OK! first cut on a real part… one error in a cut on the top box.
All observations and suggestions appreciated …
Is this normal vibration and noise, the material is .20 MDF with a 1/8", 2 flute end milling bit?
Still cannot get drilling to work on CP, simulations work fine. I will simplify the design to just drilling and see if I can find out what is wrong in the Gcode.
Got a lot to learn about bits, materials, speeds, plunge rates and direction of cut. I just used what CamBam had as defaults.
I can also see that low profile work holding clamps are desired…
So far no interruptions from electrical noise (fingers crossed).
Sounds fine. 400w spindle? I can hear it bogging down. Surprised to see you have your rapids and accel properly but cut so slowly… A 800w spindle would be much better, you could cut 9mm deep at 180ipm with it!
Spindle definitely seems to be bogging down a bit, and noise and vibration is more than expected. I would recommend a Dewalt DWP611 1.25 Hp router as a spindle, those cheap Chinese spindles are pretty much junk, IMHO. I saw a teardown of one and they had the spindle bearings mounted in rubber cups - definitely not conducive to accurate work. The ability to control spindle speed on the fly is highly overrated, IMHO.
Use a solid carbide 2 flute spiral bit for wood, you can use a down-cut for outline cutting, up-cut for holes. Lee Valley tools has a good selection, but so do places like WoodPeckers, Rockler, Woodline.
Chinese bits especially in 1/8" are OK quality, I use a lot of single flute, flat bits, round nose 2 flutes, etc. $10 for 10 pcs.
As far as the drilling thing, make sure your bit size is correct in the setup. If your bit size is wrong, the hole will end up the wrong size since the software has bit radius compnsation. The size of the hole is the tool path diameter + bit radius.
It looks to me that you go to deep and too fast in one cycle, I am much more conservative.
My suggestion is to begin with slower feedrates/speeds and increase one at time to find best result per material/tool.
For drilling I prefer slow plunge speed and high spindle rpm.
@Julius_Jahn yes its a 400W spindle I may upgrade to 800W once I get this dialed in. Any recommendations on a source?
I may just move to a dewalt though …
Rapids and Accel were just the CamBam defaults.
@Joseph_Coffland can you ellaborate on what you mean by “small cuts”. Do you mean do not plunge as deep? I was thinking the same thing. What is reasonable?
I will look at the bit size and type suggestion, what I am using here are Chinese end mills. I read warnings about using spiral bits so I decided not to start there.
Its interesting that the simulations drill (peck) fine, it loads into CP fine but just skips over that part of the gcode.
As a closure on my drilling problem in case anyone else stumbles on this:
Tiny G does not support G83 canned cycles :(. CamBam was generated them in my gcode.
@donkjr You can get factory refurb DWP611’s from several places for well under $100, you can get a new one on http://amazon.com for $120. I doubt you could get a chinese spindle for this price.
It should be possible to find a “VFD” to control your router. The Dewalt is a universal motor, meaning it will run on DC, so you would just need a Bridge rectifier and 15A 200V or so isolated SSR capable of PWM to run it off your GRBL spindle output. Must admit I haven’t tried this, so take it with a grain of salt. As I said, I think program spindle speed control is overrated. I can just reach over and tweek the knob if I need to.
The dust adapter is meant to attach to the base of the router, which you don’t use in the Ox Router Mount, so it’s doubtful if it would work. May be possible to adapt it, I don’t know for sure. See my post (as MetalGuru) on the Openbuilds site: http://www.openbuilds.com/threads/cheep-and-dirty-dust-collector.7770/
for a simple yet effective dust collection system for under $10.
What is CP? Is it skipping the code because of an unsupported G-Code in your code? GRBL doesn’t support some g-codes.
@donkjr Yeah, I thought the TinyG actually used GRBL code, but apparently they have their own firmware. GRBL doesn’t support them either.
I don’t usually change speeds between drilling or cutting, since drilling is just cutting a circular pattern. I change speeds on the fly with the router’s built in speed control if I feel it would improve the cut, reduce burning, etc. Never had a machine with spindle speed control, so I don’t really miss it.
That’s why I published it. It works great, I was just carving some MDF, and it let hardly any dust or chips escape.
