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A project log for Workbench CNC Mill

CNC Mill with aluminium flat bar frame built without mill or lathe.

gregstephensongregstephenson 07/03/2016 at 21:370 Comments

Well, for a given value of finished. There's still so much more I want to do, like a 4th axis, move my old Prusa 2's hot end and extruder onto a quick mount head, add laser etching....

Anyway, the project was finally finished over the weekend will the completion of the electronics enclosure I milled out on the machine itself. As a brief rundown of performance, at this point I'm comfortably cutting MDF and ply at 1000mm/min, 4mm DoC, with an accuracy of +/- 0.02mm, if you're willing to believe my digital calipers (It's just occurred to me I should probably have photographed that, watch this space). I haven't yet tried milling aluminium, but with the 5kg spindle weighing down the gantry and smoothing out the vibration from the slightly bent lead screw, I really can't see any major problems. The machine barely even works cutting soft wood.

From the last update, you can see my super cheap E-Bay spindle package, which came with the 2.2kw spindle, full set of ER20 collets, HuanYang VSD (which to this point is also working well, but feels kinda temporary), and the submersible pump below the enclosure.

The software toolchain is still Autodesk Fusion 360 into Mach 4, both of which are working without even the slightest hassle.

I intend to post a full set of DXFs for the aluminium components, a parts list, and if I get really keen, a set of build instructions.

Probably the single most important learning I can pass on from this project is to build the dust boot before you cut your first MDF piece. Trust me on this.

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