We’ve had a CNC for a number of years now, but its has always been a bit on the rubbish side. It wasn’t very rigid to say the least, with wobble in the Z axis being very pronounced. So earlier this year I found a UK company (IT Tech) doing a whole machinery kit that looked very solid. The old one ran on v-rails with belt drives, with 2020 aluminium extrusion as the body. Whilst this made it cheap, it wasn’t the best option.
Now the new one is all ballscrew feeds on hardened steel linear rails. When I first got it I quickly put it together (8 bolts) and fastened it to the bed with a single screw. I could barely move it. This thing is rock solid.
Along with the new mechanism, I also decided to upgrade the spindle too to a nice three phase one. So glad I did as its not only more powerful, but its a lot quieter too. Previously I had needed to wear hearing defenders when running it due to the high pitch noise, but now the dust collection is louder (so I still wear the hearing defenders). I do have a current issue where by default it runs backwards. I discovered this when I set a job going and lots of smoke happened as the bit basically tried to create fire on the piece of oak I was using.
The last upgrade was the spoil board. I had originally thought I’d use the old one as it was big enough and it had been working well. It consisted of a bunch of holes spaced 100mm apart in a grid, with threaded nuts. This worked really well, but after a few flattenings there wasn’t much left and replacing it was going to be a nightmare. After watching *many* youtube videos, I decided to go with a t-track based spoil board. So ordered a bunch of t-track and a sheet of MDF (prices for a half sheet are ridiculous compared to a full sheet!) to build my new spoil board. It turned out really nicely and has the added benefit of being able to just replace a single strip if it gets too chewed up.
I bought the electronics from the same company, which is running FluidCNC, a nice opensource system based around an ESP32. It came in a nice enclosure with all the stepper drivers included. I found it fairly easy to use, tho I am probably going to roll my own system so that I can get a few extra benefits such as an OLED readout and the ability to communicate with the spindle using RS485 for full control.
Time for some first cuts. Turns out the calibration (steps/mm) was out, so I was getting some extra small items to start with. I’m used to this process with 3d printers so it didn’t take too long. Once that was done it was on to doing some tests. I had some old oak floorboards that were gifted for free and came in very handy for the tests. I’m not the best at CAD so I just made a simple hexagonal dish. The wood was only 110mm wide too so it was a bit small for anything useful.
Over all I’m am extremely pleased with the upgrade. I’ve got about 800x800mm capacity, and should even be able to do light aluminium work. I still need to figure out the feeds and speeds for the materials and cnc, but I want to give it a try with some larger items now. Hopefully I’ll have some more examples to show soon. I’ll have to actually set up my new jointer that I bought about 6 months ago and still not used, then I can join a few of the boards I’ve got together and hopefully do some nice hard wood bowls.
