Woohoo! Today was a good day in the saga of my diy CNC machine.

General CNC CNC Routers
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Woohoo!
Today was a good day in the saga of my diy CNC machine.

I bought a pair of CPU heatsink/fan combos which I lashed onto the y and z axis steppers. They had been getting alarmingly hot, but these babies kept them both cool to touch throughout about 2 hours of operation.

The machine ran perfectly. Unfortunately operator error meant things didn’t go as well as they could. The intention was to mill a raspberry pi case in two passes, one rough with 1mm clearance with a big 10mm router bit. then follow up with a finishing pass with a 3mm bit.

Unfortunately I miss calculated the depth of wood. I thought I’d be left with a mm or two all around holding the piece to the main block after the rough pass, but it actually just about perfectly cut clean through releasing the pieces before I could do a finishing pass. Doh.
Also there was a big in the model which generated bad gcode such that one side of the bottom got cut away when it should not.

Despite these failings, the machine itself rocked! And I finished by making myself a little sign which I’ve tried cutting before. Last time it didn’t come out to well. This time it looks great.

So as ever, the biggest problem now is time! Why do I have to go back to work :frowning:

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That’s good to hear. But speaking of heat, you know that wood box is going to trap heat, so cooling you board may become an issue…

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@Mat_Helm the raspberry pi case? The finished version has a bunch of vent holes in it. But the job didn’t get that far.

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Yea. The reason you don’t see electronics in wood is not only heat radiation, it also doesn’t diffuse high frequency signals. I don’t think you’ll have any issues with your pi, but any noise it produces will be bounced around inside a wooden case instead of being radiated out (diffused). And any noise that makes it’s way into the box will be relatively stuck (bouncing off the walls)…

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@Mat_Helm interesting, I guess I would have thought it is similar to plastic. Will see how it gets on. Assuming I manage to successfully mill the whole thing without making a miscalculation :slight_smile:

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@Daniel_Would Much less moister and air pockets in plastic. So it transfers heat much better, or rather, doesn’t trap it as well.

Good conductors of electricity are also good conductors of heat. The effect is pretty much the same on an atom…