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Hobby CAD, CNC machining, and resin casting (2015)

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Re: Hobby CAD, CNC machining, and resin casting (2015)

#21

Post by bluGill »

mdorazio wrote: post #13
sottol wrote: post #5

Shameless plug if anyone is interested - I'm working on a $600-ish open-source, reasonably capable, but small and somewhat "tidy" hobby CNC machine with BOM cost around $600 that requires some DIYing. It's meant to be an alternative to the Desktop CNCs like Nomad, Carvera, Bantam, ... moreso than a PCNC or other proper entry-level CNC. The ultimate goal is to make it hobbyist-friendly, capable of easily cutting alumi…

What's the advantage of this over a 3018 or 3030 machine? With some basic upgrades (you mentioned needing to diy anyway) you can easily cut aluminum on those for $500 or less.

Not made in china though since many parts come from china anyway...

Re: Hobby CAD, CNC machining, and resin casting (2015)

#22

Post by [deleted] »

bluGill wrote: post #21
mdorazio wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the advantage of this over a 3018 or 3030 machine? With some basic upgrades (you mentioned needing to diy anyway) you can easily cut aluminum on those for $500 or less.

Not made in china though since many parts come from china anyway...

[deleted]

Re: Hobby CAD, CNC machining, and resin casting (2015)

#23

Post by Joel_Mckay »

syntaxing wrote: post #18
Joel_Mckay wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A reasonable quality plasma-cutter CNC table offers the speed and low operational cost most fabricators can manage well. Having a CNC Router table in a non-industrial zoned area will not work for most people. Services like sendcutsend.com makes life so much easier... =3

I was in charge of one of these when I was way younger and they are awesome. Downside is that I don't want to house Argon and they're such a pain to maintain. Getting parts ordered is definitely magnitudes more efficient and significantly cheaper nowadays. You can get really nicely machined and anodized parts from China for the same cost as custom part shipping cost here in the states, it's crazy.

Budget 3D metal printers will eventually enter the hobby market, but I only get to work on my hobby on Saturdays. =3

Re: Hobby CAD, CNC machining, and resin casting (2015)

#24

Post by cjbgkagh »

syntaxing wrote: post #17
sottol wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is definitely more expensive than 3d printing in terms of consumables but china/aliexpress has really good hobby-quality equipment now - if you don't mind the country of origin. Many of their coated end-mills are decent and Maybe not stuff you would want to run professionally but it works quite well in a hobbyist setting and a mistake won't cost you $50. I also looked into the Millenium Milo, only downside for me…

Have you seen the Carvera Air? Not gonna lie, I'm equally tempted but that price point is tough to swallow. Its about $7-800 more than the Milo but has a bunch of things built in that you would probably would enjoy like touch probe leveling and camera zeroing. Its the "Bambulab" of the CNC world.

Like many things it’ll depend on your use case. Carvera Air is 200W vs Milo 1.5kW which could make a big difference.

Re: Hobby CAD, CNC machining, and resin casting (2015)

#25

Post by Animats »

WillAdams wrote: post #4

Previous discussions: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41467268 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27645605 This was a resource which was mentioned on the Shapeoko wiki --- while it's off-line, it's still on the Wayback Machine: https://web.archive.org/web/20211127090321/https://wiki.shap... Since then, some of those pages have been made available on Reddit: https://old.reddit.com/r/hobbycnc/wiki/index https://…

Right. This article is (2015).

3D printing with PLA has improved in the intervening decade. You can usually get a good print on good modern printers. The first generation of those things had poor extruders, and filament formulation has reportedly improved. There's complicated heat transfer going on in those things. You're welding a hot thing to a cold thing, which is inherently troublesome. I'm told that works better now.

Machining resin molds is straightforward, because you start with a block of something and machine only its top. So there's no work-holding problem. Trying to figure out how to clamp something that needs to be machined on several sides is usually hard.

Not sure what's going on in tiny mills today. I've used Tormachs, the whole range of Shopbots, and some strange one-off machines that TechShop somehow obtained. (Never did use the beautiful little Pocket 5-axis machine. TheShop had one just before they went bankrupt.)

Re: Hobby CAD, CNC machining, and resin casting (2015)

#26

Post by WillAdams »

Joel_Mckay wrote: post #15
syntaxing wrote: post #7

Former MechE for a decade and I owned personal CNC routers and on my 6th 3D printer. The biggest issue with CNC is the cost for consumables and accessories. Need a special bit? $$$ Need stock to cut? $$$ Want a nice ER11 or R2 collet set? $$$. A nice vise? $$$ Cut something wrong with a carbide bit? Shrapnel explosion. 3D printing has a bunch of limitations but is a way better machine for hobbyist. But I have been ey…

A reasonable quality plasma-cutter CNC table offers the speed and low operational cost most fabricators can manage well. Having a CNC Router table in a non-industrial zoned area will not work for most people. Services like sendcutsend.com makes life so much easier... =3

I use mine in my (finished) basement, or if cutting tropical hardwoods out on my back deck (I have a machine on a wheeled cart).

Re: Hobby CAD, CNC machining, and resin casting (2015)

#27

Post by Joel_Mckay »

WillAdams wrote: post #26
Joel_Mckay wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A reasonable quality plasma-cutter CNC table offers the speed and low operational cost most fabricators can manage well. Having a CNC Router table in a non-industrial zoned area will not work for most people. Services like sendcutsend.com makes life so much easier... =3

I use mine in my (finished) basement, or if cutting tropical hardwoods out on my back deck (I have a machine on a wheeled cart).

The noise from having a router and vacuum dust-collection running all the time can become a problem in residential areas. Most would like a full-sized machine that could directly handle standard sheets of material, but the space is not the only limiting factor (i.e. the insurance provider could pull something nasty with your mortgage creditors etc.)

Peoples situations will differ, and definitely check out reverse-spiral flute carbide-cutters if you handle a lot of sheet-work on a 2.5D setup =3

Re: Hobby CAD, CNC machining, and resin casting (2015)

#28

Post by throwaway81523 »

I'm not too excited by the idea of making little plastic precision gearboxes for robots, so when PLA printing isn't good enough, I mostly want to machine metal. Not car parts or firearms but flashlight bodies, knife blades, small tools, that sort of thing. Nothing wrong with robotics but there are other interesting areas too. I think the article skips over that a little too easily. That said, it's a good article.

Re: Hobby CAD, CNC machining, and resin casting (2015)

#29

Post by throwaway81523 »

sottol wrote: post #5

Shameless plug if anyone is interested - I'm working on a $600-ish open-source, reasonably capable, but small and somewhat "tidy" hobby CNC machine with BOM cost around $600 that requires some DIYing. It's meant to be an alternative to the Desktop CNCs like Nomad, Carvera, Bantam, ... moreso than a PCNC or other proper entry-level CNC. The ultimate goal is to make it hobbyist-friendly, capable of easily cutting alumi…

This would be a lot more interesting if it could cut steel and titanium. I guess that is more difficult.

Added: a dumb question, if the main cutting device is a router with a spinning bit, how do you cut angles? One thing I'd like to make is a 4mm hexagonal hole in a piece of steel, to turn little hex drive screwdriver bits and the like. Is it even possible to make that with a mill, or do you need a different machine?

Re: Hobby CAD, CNC machining, and resin casting (2015)

#30

Post by sottol »

mdorazio wrote: post #13
sottol wrote: post #5

Shameless plug if anyone is interested - I'm working on a $600-ish open-source, reasonably capable, but small and somewhat "tidy" hobby CNC machine with BOM cost around $600 that requires some DIYing. It's meant to be an alternative to the Desktop CNCs like Nomad, Carvera, Bantam, ... moreso than a PCNC or other proper entry-level CNC. The ultimate goal is to make it hobbyist-friendly, capable of easily cutting alumi…

What's the advantage of this over a 3018 or 3030 machine? With some basic upgrades (you mentioned needing to diy anyway) you can easily cut aluminum on those for $500 or less.

I tried [1] - replaced the sides with 2040s, blind-jointed every extrusion, replaced X with MGN12H + 4 carriages, replaced the whole Z with 4080U and even bolted it into an MDF box to stiffen it up. The 3018 could cut alu, but not well. Maybe it was the 4080U but it just didn't work for me, it could cut alu but had lot of chatter.

For $600-800 it is fully enclosed, includes a decent spindle, wifi-enabled +offline RRF-based controller with folding/rotating LCD screen, 2 power supplies (24V + 48V for the spindle), a chip vacuum and probably some more I forget.

This machine was designed [3] specifically to cut alu rather well for [1] https://youtube.com/shorts/C0ngUJrWrB4

[2] https://youtube.com/shorts/XUsj06iMbb0

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