Setting up a 4th axis with ChiliPeppr and TinyG
Originally shared by John Lauer
http://www.youtube.com/attribution_link?a=B_R9cz_9l7w&u=/watch?v%3DK_r8y_T8rsY%26feature%3Dshare
This is awesome! Looking forward to some milling in action. Do you have any ideas of what you want to mill on that 4th axis?
nice project!
Yes. I want to mill a heavy wire bonder so I can do copper wire bending with 6mil wire on my cnc so I can print circuit boards using additive techniques rather than milling away isolation routes in fr4. It’s risky whether it will work, but cheap enough to experiment.
That sounds fun. Wonder if you could coat the wire with a 2 part fast set epoxy or something as its coming out so that it will stay put on whatever surface you print it on to.
I think I better start planning on building cnc by the summer.
@jlauer would you mind sharing the link to the 4th axis add-on you bought?
@jlauer In the video you mentioned that you bought the 4th axis add-on from ebay. I don’t see the add-on listed on http://carving-cnc.com.
You just have to email their customer support. They sell it as an add-on, but they will sell it standalone.
I want to build a CNC machine but I don’t know where to start can you guys give me some ideas
@Herman_Rios I started to design my own desktop design and found I could buy a chinese machine for much less than I would spend in materials for a similar sized machine and using similar materials and construction (I spent about $700 for the machine and my estimate was almost that for the materials for the body and frame in aluminum). Even if the machine has failures similar to those I have heard of others experiencing (notably power supply failures), I can modify the existing system and still come out ahead. I eventually want to design and build a multipurpose large bed machine and that will be home built. If the build is how you have fun, by all means, build, but if you are building to save money, run an estimate of the materials for your machine first.
Bear
@Bryan_Barnes_BBmech7 Generally the epoxy will get in the way of the component soldering, which is why most boards are laminated with adhesive on only one side of the copper sheet. Also keep in mind that the copper will expand much more than the substrate when heated during assembly and may break the joint with the much heavier copper wire. It might be practical to lay the paths, mill a contact point through the epoxy and drill the mounting holes, solder the joints and recoat the entire board with adhesive to reinforce the assembly.
Food for thought…
Hi Bear, thanks for your insight. As, you said the fun is in building the machine. So I have to find out where to look and see how much time I need to put in and the makers of the kits.
I am still learning myself, but am glad to help where I can. If I may offer in addition, look at what you want to do with the machine and how accurate and repeatable you want the output to be. For me, cutting PC boards for surface mounted chips requires a fair level of precision and repeatability but not a lot of cutter horsepower, so I went with a small spindle drive, aluminum chassis parts (less flex) very smooth guide rods and a fairly good quality leadscrew drive system with backlash nuts to limit movement due to “slop” in the drives. My larger design is for cutting 4x8 ft panels for signs and furniture and will start out using threaded rod for the drives and ball bearing rollers on V-rail for the carriage guides as the precision requirements will be much lower (+/- 1/16" vs +/- 0.005" for the PCB mill) and the cost can be MUCH lower even for very large machines. Hope this helps in your plans!
To be honest. I want to build robots. Parts made out of plastic, pvc and things like that. I have heard that I could use a 3d printer. but I think that the printer would be too small. Plus if I buy the printer where is the fun in that?(haha) I would like to have a challenge and learn in the process. Something to keep me busy during the winter(s).
Battle bots or something to run around the house?
I am into radio control and have discussed printing some parts for my aircraft, including a camera mount to hang as a belly pod. Two items came up that may be of interest to you… The common printer feedstock are PLA and ABS. PLA is organic, breaks down with water and sunlight exposure and is not particularly strong, but prints well. ABS is much stronger, but parts tend to creep and splay during printing and may require cleanup after printing. Also most programs which create the CNC print code do not print solid parts to save print time and material used. For my purposes, the hollow spaces are an advantage by making the parts lighter, but I was planning to machine the parts after rough shape printing and the hollows might become a problem in addition to the reduced component strength.
I haven’t looked far yet, but I am considering adding a 3D printer extruder head to my router drive and make it a dual or triple purpose machine (with a solid stage laser head added). Food for thought.
OK I guess there could be more options. Thanks.
I would like to do multiple items on my head too like laser, extruder, etc