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Post by aforww on Aug 10, 2017 22:33:28 GMT
I think you're making it seem overly difficult.
1. The surfacing bit I have is 1.5 inches. When I surface my table that bit extends past the usable cutting area of the machine. So make your spoil board 9.5x9.5 surface it, and it's good until it's time to replace it. 2. You need to understand that ANY machine you buy, you will have to level the bed to the spindle. Any machine you buy period. My drill press, lathe, band saw, and a $6,000 table saw all needed an hour or more of squaring and leveling to get right. Granted, the table saw was only out a few thousandths but I wanted .001 over 14 inches. That's beyond accurate. If you think you are going to buy a machine, put it together, and not have to spend time dialing it in, you're setting yourself up for failure. 3. This is a process that needs to be done every once in awhile so get used to the idea. You have to check these things on all machinery. 4. If you want to mill metals, even aluminum, accuracy is not just a matter of accuracy or breaking it bits, it's a safety issue. Objects rotating or moving at high-speed and binding to an abrupt halt can cause injury. 5. I encourage you to learn these processes and accept it as a fact of life with manufacturing. As the saying goes, the Devil is in the details. Overlooking these little things will ruin your jobs and your motivation to learn. (as I'm sure you're finding now with your frustration).
If you want to do it right, shim the table to as close to possible and then surface your waste board. We're always around to help, even if you don't like the work involved in the responses lol.
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james383
New Member
Ready for larger and not even learned on my M3 yet. It's just enjoyable
Posts: 35
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Post by james383 on Aug 10, 2017 23:01:43 GMT
True but it would be nice to be able to cut the full bed flat not a pocket in it But then i guess the 90deg corners will help you hold things straight jejeje. Im used to shimming things up as I owned a machine shop and milling some of the blocks and heads you had to , then turning crankshafts dialing them in with the right stroke and then turning each journal . The 3d printers was easy with being able to raise or lower each corner of the bed . But it would be nice if the rails on the M3 was say 2incahes longer and wider just so that you could clean up the whole spoilerboard and not just part of it. I was going to try and shim the left rear corner up then when i cut say alum use my low vise and clamp the object in level or use some shim paper and shim the alum off from the board. Im over thinking this i know but when all you have is time on your hands thats what one does. I already want a larger cutter jejejeje like 3'x3' much larger than that then id have to sell the house to buy one . Well i think Monday the surfacing bit arives and ill by then have the board shimmed up some and give it a try. Might need a clue on how or what to enter for a thin cut. Like you said maybe 1-2ths and zero it out run the gcode if not clean zero it again and run code again till it looks clean. I think that would be how. Again thanks for all the help and info.
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Post by aforww on Aug 11, 2017 0:23:05 GMT
Realistically, you can just ignore the bed all together.
If you make a spoil board with all the holes in it (MillRight sells them) and it's just a tick under the usable cutting area, then you won't have to pocket the bed at all. You simply attached the spoil board with screws that are recessed below the surface by 1/8. Then you just surface the spoil board taking off a couple thousandths at a time until it's dead flat. The other side effect of this process and a positive one is that if you see lines across the surface as you overlap, it means the spindle isn't 90 degrees to the board. I don't know if you ever used a fly cutter to flatten stock, but it's the same concept.
As for the bigger machine, I can understand. I'm designing a huge one right now. However, we''re talking a couple grand in parts and materials, some of which I will machine myself on the M3. This machine gets into serious money if I bought it retail. The MillRight machines are by far the best bang for your buck you can get and once you get your M3 dialed in, you will have tons of fun with it. Keep your goals short term. Don't be looking down the road at aluminum until you have got a handle on the easy, more forgiving stuff and an understanding of CAD/CAM better. When I bought my M3 I knew absolutely ZERO about CNC and here I am. Stick with it, problem solve using info you gather and don't take shortcuts. You will be much happier in the long run.
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james383
New Member
Ready for larger and not even learned on my M3 yet. It's just enjoyable
Posts: 35
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Post by james383 on Aug 11, 2017 1:19:06 GMT
It's nice to here others started from not knowing anything and learn from scratch. Some of the other rooms it's harsh. They tell you to get lost and anything under 4'x6' is a toy and then you have to have software costing $2500 each to work and design things. Ya some of the rooms just not friendly at all. I could buy another spoilerboard from Millright and cut it down say 9 1/2 x 9 1/2 that way id not have to guess where the holes are and design one. Im sure over next few months will start getting the hang of things . Ive always liked to have 2 of everything so if one goes down i can keep going. Im looking like i said to buy a 2nd cnc machine but I want a min of around 3ft x 3ft work space I can see me doing some pictures with its own frame and sports junk for gifts. I used to do glass etching as hobby just to have gifts for people around me from my Doctors and Nurses I have allot of them jejeje. Trophy placks for the RC racing Key-chain with names or sports team on them as gifts . Did I say i have lots of free time jejejeje. Got to keep my mind busy and off of the cancer and treatments so what other way than to enjoy making sawdust all over the garage floor. I enjoy this Forum and all the help you have given me along with Mr D of Millright .
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Post by aforww on Aug 11, 2017 2:00:41 GMT
It's nice to here others started from not knowing anything and learn from scratch. Some of the other rooms it's harsh. They tell you to get lost and anything under 4'x6' is a toy and then you have to have software costing $2500 each to work and design things. Ya some of the rooms just not friendly at all. I could buy another spoilerboard from Millright and cut it down say 9 1/2 x 9 1/2 that way id not have to guess where the holes are and design one. Im sure over next few months will start getting the hang of things . Ive always liked to have 2 of everything so if one goes down i can keep going. Im looking like i said to buy a 2nd cnc machine but I want a min of around 3ft x 3ft work space I can see me doing some pictures with its own frame and sports junk for gifts. I used to do glass etching as hobby just to have gifts for people around me from my Doctors and Nurses I have allot of them jejeje. Trophy placks for the RC racing Key-chain with names or sports team on them as gifts . Did I say i have lots of free time jejejeje. Got to keep my mind busy and off of the cancer and treatments so what other way than to enjoy making sawdust all over the garage floor. I enjoy this Forum and all the help you have given me along with Mr D of Millright . Gotta stay positive for sure in your shoes. Having hobbies is a huge plus. An idle mind is dangerous. You ask anyone here, I'm big on helping. Derek was instrumental in my first days. Y'all can thank him for me being around this long lol. I'm not big on the whole forums thing. This is the only one I'm a part of. As for those folks with the complex about CNC size, money doesn't buy you skill or an eye for design. Just guys with a complex.
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Post by Derek the Admin on Aug 11, 2017 2:01:10 GMT
It looks like aforww has given some pretty good advice.
I'll say this as well. On tramming and cutting flat: I do this on our industrial level router as well. The machine cut it's own bed and I surface spoil boards everytime I chance them. There are some mechanical adjustments you can make. The machine itself is designed for flatness. In the perfect world (the 3d model being that perfect world), everything is trammed perfectly. There are some inaccuracies introduced in the manufacturing process, but even there everything is very very close to the model. The bed itself is very flat, the rails are quite straight, and the frame pieces are very accurately cut. There is some adjustment room in the holes that mount the rails to the frame pieces to help allow you to adjust for the frame getting connected inaccurately (IE: the bottom of every frame piece not being on the exact same plane). I encourage you to surface the bed, but I think you can make some adjustments to get it closer to trammed by making adjustments. If it's always high on the right side, then the right side of the X rail needs to come down. There's also tiny bit of adjustment in the Y rails.
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Post by icarii on Aug 11, 2017 17:09:01 GMT
It looks like aforww has given some pretty good advice. I'll say this as well. On tramming and cutting flat: I do this on our industrial level router as well. The machine cut it's own bed and I surface spoil boards everytime I chance them. There are some mechanical adjustments you can make. The machine itself is designed for flatness. In the perfect world (the 3d model being that perfect world), everything is trammed perfectly. There are some inaccuracies introduced in the manufacturing process, but even there everything is very very close to the model. The bed itself is very flat, the rails are quite straight, and the frame pieces are very accurately cut. There is some adjustment room in the holes that mount the rails to the frame pieces to help allow you to adjust for the frame getting connected inaccurately (IE: the bottom of every frame piece not being on the exact same plane). I encourage you to surface the bed, but I think you can make some adjustments to get it closer to trammed by making adjustments. If it's always high on the right side, then the right side of the X rail needs to come down. There's also tiny bit of adjustment in the Y rails. OK I apologize for the probably simple/dumb question, when you say you surface the spoil boards, is this another board you put on top of the bed or literally the bed of the M3. aforww in some of your recent pictures in the project section of the forum it looks like you have carved out a section of the bed of the of the M3 to make it level, is that the process you are referring to? Which brings me to another questions, which is probably relative to how much you actually run the machine but how often do you replace a spoil board? Also what type of code do you run at the machine to level the spoil board? Do you just set the z to a fixed height and then run a file through UGS which moves the x/y in the needed directions to carve out the level spot? I know I am way ahead of my development in the skill set to successfully run a cnc but these were just questions that popped into my mind as I was reading these posts.
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Post by Derek the Admin on Aug 11, 2017 17:31:18 GMT
Icari, that is more or less correct. You just program it in CAM software like you would any other design that you are cutting. Fusion 360 has a facing operation you could use. There are other ways to skin that cat too.
Some people use our spoil boards (we sell them at out store), some people don't. I'll emphasize that you should be trying to tram things mechanically first. You will get pretty close but not perfect probably. It's not too hard, just spend a little time with it by adjusting as I described above. You could just do the bed as aforww did. I'll say this too: enjoy the machine some before getting totally wrapped up in a dead trammed bed. A half mm front to back is hardly critical for most work people will do.
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Post by aforww on Aug 11, 2017 17:46:21 GMT
Don't follow my lead! Lol. I surfaced the bed because it was almost 2mm off on one corner, 1mm on another, and -.4mm on another. I tried to mechanically fix as much as I could. Now, some of my more frequent operations I wasn't using a spoil board because it wouldn't work with Z height. So I had to level the bed. The caveat to that is I had to give up a uniform surface across the bed. Now my spoil boards have to be within the part that was surfaced. It limited my work holding options a bit.
Your best bet, like Derek said, adjust mechanically to as close as you can attach spoil board and surface. If you use a .25 inch spoil board you can surface it a whole bunch before it has to be replaced.
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james383
New Member
Ready for larger and not even learned on my M3 yet. It's just enjoyable
Posts: 35
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Post by james383 on Aug 11, 2017 20:59:56 GMT
Well i went out early this morning to check the Tram on my M3 and even with all my Mics and machine shop junk had nothing small enough to work so I did mine old style way and placed a peace of glass 10x10 over the spoil board then zeroed the bit center on it and jogged it around finding high and low spot and shimmed the glass up till it was level in all 4 corners of the glass to the dremel bit. Then removed the bit and replaced it with a Z shape peace of solder YES 1/8 thick Solder bent into a Z like shape. Placed the router center of bed lowered down till the Solder just touched the glass on front side without moving the dremel from center of board, turned it 180deg so it was now at the back of the board and found it was over 7/32 high and level up front on the glass. I backed off the 2 Screws on both sides of the TOP BAR and twisted the bar holding onto the drill head (Dremel) till the Solder was touching in the backside on the glass, rotating the drill head back 180 to the front of glass checked clearance twisted TOP rail again to get clearances and found a happy in-between . Snugged the side screws on both sides of the bar then checking clearance again but this time every 90degs so left side right side front and rear. Had to lift the right side just a bit to get it level with glass and tighten the side screw up good, re-checked the clearance of the solder tip to the glass with just a peace of paper and it was as close as I think i could get it. Now the trick i took one of my buffing pad disks and chucked it up on a 3in pad 1/4in shank and placed it into my dremel and Zeroed it to left front of the Spoiler-board after removing the glass and shims i use and set a Gcode up to cut a .002ths pocket over the whole bed which was a 10x10 setting and then zeroed the buffing pad left front corner of bed run it around 8000rpm and run Gcode and it cleaned the bed up nicely. Still not level but lot better than when i started. WIll shim bed later this was just to see if I was close and it was way off .
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james383
New Member
Ready for larger and not even learned on my M3 yet. It's just enjoyable
Posts: 35
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Post by james383 on Aug 11, 2017 21:10:07 GMT
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Post by aforww on Aug 11, 2017 22:45:55 GMT
Well done. That's exactly what I did to tram mine. Used a piece of 1/8 steel rod. Not as good as a dial indicator but worked enough to tell me I wasn't going to fix it with just moving rails up and down lol. Once my next machine is done, I'll surely be investing in the proper tools.
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