DIY Fixture Plate for my 3040 CNC

Рет қаралды 13,565

Күн бұрын

0:00 Intro
0:36 The material
Today I'm finally building a fixture plate for my 3040 CNC! I started off with a 19mm thick aluminium plate and proceeded to machine 170+ holes in it! I had to hand tap each threaded hole too which took weeks to finish.
Tip - if you want to machine accurate holes for dowel pins think about machining slightly smaller holes first and then finishing off with a reamer drill bit. Or use bigger dowel pins so you can use larger diameter endmills to machine your holes. I chose 6mm dowel pins for some reason which meant I had to use a 3mm endmill machine the holes. There was too much deflection in these small endmills and it resulted in not the most accurate dowel pins holes.
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Пікірлер: 30

@danapatelzick594 3 ай бұрын

Tap with lubricant and limit the number of threads you cut and throw the tap out when you reach that limit. I have used a battery powered driver when tapping, it's quick in and out. For the pin holes use the CNC to cut a smaller guide hole the drill it with the correct size drill bit with drill and drill guide. It's not perfect but the holes should adequately hold the pins.

@chazz.zaragoza.9561 3 жыл бұрын

My suggestion if you're going for a good surface finish, would be to leave. 010" of an inch or approximately a quarter of a millimeter for your finish passes and always use the same direction of cut instead of zigzagging the endmill and going back and forth between climb and conventional milling. Yes it's true that it will take a lot longer to finish the part if you only climb mill... but if the fixture plate is going to be used for repeatability, I think it's worth the extra effort of doing a one way climb cut for finish passes and just deal will a bunch of retracts because it's something you'll be staring at on a daily basis. On the topic of improving accuracy of your surface finishes, I suggest taking a look at this video by "Creative Technology Corp" KZfaq channel. Hopefully it will be an eye opener for you as much as it was for me when I was learning about surface finishes for aerospace manufacturing. Video - "Better Milled Finishes in Less Time." Having calculated and optimized feeds and speeds will be a game changer.

@ThisDesignedThat 3 жыл бұрын

Hi Chazz, thanks for this info, damn i never though about doing the final pass just one way, ill definitely have to remember that next time I finish a part. Thanks for the channel, will have a watch

@Jamesbond22855 Жыл бұрын

Hey, you should try using Alum and hydrogen peroxide with a little heat for a few days to dissolve those broken taps. It won't do anything to the aluminum, but it should nearly completely dissolve the taps from the holes

@ThisDesignedThat Жыл бұрын

seen this tip before and it does seem to work. Dont have much need for all those tapped holes now that I have the SMW mod vice

@morganlafaye1063 3 жыл бұрын

Do you still cnc setup for plate

@sarahjrandomnumbers 2 жыл бұрын

Instead of using a drill press, why not dissolve the taps with a saturated ammonium aluminium sulphate bath? Its worked for me every time I've got a tap stuck in ally or copper :).

@ThisDesignedThat 2 жыл бұрын

Yes Ive read a few other comments about this. I will try it at some point, thanks for the tip

@morganlafaye1063 3 жыл бұрын

Another question I have a 3040 and would like to upgrade spindle and would like to know how you did it and what was used

@ThisDesignedThat 3 жыл бұрын

i havent upgraded my spindle but there are plenty of videos on youtube explaining it

@andrewpawson6494 3 жыл бұрын

Do you have any through holes to bolt the fixture plate down to the bed in the center of the plate? If not, it may be possible that the end mill pulls the 19mm plate up, by 0.02mm :), which may ruin your stamps or dies. You could use down cut bits instead of up cut but they are more expensive and may leave a worse finish.

@ThisDesignedThat 3 жыл бұрын

Hi Andrew, no I didn't put a through bolt in the middle but its probably a good idea to do that, so might get it machined over the weekend, thanks for the advice!

@lloydmorrissey 3 жыл бұрын

I'm working on a design for a similar fixture plate. I'm a bit lucky as a I have a VSD driven spindle, so I'm going to try boring and then reaming the dowel pinholes and I'll try to thread mill the threaded holes... Wish me luck Also, if you are considering enlarging the holes, a drill press might not be the go. The dowel pin holes are there as alignment pins, and if you use a drill press, it'll ruin how straight they are. If you go for 8mm, consider a larger end mill, I have a set of pretty nice single flute 1/4" end mills with a 1.25" flute length that would enlarge those holes to 8mm very easily. See 2L tools, part number AE1-250-1C1.25. For the broken taps, try getting a ball nose carbide die grinding bit, and peck drill with your new drill press. It's the only way I've had success removing taps without a mill

@ThisDesignedThat 3 жыл бұрын

Good luck with the fixture plate. Im going to try and drill out the taps using a drill press and see what happens :) I'm thinking of drilling the holes to 7.9mm on my drill press and then hand reaming each one to get it spot on. Never done it before so will be interesting to see how it works

@wolf310ii 3 жыл бұрын

@@ThisDesignedThat Depending on the precision your aiming for, thats a bad idea. In alu you can get easy 0.1 or 0.2mm out of line on a drill press. For hand reaming, make first a tool as a lead for the reamer, so that you can ream exact rectangular, a piece of material 40-60mm high with a 8mm hole, optimal would be 8mm drill bushings. You have a very long lever between the spindel holder and the tool tip, thats were your machine "bends" milling the holes. Set the spindel higher in the holder and make a test hole, to see if its work better, if yes, just set the plate higher to mill the holes. Another way would be, make the holes 7.98mm and press a 8mm steel ball through it

@AndrewAHayes 3 жыл бұрын

I always use a fly cutter when facing off large plare

@axelSixtySix 3 жыл бұрын

A fly cutter may be a wrong idea if your spindle is not perfectly perpendicular to the build plate. The use of a small end mill makes the alignment error probably not noticeable. But if your spindle is perfectly spot on, with no wobble at all, then a fly cutter is the proper tool. Here, this is a hobby CNC, maybe perfection is not reachable.

@150Gianluca 3 жыл бұрын

Can't/shouldn't use a fly cutter above 1k rpm. Even if they're perfectly balanced (which they're not) and these high speed routers cant go that low

@ThisDesignedThat 3 жыл бұрын

Agree with other comment, no way should you be using any sort of flycutter on a spindle that runs at 10k (lowest speed). Please no one do this! Yes I used a small endmill because my spindle is not trammed in and i dont really have a way to fix it so i minimize the alignment issues by using a small endmill

@AndrewAHayes 3 жыл бұрын

@@axelSixtySix My machine is an X-carve and much larger area, I haven't had any problems using fly cutters

@axelSixtySix 3 жыл бұрын

@@AndrewAHayes I apologize, I could not know you are a X-Carve owner. Lucky you: the X-carve is a perfect machine : top stiffness, top alignment, oversized belts, with a palm router on top, this is perfect for fly cutters. No, seriously dude ?

@wolf310ii 3 жыл бұрын

Why dont you just replace the slobby T-Slot profiles with a massiv T-Slot plate? Cast Alu 400x300x20mm 126€ plus shipping at Sorotec de, for that little money i wouldnt even think about making it myself

@ThisDesignedThat 3 жыл бұрын

My plate was half that price, obviously Im not counting the hours spent machining it but it was a fun learning experience. Replacing the t slot bed wouldnt solve the flatness issue either because the frame itself is not level. If i replaced the T slot I would need to surface it and didnt really want to buy an expensive machined t slot bed and then have to surface it myself.

@wolf310ii 3 жыл бұрын

@@ThisDesignedThat Well, why you dont solve the level of the frame first? Then mount the plate, wich is perfectly flat (and also makes the frame more stiff), adjust the X-axis to the plate, then the Y-axis and last the Z-axis. If you dont have a precise water level and dont want to buy one, i saw a few days ago one guy on YT who mad it like the old egyptians, with a pendel in a frame around 1m high.

@ThisDesignedThat 3 жыл бұрын

Yes I did think about doing it this way but honestly I'm a complete beginner when it comes to mechanical engineering stuff like this and aside from the CNC only have basic hand tools so I didn't really want to take apart my CNC and then potentially make things worse.

@Keechization 2 жыл бұрын

lol drillpress or not you are not going to be able to casually drill the broken taps out of there

@ThisDesignedThat 2 жыл бұрын

what do you think would be the best way to get them out?

@DizzyWood_shop 2 жыл бұрын

Wire EDM . Would be the solution. But not worth the time and money. Beter of making another fixture plate. Next time use 5083 aluminium. Better finish and maching .

@K9Megahertz 2 жыл бұрын

Little late to the discussion here, but I agree, One does not simply drill out broken taps. I have one stuck in my cnc machine on the end of one of the 80x160mm aluminum extrusions. I started to try and drill it out, but really didn't make any progress. Fortunately I can just live with the tap stuck in there as I have 7 other holes to hold the end plate on to the extrusion. If I really needed it out, id probably just buy another length of extrusion and replace the whole thing.