[QUELAB CNC] Shapeoko->Xcarve Status

[John Anthes]

Morgan, Thanks for the internet research.

I have a call in to Galaxy Products for replacement collets. They are in Ohio on Central time. Maybe they will phone back Friday before I leave town Saturday O-Dark thirty?

They offer 1/4 inch and 1/8 inch. I plan to order 2X of each.

I have an assortment of CNC milling cutters ordered from Amazon. Both 1/8 inch and 1/4 inch shanks. 
The 1/8 inch collet should accommodate the existing cutters from the various Dremel tools. But those tools are probably limited to soft materials.
The 1/4 in diameter will remove material much faster.

I will be returning 27 April late. So it will be two weeks before I can get these down to the Quelab.

Sorry for the delay.

John, Dr.Opto

-----Original Message-----
From: Morgan ``indrora'' Gangwere [mailto:morgan.gangwere at gmail.com] 
Sent: Wednesday, March 09, 2016 2:27 PM
To: jpanthes at comcast.net
Cc: cnc at quelab.net
Subject: Shapeoko->Xcarve Status


This is for John Anthes, who asked for this, but also for the CNC list so we know what's needed:

* A set of bosch-compatible collets (need to obtain) *

Galaxy Products makes replacement collets < http://gpcollets.com/bsch_cross.html > that run ~$15/pc and come in Imperial and Metric sizes. This gets weirder when you consider that CNC milling is all metric.

There's some evidence that newer Bosch routers have horrible runout < http://www.precisebits.com/lab_reports/bosch_colt_TIR.htm > Personally, for most of the things we're looking at doing, this shouldn't be a problem.

* Endmills (need to determine what to obtain) *

Certainly, some endmills can be borrowed from the metal shop, but a set of "kinda common" ones are good to keep *with* the machine, as I'm pretty sure Eric would be less than happy with endmills walking around. In a pipe dream beyond pipe dreams, we'd get a set of endmills from an absolutely insane company out of Japan called OSG; their prices range in the $30-60/endmill.

What I need to know is: What endmills do we need to have a good variety?

* A tooling chain (I mostly have) *

Currently, DXF2GCODE is the sanest, but supposedly, Easel is getting "better". This will be an evolving process.

* A machine to run the machine (I mostly have) *

I need to go hunt it down again, but I've got a light windows touch device that we can smush and use. No fans, no moving parts. USB Extension cord and some other stuff and I should be good to go overall. This isn't for design, it's for dumping g-code to the machine.

* training (moderately hard) *

We should probably list this as a red/yellow tool, frankly. A 1hp router is nothing to laugh at in the long run. Someone who doesn't know what their doing can take off fingers, etc.

Marty (the snowboard guy) has been working on some stuff for the CNM makerspace -- I'll see what he's got, since they've got a shopbot and a plasma cutter and some other fun stuff. We can probably cop some of their training materials.

* A place to live (easy) *

No seriously, it doesn't have a home and needs one. It needs a spot carved out (pun *intended*) for it. It needs open ventilation and some storage area, as well as a means to lash it to the table. It'll vibrate a lot.

Tiny chips of material, cutting fluid in some cases -- these are the things that are going to come off of this. When cutting wood, it'll fling off dust, when cutting metal, we get metal flakes (hot!) and cutting fluid, and when you get into PCB manufacturing with it (which I definitely want to do) we'll get fiberglass shreds and atomized copper. Ew.



So, that's where the CNC machine stands.

-- 
Morgan Gangwere      <morgan.gangwere at gmail.com>
www: zaibatsutel.net twitter; @indrora (also GH)