setup.

The single flute VHM cutters also came in and they look really mean:

6 and 8mm

Around Friday / Saturday I'm able to start experimenting.
Again than you for all the help!

[DuffelBuffelWuffel]

Quick update.

Vertex VA-4 vice came in and I must say It very good for the price. Nice and heavy (~20Kg) and it allows larger work-pieces to be clamped because of the movable jaws.

I also installed inductive sensors on all axis to home the machine. The step loss is 0-1 and in the rare occasion 2. 1 step loss is about 0.0025mm and that is probably because my sensor holder is a bit wonky and the sensor probably has some error to. I have hybrid steppers with encoder so there should be none to very little step loss. I haven't tested it with a dial indicator yet...

The Haimer 3d probe is a nice piece of kit. When I was getting it out of my ER tool holder It fell a few cm and the probe broke off. So I have ordered a new one and a spare.

The As196 compressor is a nice and quiet compressor. I would like some more volume. In a later stage I might hook up 2-3 of them to a 50-100L tank and get that up to 6 bar. This would be nice for non-cnc stuff.

Last but not least I received the china mist thing from ebay ... but I haven't had much luck with it.
There is no way to adjust the amount of coolant that gets in the nozzle. When you turn the air down and the coolant reservoir is higher than the nozzle you will get quite a stream of coolant coming out of the nozzle.

When the reservoir is just a bit higher or lower than the nozzle there will be no coolant coming out. Does not matter if the system is at 1, 2 or 6 bar. The airbrush pistol that came with the compressor does a much better job. It even has a ionizer pin inside of it. Might hack that up later ....

I would like a fogbuster ... but they are just so damm expensive. Haven't the Chinese copied it yet?

Now I just use 1 or two air blasts at the endmil.

Oh and I also found out how to do automatic tool height compensation with EdingCNC and a tool-setter. Sadly during my last test I entered the estimated tool length wrong. The tool went into the tool-setter and broke the limit switch inside... Damage 3$

Tomorrow I will do some milling with the machine. I will also make a short movie about it and post some pictures of my setup.

[DuffelBuffelWuffel]

All went ... excellent to my surprise :)

All the feeds and speeds from gwizard work out fine , I had no mist on at the time , just a light (like blow light) air stream at 4 bar.

Video:
https://goo.gl/photos/3BqRiQLr8N396J7P6
This is about 1200mm feed, 12-15k rpm? and 2.5 mm deep . 7.9993 mm wide with a 8mm single flute cutter.

Video 2:
00:00 -> 20:00 is finishing the top at like 168 feed (gwizard) very light load. You can see the machine in the reflection of the material.
@23:00 it goes a bit deep ~10mm , 8mm 1F (conventional acc. Gwizard)
https://goo.gl/photos/tfS2MxWC95hTbb5t5
I changed the cam after that.

I like the 2F VHM cutters more than the single flute. The 2F allows me to go higher rpm and feed-rate (at least in Gwizard).

Finishing:

https://goo.gl/photos/UKZSaxefNBPmG6Xc8

Picture of machine:
https://goo.gl/photos/UgQrhXFBPk1CAceN6

https://goo.gl/photos/hCpUkn3ZG5RDuqREA

The AS196 is a bit low on air volume in my opinion. I would like a harder stream of air.
Adding a 25-50-100 liter external tank with an additional pressure regulator might do the trick.
So the compressor can turn at 4-6bar and filling the tank. The tank can provide 1-2 bar at a bit higher volume than regularly.

Due to the small tank (1.5l?) turning down the pressure regulator from 6 bar to 4 3 2 or 1 does not help to get the volume up.

The machining time is usually so short that a bit bigger tank should solve this problem.

Or I might get a timer and an solenoid that just pulses the air at a higher pressure every few seconds for a short period. Allowing the compressor to catch up and clearing the chips and cooling the bit better.

Anyway.. the machine and cutter works fine. I'm trying some higher feed-rates next weekend to "comply" with the HSM idea.