Hey, Tom, take care when cutting carbon fiber, ok? If possible, cut under water! (Basically you would have a "pool", some water pumps and a filter.) Because carbon fiber dust is a health hazard! 😉

That's awesome ! I can't wait to see what you're going to do with this

I am in a 14 month CNC build, I am almost finished. I appreciate hearing about your pain.

Hey man! If I’m not mistaken I actually think your feed rates are too slow. The melting shows there is more friction/rubbing taking place than cutting. Try taking a shallower depth per pass, and upping the feed rate so it’s taking off a few thou but removing material quickly and clearing chips. In aluminum for example the material will weld itself to the cutter if it’s cutting chips twice, and burnishing the material too much. Also, if you aren’t already, try using a single or two flute end mill since they allow for more chip evacuation. Like others have commented, materials like acrylic can be really brittle, so I would do a bit more research, but melting is definitely a sign of rubbing. Glad that you finally got the machine up and running!

I must say Tom , you have lots of patience, I live in Australia and i bought a CNC from a company in USA called Probotix. It arrived fully assembled , I connected all the wiring , computer , controller etc and it worked first go, and never missed a beat and its been 7 months. I really admire your determination

Tom, Good to see that you made the leap! With a CNC Router and 3D printers, your limits are sky high! I am also on the learning curve with Fusion 360, looking to 'carve' molds for heat-forming EPP foam model fuselages. I ended up building my own machine, including a HobbyCNC controller board and my own power supply. I also built a CNC hotwire foam cutter using a HobbyCNC controller kit that allows heat control from the keyboard. I have cut acrylic using special single-flute plastic-cutting bits and found that having water in a squirt bottle and following the bit with a squirt every second or so really helps with the melting. There are also several 'misting' attachments that put a fine water/coolant mist right on the spindle mount and pointed at the bit. For shallow cuts in wood and plastic, I can recommend 'downcutting' bits to keep the workpiece from flexing upward...they also tend to make for a MUCH cleaner edge! As for what to make...how about a lit acrylic sign? You hide the controls for some LED strip lights in the base and shoot the light into the bottom edge of the acrylic sheet which you have CNC routed. The video shows one I did for the lobby of the place I work. kzfaq.info/get/bejne/eM-ancSVq6zLlZs.html My router test run on the kitchen floor. (I'm a bachelor!) kzfaq.info/get/bejne/o51ydqaY2KudaZ8.html The full tour of my router as it cuts a snowflake pattern. (yes, I am a 'Yank', but, as you will hear, I do run metric on all of my machines)

Thanks Tom - It's very helpful to hear what went wrong.

The machining process takes a while to learn. Stick with it. You will be rewarded.

Great friend who recommended this CNC machine XD. Good look with tuning. Looking forward to see more on this machine

Pretty awesome man, I have wanted to build a 4 axis cnc router for hot wire cutting foam wings for a couple years. Finally started working on it and have cut a few wings out. Still fine tuning (probably forever) but have cut a few things out. thanks for sharing.

Really excited for you!

Get ready got higher quality aluminum air engine parts. Can’t wait to see what you come up with on it.

OK, we need you to design a CNC router we can all trust now, Tom! You got this! 💪

Exciting that you have a CNC machine now Tom! Looking forward to seeing what you create with it :) I have experienced quite a steep learning curve with the one I put together - lots of broken tools. Would be great if you could let us know the tool types, sizes and feed rates you use in future projects.

I look forward to seeing some more of your CNC videos Tom. It would make a good series on your channel as there are not very many well produced CNC related videos on KZfaq.

Onsrud actually has some great literature on the topic of CNC routing that you might really find helpful. I actually keep some of their documents at my work station at work for those Mondays when all the intuitive solutions aren't working and I need that really obscure tidbit of knowledge. My best advice for tooling for your machine, since you lack a vacuum material holding system (hint, try to make one, it'll change your life), try using non-helical tooling, stick with a straight cut flute as they will not try to lift your work piece. There are down-flutes, but those have their own issues and are pissy at times. You might also try to find CNC router specific double sticky tape for better work holding. 3M's Spray 77 is also a winner.. a little zap and done, tho it will leave residues on material and ruin your spoiler board faster.

Recomendations: Machinery's Handbook, while it's "primarily" focused on metalworking, you'll get uselfull info still, you can get the concept and aply it to your specific materials or tools, don't look for "rpm" look for speeds & feeds and apply then to your tools. on (soft) plastics, low flute count tends to be better, high rpms help creating "dust" type of chips instead of stringy ones, but you have to watch out for melting, for the feeds you need to play around, sometimes it's better to go faster and get thicker chips, if they break apart, other times it's better to have a slower feed and get "dusty" chips... what you should avoid is the long strings... consider if your tool deflects, or "gets caught" when thinking about going "faster or slower" if you consider machining metals again I recommend the handbook there you can find your speeds and feeds, also if you buy quality tools your suplyer should ask your questions if you ask them about those, they'll know better than anyone what feeds and speeds are ideal for their tools on materials that they have tried, or at least they'll give you a starting point to work from. Don't cut fiberglass or carbon fiber unless you have it submerged, or use a complete enclousure with air filtration and whatnot...

This was cool. You are opening a world of possibilities.

Tom that is a water cooled spindle. I have the same one. You need to connect 2 tubes to it and use a pump to pump water through it to cool the spindle and coils. Those two fittings on the top for the spindle are for water cooling. It won't last long if you continue to run it without cooling the coils. They should have given you the tubing and a submersible pump. Love watching your videos and all the incredible ideas you have for making things.

Very nice future for CNC Machine carry on Tom.

Its nice Tom, hopfully you can get all the bugs worked out of it 🖒

Lots of good advice in these comments! Hope I get to try one of these machines someday.

I've printed most of the parts for the MPCNC so hope to get it going this fall after I'm done with other projects.

Your bit had excessive stick-out, which will tend to vibrate, & contributed to it snapping off at the end. It was likely a 'long series' - buy some 'short series' bits. (I used to run a CNC mill cutting metal).

thank you for being an amazing youtuber!

Hey Tom, that sucks your CNC machine is "falling apart". Hopefully you find what is loose and tighten them up. Can't wait to see a combo of 3D printed part with CNC made parts. I think you can go far. Cheers!

The recommendations you saw are the way they are for a reason. You need to keep your cutting parameters very carefully tuned to actually make a chip (when individual chips form, they carry away heat from the cut very efficiently). You need to be sure your feedrate per tooth (inch per tooth or mm per tooth, also known as chip load) is at least 0.001 for any starting cut in any material, otherwise the tool won't be presented to enough material to remove an actual chip and will instead just rub and generate heat. For acrylic, sources say you can use 0.004-0.015 inches per tooth feedrate with a minimum surface speed of about 300 surface feet a minute (probably for a carbide tool, check with the manufacturer to be sure). So, if you're using a 0.25 inch (about 6mm) cutter with two flutes, to achieve 0.004 inches per tooth at 10000 rpm you must feed at 80 inches per minute. However, at this speed you will not achieve 300 surface feet per minute; instead, you'll be closer to 100 surface feet a minute. At 24000 rpm you will have about 250~300 surface feet a minute, but a feedrate of the same linear increase. Surface speed is generally less important than chipload and has more to do with cut quality, but shouldn't be completely ignored. Cutter diameter may be adjusted to ease reaching the surface speed, but you may begin to notice spindle power issues with larger tools. To reduce the feedrate, less flutes may be used. Single flute high speed steel bits may be run at a lower surface speed and the same chip load to reduce machine performance requirements while maintaining high quality cuts. Tl;dr, you need to follow the recommendations you saw online. Also you should use a shorter tool, for every halving of length it'll be 8X more rigid, making cuts much nicer and vastly reducing probability of tool breakage. Setting up cuts isn't always intuitive, but you'll get the feel for it with time. Have fun with your new machine!

Hi, i do cnc milling on plastic as a job and i recommend using high feed rate with high rpm so the cut will turn out precise and it won't melt the material. On acrilic i use 8000-10000 rpm with 3000-3500 mm/min as feed rate. For preventing the bit from snapping you should pull it out less and avoid the oscillating path which only keeps the tool longer in the same position and makes the plastic melt even quicker

It looks like that mill is built out of 8020, such a fun material. If you buy a lot of 1/8th inch aluminum sheet, you can mill a lot of brackets. Then you can build a lot of really cool machines

Try some lubricant. I had pretty much the same issues with PS on my CNC mill and the problem was the molten plastic sticking to the blades of the router bit, clogging it finally. That's what causes it over time to "rub" instead of cut, producing even more molten plastic and increasing the force on the router bit until it breaks off. Try some WD40 for a start and cover the whole surface with a thin layer. This will not only prevent the plastic from sticking to the bit, but also slightly get the temperature down.

That is awesome!

Hi Tom A neat way to make impressive signs in perspex is to spray the perspex with a colour which becomes the background colour of the sign. Then rout the sign in mirror writing through the paint and then spray a different colour into the letters you have cut. No need for masking unless you want multi coloured signs and even then its not fiddly just to block off the bits from a colour. Thick perspex and deep letters give a nice 3d effect from the front which of course is dead smooth.

congrats!!

Hi Tom I built my own machine which is similar to yours I used 20x20 and 20x40 extrusions as the main frame plus 12mm SBR rails and 12mm open block linear bearing slides along with ball screws in place of lead screws as they have a better accuracy I gave it a higher z-axis as when I was first thinking about it I was thinking of using it as a mill, laser cutter and a 3d printer but before it finished it the price of A3 laser cutters with an 8W laser came down in price on banggood's site so I bought one of them also I decided that trying to use it as a 3d printer it may not have a high enough speed on the XY axis to be useful as a printer, and as other projects catch my attention I tend to have several projects on the go at the same time and some get left only partly finished so something to get back to later. you have some great videos on here keep up the great work, regards Poppy Ann.

Glad to see you finally sort of got the CNC router running! As far a Polystyrene, do not bother!!!(I presume you have already figured this out!) It'sat the bottom of the plastic hierarchy as far as utility.

More CNC stuff! Also We don’t get bored with technical stuff. Show us more!

I saw a cool video about over extruding when doing a 3d print and then going back and CNC milling the part to clean it up and get all the tolerances spot on. Might be a cool way to do the air compressor engine so you wouldn't need to sand anything.

To cut plastic you need extremely sharp bits. I have worked at a company building cnc machines that had a prototype to machine acrylic lenses for glasses. They used diamond bits for that so they stay extremely sharp hence reducing friction and therefore heat

I had the same results with you when I tried to cut acrylic / plexiglass, then I added mist coolant / lubrication and the results are much much better. It will give you a great finish without the sandblast look. My motor does not go below 10,000 rpm so it gets messy. I believe you wont be that bad. I suggest you try it sometime and choose for yourself.

The router is finally there! Wooooohooooo!

Try an up-spiral single flute o-cutter for plastic if you didn't already. You machine looks a lot better than an x carve - just need to be heavily tuned up.

Hi Tom, Have fun! Using Fusion360 & a CNC router alongside a 3D printer makes for great new options an combinations to achieve your design goals. Enjoy!

I have put the plastic in the freezer before I cut it. It seems to help. I use Vcarve pro for my cam software. It's a UK company with great support.

With the CNC machine's I use at work for milling PVC window frames, the smaller tools (10 to 25 mm diameter) run at 800 to 2500 mm per minute traveling speed, the revolutions per minuter range from 15000 to 11000 rpm for respected sizes. The tools vary from 2 to 3 cutting faces.

I can't believe you didn't give us all a shot of you peeling the film off of your sign at the end... What a tease

Tom i have some experience with cnc routing. You can stick it down with some double sided tape. Place a sheet of material on your workbed, some kind of cheap wood you dont care about. Use a facing cycle of some sort so the bed is exactly level with your workplane. Then just stick your stock on there with the tape and youre up. Its much easier then the bolts. And for the toll breaking, try using a smaller stepover, or feed. But you probably figured that out already.

Aluminium panels and pieces for models come to mind

Look at the Onsrud "O" flute cutters. They're designed for acrylic and work very well.

Welcome to CNC! You can certainly mill your own PCBs with that set once you get it unhosed. Buy cheap bits for the first dozen or so projects until you get that thing figured out. Unlike 3D printing, don't be afraid of speed. Listen for chatter, read the chips, and have fun!

I always keep a second or third router bit for such problems. The router I use is a onsrud 144g10 which has a vacuum to hold the part to the table. Maybe some hair spray might work. I saw some of the sheet moving around. Maybe your feed rate was too high.

Dear, Tom. I sure would love some 13 inch thick metal custom Tom's Throwing Knife. 50 would be great!! HAHA Cool Machine. Can't wait to see your creations. Even Throwing Stars would be Awesome.

DON'T RUN IT WITHOUT COOLING! The windings will get hot, but the casing, being hollow, won't transmit the heat and you'll think it's cold, or just warm. Also, you are running the endmill at too high RPM's and/or too fast, it's rubbing with the plastic instead of cutting, hence the mess. Decrease RPM's and/or try single flute endmills. Switching to carbide won't hurt either, it's really sharp, helping with cutting. Also, note that carbon fiber/fiberglass cutting endmills, are quite different than the ones used for metal or wood (they have little tiny teeth instead of being like a drill bit)

ABOUT TIME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I have followed and shared Toms frustration since it happened, pushing him to get it sorted, WOOHOO!

You need a high feedrate to prevent the plastic to melt. I cut Plexiglas with 30.000 rpm with a 6mm mill and 2000-4000 mm/min

Acrylic is very brittle, which also probably contributes to the need for the high speed of the bit. It looks like you're close with your speeds now, just dial it down a little bit more.

Dude, the momentum caused by the cutting tool on the spindle mount is too big.. you need to put the tip of the spindle as close as possible to the mount.

HOT TIP: Consider using down spiral flute cutters (sometimes wrongly sold as left hand cutters). The up spiral cutter lifts the work off the table especilly as you dont have great hold down. That is why your bit broke. I use straight flute for plastic sheet with a vacuum hold down table. I only use up flute for metal.

You should have gone to Ooznest Tom. If you need anything in the future give them a look.

Oooo custom flywheels!

I've dealt with Robocutters in the past myself, and I've spoken to many other people who have the misfortune to deal with them, and this experience seems to be universal. As well as avoiding Robocutters, I'd recommend that you also check any independent UK based CNC suppliers in the future to see if they're run by the same person. Robocutters is far from the first incarnation of this outfit, and I have no doubt that once the reputation of Robocutters has reached rock bottom, it'll be back again with a different name.

OH CANT BELIVE UV DONE THISSSS

I'm not at all experienced with building RC airplanes (yet) but I think the CNC router will work quite well to cut balsa wood for the airplanes

I couldn't tell how many flutes your bit had but you could to try a single flute cutter. Let me know if I can help out. Cheers

I am not a CNC expert but due to what I do for a living, I own and use two daily, one similar to what you have. When I use it to cut or engrave plastic, I always use plexi glass (I think it's acrylic) that's made for CNC machining, you can also order specific drilling bits for engraving plastic but usually any drilling bit should do. There should also be a pass depth option, or something similar, which would make the CNC make multiple passes machining the material, instead of engraving it all the way through. This should generate less heat and less stress on the material and drill bit. By pass depth, I mean, instead of making the CNC cut all the way through to, let's say, 0,5 milimeters, you use a pass depth setting of 0,25 mm. This should make the CNC pass through the same route twice, once at 0,25mm depth, and once at 0,5mm. Sorry if I'm not clear enough, English is not my native tongue so I might have messed up the CNC terminology.

You and Ivan Miranda are my favorite KZfaq

What you are cutting there is plastic glass mate. Perspex. You want to use acrylic, as you said. I do a lot of PC modding and I cut a lot of this sort of stuff with a diamond dremel blade and perspex is a nightmare. It just melts, sticking to everything. Acrylic? just turns to powder. Much easier to machine by hand, and CNC (guys I know make water blocks, reservoirs etc). Good luck for the future !

Hi Tom I have a 8x4 cnc and I use lmt in the uk for all my cnc cutters

Blimey. I've had some experiences like this myself and can relate... the hardware on your machine looks good and sturdy though, well done for seeing it through! I will say that you should NOT be running your spindle power cable along with the stepper motor or usb cables due to interference - it's a very real problem that you will experiencing to some degree, even if its not obvious, run the cable seperately, usually wall mounted on an arm along with your extraction (this will help with the acrylic!). Also - I'd recommend milling out your spoiler board, and inserting some 't-track' so you can use clamps instead of screws to hold your pieces down, you can see how the screws cause the acrylic to 'bow' in the video - this will give you awful results when making pocket cuts. Good luck though sir! When they're dialed in, they're fantastic!

Hi I cutting Perspex always with single flute bit and spray it with water+windows cleaner and it works spot on ;-)

Perspex Tm is Acrylic, very brittle but routs great, Clear Polystyrene, melts easily

you might need a mist sprayer in the near future tom. but even though they claim it safe please use powered ventilation, maybe those fans that fit in a window.

You are going to damage the spindle if you run it without water. It is double walled so you don't feel the heat of the inner wall. Try using straight 2 flute cutters.

Hey Tom, I have been having a bit of a good run cutting "cast acrylic" sheets with a ball nose end mill.. try it out maybe? The chip clearing is good with a ball nose in this case..

Acrylic is very brittle and prone to chipping. perspex seems softer and less prone to chipping. Project ideas: See-through engine block for the air-engine. ready-to-fly plane from sign plastic with pre-cut hinges and holes for hardware

Are you still working on your drone frame business? If so, I wish you all the best luck and I might buy one sometime!

worth watching for me.. perfect amount on depth in machining content thanks. interesting to see what tools people are using. Thanks. PS go to any in depth you want. we can pass a few videos you wont loose real fans

Amazing idea! Design a few nice 5” 4mm thick freestyle frames for a good price and you will have mad costumers from U.K.!

This is wicked hopefully you get this sorted and also have a look at ‘this old tony’ he has a loads of great CNC router videos

Wow wow and wow

You should be using a very sharp single flute cutter with plastic. Also, it would be better to have some air blowing on the cutter and material. In general, it is not good to slow down the feed with plastics. If you can't get enough seed rate out of the stepper motors decrease the spindle RPM to get a full cut. Remember, if it isn't cutting then it is rubbing. If it is rubbing there will be heat and the heat will melt the plastic. The heat will build up on the cutter, then the plastic will build up, then the stress will build up, then the cutting tool will break.

12000 rpm might be right. I used a really big CNC router (industrial) type during education long ago. The Higher rpm will not melt the plastic but you have to experiment with the feeding speed. The bit broke due to too low rpm.

Hi Tom I got mine from Ozznest in the UK. Hope that wasn't the company. Their kits are superb and I now use LinuxCNC for my router and 4 axis hot wire foam cutter. Produced a few videos on them. Mach3 is good but isn't free I find LinuxCNC much better for foam cutting. Glad you got it sorted in the end. Keith

Nice to see a CNC setup, as you are using Fusion 360 why not try the "Slicer for Fusion 360" addon it allows you to pattern a slot together frame from an imported STL, so if you wanted to throw together a set of funky shelfs you can with ease.

Hi Tom, first of I really like your work and personality. I have an episode idea for you, use your CNC to build a foam/polystyrene RC plane. Or build a 3d sculpture (a building or character of your design).

Try using a bit that has only a single flute. It will help you take a bigger chip if you are limited by you machines feed rate.

My dream, 1 cnc and 1 3d printer!

Your first project with this machine should be a vacuum table. You wont get even z-depth otherwise. All you need is two pieces of mdf and some rubber gasket. And try single flute end mills with 30° sprial or less. 0° s good for thin soft plastic. 10-15K rpm is actually quite normal for acrylic. If it melts, increase feed rates. And hook up the coolant lines to the spindle. The water cooling on these isn't optional. HF-Spindles can burn out under load without cooling before the outside of the casing even gets handwarm. My suggestion for milling project#2 would be proper sideplates for the gantry. The current construction is a total mess. 20-25mm/1" 7075/7021/7022 should be strog enough for what the small spindle can handle. Well pretty much every detail of the machine is executed in the worst way possible. Are those 20x40 extrusions under the bed? Good lord. And there isn't even a frontplate connecting the main extrusions. My honest oppinion: Forget this contraption if your goal is commercial production of carbon fibre parts. This is worse than a 1000$ china-router. Make solid side plates and stiffen out the bed ... design your own router and machine the neccessary parts. Then sell this thing.

As a purely prototyping tool for drone frames, checking how things could be assembled etc, a laser cutter with acrylic or plywood could be much quicker and cheaper. It would be useless for the finished parts as it wouldn't cut carbon fibre and acrylic is too brittle to survive a mild crash, but a frame could be cut out of 3mm acrylic in just a couple of minutes and you could test assemble it. A cheap Chinese "K40" that can cut A4 size sheets can be had for ~£500, though would need some setting up time. It's tool that compliments a CNC and 3D printer nicely.

Where did you get the cnc from it would be nice to look at there specs or prices i know you think they are a dud but its good to look

Wow, thats a freaking huge machine! Looking forward to see it running properly. Really had bad luck with the supplier... How much does such a thing cost?

Use a good sharp O-flute bit for literally everything from plastic to nonferrous metal. Thats all I use with great results. I have some videos on my channel. Looks like a solid machine though man, should perform as well or better than my CNC router parts machine. keep it up its a lot of fun!

Nice. Use higher feed when it starts to melt. At work I would go with max rpm the machine can go (15000) and a feed of probably 3000-5000. The material only melts and starts clogging when you aren't moving fast enough, and feed shall always be in comparison to rpm. So if you use 5000mm/s and 15000rpm that's 500mm/s if you use 1500rpm.

Looking at what you got, it might have been a valuable consideration to think about getting a laser cutter instead. I know, it is more complicated concerning fumes and eye-protection but there are awesome open-sourced builds like the lasersaur that make it worth your while. The main problem with lasercutting carbon though is that you get incredibly poisonous fumes so that might be a reason not to do that. And since you already have the CNC mill; please make a water bed because those small fibers can cause serious health issues :)

Reminds me of my folgetech ft-5 kit. Missing numerous parts I had to buy to replace. The wiring was a joke. The instructions were poor and rolling their color coding on the looms that were long enough to reach certain things. I wound up just buying wire myself and making my own wiring harnesses. It was so frustrating I had to take breaks for weeks at a time to keep myself from getting mad and just breaking things LOL. A weeks worth of printing the melamine pieces of the extruder shuttle broke and I had to rig it to work long enough to print replacements in ABS.

OMG Thats a big machine

It would make a good anchor.

That’s awesome. Would subs be able to put in custom requests for drone frames?

harikasın tom

How do you keep your workbenches clean? I've been thinking about it and I can't understand it. It's impossible for me.

Can you share where you got this from, boon looking for one but that looks nice for my needs!