I was thinking more down the lines of Smoking Monkey CNC but you do have a point...Quote:
Originally Posted by Hemsworthlad
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I was thinking more down the lines of Smoking Monkey CNC but you do have a point...Quote:
Originally Posted by Hemsworthlad
Just made an ali part with my new Ali Master cutters, using these compared to my 3 flute carbide cutters is like night and day.
No clogging, cuts easier, faster feedrates and a better finish.
If anyone is thinking of cutting ali on your router (yes Kip, cutting aluminium on your router!) then get some of these. Best £7.00 I have spent in ages.
Well me owd kipster its bad news I'm afraid....Quote:
Originally Posted by Kip
Made a part yesterday out of 20mm alu/ali/ally plate and put a 38.1mm bore through it with a 6mm alue/allie/hally master cutter and it came out at 38.07. Measured it in 6 different places and yes its concentric (big word, had to check it on spellchecker). Was a bit pissed off though being 0.03 undersize so altered the cutter comp and put it right.
Yes it was near the middle of the table but thats because it seemed the most sensible place to put it. Honestly don't think it would matter were it was on this machine.
Could my router replace a machine tool...... No. I used to have a HAAS VF0 (little baby one) and that could do jobs like this in a quarter of the time but were's the fun in that..?
Steve,
repeat after me
"It's not a router, it's a bed mill "
"It's not a router, it's a bed mill "
"It's not a router, it's a bed mill "
"It's not a router, it's a bed mill "
"It's not a router, it's a bed mill "
"It's not a router, it's a bed mill "
.:wave:
"It's not a router, it's a bed mill "
"It's not a router, it's a bed mill "
"It's not a router, it's a bed mill "
"It's not a router, it's a bed mill "
"It's not a router, it's a bed mill "
"It's not a router, it's a bed mill "
"It's not a router, it's a bed mill "
"It's not a router, it's a bed mill "
"It's not a router, it's a bed mill "
"It's not a router, it's a bed mill "
"It's not a router, it's a bed mill "
"It's not a router, it's a bed mill "
(how long for?)
Till I get me shuttle back..............
.
Just been in workshop to polish my bed mill, got a bit dirty after milling all that hallumiyum plate over the weekend, nice and shiny again now.:smile:
Shame kips not around, he would of really liked a photo of it.
(John, looks like i'll be repeating
"It's not a router, it's a bed mill "
"It's not a router, it's a bed mill "
"It's not a router, it's a bed mill "
"It's not a router, it's a bed mill "
"It's not a router, it's a bed mill "
"It's not a router, it's a bed mill "
for a while...):naughty:
bastard..................
.
PS any good pubs near Hilton ?
Yes.. (message to short my arse!)
Good, you can take me for a pint when i collect me shuttle
Pm sent over another job, you'll like it, just fit on your bed mill :whistling:
Bastard..........Quote:
Originally Posted by John S
Hi HiltonSteve - Great build - I'm going to be using 80x40 extrusions on my build. How thick are the ally tool plates supporting the 80x40 sides on your build?
Thanks
Mike
15mm.
If you pm me your email i will send you the drawing if you want it.
Hi Steve haven't posted in a long time as my computer is as sick as a skegness donkey and a bit temperamental but have managed to get back on the net and must say what a fantastic machine and after seeing that I have gave up on my MDF "SPECIAL" and will go the aluminium rout. I see you had a good mentor Mr John S what a great bloke and I must e-mail him and try and get my build back on track and what to do next. That is the sort of machine I would like to build and I also live in Long Eaton literally 5 mins away from John and I see your in Derby what a small world eh? Would love to see that baby working bro maybe some time........
Thanks Kammo....
If you want to come round and see it in action then your more than welcome, also happy to help pointing you in the right direction as it is amazing how much you learn in a short space of time building a machine.
If your 5 mins away from John S then I am sure he can help with all the stuff that you need, but if he's too busy then I'm only 15 mins away.
Good thing about John is that he lets you 'borrow' loads of stuff and you don't have to take it back....:naughty:
Bastard........
List so far
Quick change toolpost
HSS engraving cutter
Solid carbide engraving cutter
Shuttle Express.
Kress 800
Still trying to remember.
Never had a Kress of you....... honest me lordQuote:
Originally Posted by John S
As for the rest, hows £20 quid sound?
Well it was worth a try.............Quote:
Originally Posted by HiltonSteve
Is that £20 per week or per day ?
Tell wou what, keep that colour laser printer I gave you and we will call it quits.......:wink:
Keep it ? can't skipped it, gone to the big scrapyard in the sky, it was as reliable as a ..
*!/?-=# bastard let go me arm.................
SKIPPED IT ???????
It was alright 'till you dropped it .
:sad:
hopefully John's not wearing his glass's and can't read this, been trying to get rid of that piece of crap for ages.....
Quote:
hopefully John's not wearing his glass's and can't read this, been trying to get rid of that piece of crap for ages.....
Probably can now:yahoo:
BASTARD
Someone I know is in for a smack with my white stick.
.
Hi Steve, i was looking at your build and must say A1 on the machining front as regards to the aluminum! how did you cut the two sides out of what looks to me like 3/4" or 20mm aluminum plate?
Steve's on holiday for a fortnight so can't answer but being a true mate and to stop the bastard lying thru his teeth I can tell you he didn't cut them, I did.
At the time Steve didn't have a working machine, a bit of chicken and egg situation, no sides, no machine but need to machine sides etc.
Steve did the drawings and supplied the material.
I ignored his drawings and did it how I wanted :yahoo:Musta been a fluke but it worked out OK.
.
Ahh right well i must say you made a good job then :D im in the process of making a machine, but on a slightly larger scale ( 6x4ft ) mainly out of alloy but the bench is good old wood! i just need to machine the sides out but can see them being a right arse ache as they are 20mm thick and around 305 x 750mm. i was thinking of either making a undersize template in wood and using a router with a small end mill and do it manually or i was goin draw them up in CAD n tackle some engineering place but i dunna want shell out too much on getting the damn things cut out!
Just squeeze 305 x 750 on the Beaver I reckon, have to check the 750 bit later.
.
oh righty!, Beaver eh? ill have to think of a name for mine when its finished! :)
Cheers for that anyways john!
I might be on holiday but I'm still here!
I can confirm that John has a really nice big beaver and he knows how to use it, did a great job for me and can highly recommend him.
If he can't fit your job on then it should just fit on mine, so one of us should be able to sort you out.
Well thanks a million guys i dont live that far from you, good old sunny stoke! as for your beavers i would love to see them in action ;)
Geeet your beavers outtttt, Geeet your beavers outtttt, Geeet your beavers out for the lad !
Been playing with my machine for a few weeks now and everything is running sweet, the only problem I have is getting rid of the dust / chips when cutting wood and MDF, its amazing how much crap a 6mm cutter can create in very short space of time! Up to now I have been using our old Dyson vacuum which to be fair does a reasonable job but not really up to continous use and will soon be dead if I carry on abusing it!
So yesterday I went out and bought myself a small(ish) dust and chip extractor (see photo's below) which came with a standard 4" flexible pipe, this baby is quieter, shifts a lot more air and is built to run continously.
Now I have seen the router dust extractor mounts that fit around the spindle with the brush's and plastic flaps but just did not like the idea. Seems to me that they will probably end up getting in the way when cutting or changing tools so.... I had an idea and knocked up and bit of a prototype out of a couple of bits of MDF and the top off of an old 4" drain pipe connector this afternoon (see pics).
First test run it worked very well, cut a few deep slots in some MDF and when finished there was little or no dust or chippings around at all.
Still a bit bulky but just wanted to prove the theory a this stage, final design will probably incorporate the router mount into it and make it all out of aluminium.
But before I go any further with this has anyone seen or used anything similar that may be able to throw a few other ideas into the pot???
Most of the professional ones have a brush curtain to contain the 'splash' from the cutter. Only problem I foresee is that if the base gets to large then it will restrict the x and y movement. It would be great if the system could actually surround the router could aid cooling but would be very hard to design.
Peter
I have been doing some feed/speed calculations for cutting wood and mdf and found that my feedrates are nowhere near what they need to be to give me the correct chipload, this would explain why my carbide cutters seem to produce a lot of dust in mdf and dull off quite quickly.
Calculation -
Chipload required for MDF with a 6mm cutter = 0.33-0.41
My min spindle speed with Kress 1050 - 10,000rpm
No of flutes on cutter - 3
Feedrate = number of flutes x chipload x rpm
So... feedrate = 3 x 0.33 x 10,000
Feedrate = 9,900 mm/min !!!!
A 2 flute cutter would drop this to 6,600 mm/min, but this is still pretty high.
The problem is my machine only had a max feedrate of 2900mm/min, played with all sorts of settings when i first got it running but that was the best I could get. Feedrates/rapid speeds above that and I got stepper motors stalling and missing steps, but tonight i decided to have another go. So, I switched everything on and found for the first 2-3 mins I could get my feedrates up to 7,000 mm /min but then I started getting stepper problems, kept bringing the values down until the problems went away and guess what the feedrate ended up at.... 2900mm/min!
Took the top off my controller box to see how hot the driver cards were and found that the heatsinks on them were seriously hot, you could only hold your finger on them for 5-10secs. So I decided to do a bit of a cooling mod....
Found a couple of 120mm 12v PC fans and made some mounts for them, fixed them over the top of the driver cards which more or less covered the cards completely and wired them up to a spare 12v supply. (see photo's below)
I now have the motors running at 5,000mm/min without any issues and the driver cards don't even get warm. I did wind it up to 7,500mm/min but to be honest I think its just too fast for the machine, 5,000 looks and feels much more comfortable. The next problem was acceleration and decel, had to wind this up to 1000 mm/sec to get square corners when cutting rectangular pockets. I may have to screw the machine down to the bench now to stop it from throwing itself off!
Now running at these speeds it looks feels much more aggressive, maybe a bit too aggressive but does seem to cut a lot cleaner and a damn site quicker.
Conclusion - Cutting MDF can be a bastard nightmare, it can give you cancer and knackers your cutting tools. Looks like I might steer away from using it too much in the future. But from what I have read most woods are in a similar chipload window so still need similar feedrates to the above, may look at getting some 1 flute cutters so I can reduce the feedrates and see if they are any better.
Anyone else finding the need to run this fast when cutting mdf/wood?
Single flutes are the way to go, It's not so much chip load but space to get the chips out the way so you are not recutting chips.
Couple of people on Ebay selling Trend single flute router cutters in carbide.
I use these on Tufnol which is very abrasive and they last a long time.
Never tried Roy's 5 amp drivers as I have a load of the 7.8 amp Chinese drivers. Was running bastard Gecko 201's but these Chinese drives outperform them easily, better rapids, cooler running but best off all they don't blow up on switch on now that Marriss has now kindly admitted to on the zone.
Don't get me wrong, I am not saying that there is anything wrong with Roy's 5A drivers, just that if anyone is thinking of using them then make sure you keep them cool, maybe what I have done with the cooling is a bit over the top with the 2 x 120mm fans, I was only looking for one fan and found two so I thought I may as well stick them both in whilst I am at it.Quote:
Originally Posted by John S
But now they are cooler they run just fine.
I will have a hunt round on ebay and get myself some of those single flute cutters, they do sound like the way to go. Ta.!
Thats a beauty of a job you did on the driver and power supply housing, most professional. Did you use an old desktop pc case.
I designed and made the controller case from scratch and yes it did turn out really nice. I have considered making a few more which I will look into if i get enough interest.Quote:
Originally Posted by compfranon
I could either just supply the powder coated cases empty but with the mounting holes for the drivers etc and the front stainless plate cutomized to suit whatever you are putting inside or possibly would look at building up ready to go controller box's wired up with drivers etc.
If anyone is interested then let me know.
Had a spare couple of hours today so decided to replace the temporary MDF bed that I put on the machine when I built it, the cutting fluid that I have been spraying when working with alumuminium has finally taken its toll, just one of those jobs that I kept putting off but just can't put it off any longer.
Looked at aluminium extrusion t slot plate but when I priced it up I stopped looking, decided to come up with something different.
Thought a nice piece of 20mm aluminium tooling plate would do the job...:cool:
So I now have a nice blank piece of plate and was thinking of drilling and tapping a series of M8 holes into it for clamping etc, I will plug the holes with grub screws when not being used so they don't get clogged up and will be leaving them blind so that I can contain fluids a little easier, but before I do I am open to suggestions for hole spacings and the pattern.
Well....???
Thats a nice bit of allow steve, where did you get that from? and looking at the photo has it been faced flat?