Hello - new member here

[user 43593]

Hello all. I have just joined UKW. I have had many interests over many years including shooting, archery and RIB sailing and beer drinking. I am retired from a lifetime of working in a field unrelated to working with metal and wood. I live in the county of Bedfordshire. I love to travel and have worked in several countries. My interests revolve around CNC machinery and machining different materials. I made the usual mistakes of buying the wrong thing 3018 and Snapmaker 1 after which I then settled on a standard sized Shapeoko 3.

It has taught me a few things about CNC machining techniques and I have modified my SO3 to improve rigidity, accuracy and workholding options. My 8' x 6' garden shed suffered from a lack of space. Desperately wanting to learn how to swing a cat around, I have doubled the shed size to 12' x 8' and have just started to move all of the associated gubbins back in to its new home. I had not realised that I had so much junk in the 8' x 6' shed. I have machined glass, slate, wood, aluminium and brass. I have a small blue diode laser, a small bandsaw, a belt sander and pride of place goes to my Fobco bench pillar drill. I was hoping to replace my CNC machine for a more capable one but I spent so much cash getting the new shed (expand concrete base, new garden fencing to replace 40 year old rotten fence, landscaping, electrician and everything else imaginable) so it will have to wait.

 

[Bingy man]

Hello and welcome , you did say you was retired , sounds like anything but . quite a busy time for you -anyway enjoy your retirement and folk on this site love to see photos of your work ..

 

[user 43593]

Hello and welcome , you did say you was retired , sounds like anything but . quite a busy time for you -anyway enjoy your retirement and folk on this site love to see photos of your work ..

Thank you for the welcome. It was very tough to retire when I was used to full days at work. I was still working full time when COVID started. I was told that I was at risk so I had to leave the job at the age of 72. I would have preferred to have carried on working otherwise. A few examples of stuff when I was brand new to CNC and laser work (about 3 months practice 3 years ago)

 

[Bingy man]

Thank you for the welcome. It was very tough to retire when I was used to full days at work. I was still working full time when COVID started. I was told that I was at risk so I had to leave the job at the age of 72. I would have preferred to have carried on working otherwise. A few examples of stuff when I was brand new to CNC and laser work (about 3 months practice 3 years ago)

I think when you have worked most of your life suddenly stopping due to retirement is seriously bad for your health , so enjoy your time but it’s crucial to keep the grey matter ticking over ..and nice work btw

 

[user 43593]

I think when you have worked most of your life suddenly stopping due to retirement is seriously bad for your health , so enjoy your time but it’s crucial to keep the grey matter ticking over ..and nice work btw

Thank you for your kind comment. It always feels good to keep my mind active and it's very nice to receive compliments for stuff that I created in the early days. It shows that I was sort of on the right track.

 

[user 43593]

Wow I love the owl, was that all done with laser?

No, the owl was cut out from a 200 x 200 x 25mm piece of maple using the CNC machine. I carved it from an .stl (stereolithography) file. I Used Carveco Maker for both the 6.35mm offset roughing pass with a 2 flute straight edged cutter and then I used a circular motion cut from the centre outwards for the finishing pass with a 0.25mm 2 flute ball end mill. the image is a render of the .stl file used.

 

[Bingy man]

Thank you for your kind comment. It always feels good to keep my mind active and it's very nice to receive compliments for stuff that I created in the early days. It shows that I was sort of on the right track.

I’m constantly and pleasantly suprised at the skills of the members of this forum . Work from all skill sets is inspiring to say the least so credit where it’s due ..

 

[Sachakins]

Hi and welcome to our insanatorium

 

[user 43593]

Hi and welcome to our insanatorium

Hi there. Thanks for the welcome. It's nice to meet you in the aether.

 

[spiritburner]

Hello all. I have just joined UKW. I have had many interests over many years including shooting, archery and RIB sailing and beer drinking. I am retired from a lifetime of working in a field unrelated to working with metal and wood. I live in the county of Bedfordshire. I love to travel and have worked in several countries. My interests revolve around CNC machinery and machining different materials. I made the usual mistakes of buying the wrong thing 3018 and Snapmaker 1 after which I then settled on a standard sized Shapeoko 3.

It has taught me a few things about CNC machining techniques and I have modified my SO3 to improve rigidity, accuracy and workholding options. My 8' x 6' garden shed suffered from a lack of space. Desperately wanting to learn how to swing a cat around, I have doubled the shed size to 12' x 8' and have just started to move all of the associated gubbins back in to its new home. I had not realised that I had so much junk in the 8' x 6' shed. I have machined glass, slate, wood, aluminium and brass. I have a small blue diode laser, a small bandsaw, a belt sander and pride of place goes to my Fobco bench pillar drill. I was hoping to replace my CNC machine for a more capable one but I spent so much cash getting the new shed (expand concrete base, new garden fencing to replace 40 year old rotten fence, landscaping, electrician and everything else imaginable) so it will have to wait.

Hiya, I know that very same feeling......I build CNC machines over here in Spain for the locals amongst other things and my own hobby, if you need any help just let me know and Ill point you in the right direction and can even give you an idea of what to expect on costs . Its a minefield out there on build your own CNC XXX Whatever machine and you can end up spending a small fortune when you really dont need to at all, especially with controllers and rails, it seems the Hobby CNC world has been attacked by the fashion upgrading brigade who spend all day upgrading instead of doing, like it has in the 3D printer world!

Cheers

Neil.

 

[user 43593]

Hiya, I know that very same feeling......I build CNC machines over here in Spain for the locals amongst other things and my own hobby, if you need any help just let me know and Ill point you in the right direction and can even give you an idea of what to expect on costs .

Hi Neil. Thank you for your kind offer of help. Good to know you build CNC machines. Part of my reason for wanting a bigger workspace was to buy a bigger machine. I was looking at the Stepcraft system because I wanted to consider an ATC and a 4th axis. The ATC is a desirable rather than a must have because I am a hobbyist rather than someone trying to run a production line. The 4th axis may well be possible on my machine but not with its present GRBL controller. It is an 8bit controller with GRBL 1.1f. I tried to look at the market for 32bit GRBL controllers but that seems to be something of a minefield. Something like Openbuilds Blackbox may suit but I would like to keep using LightBurn for my JTech laser if possible.

I use a Shapeoko S03 standard size, which I would like to keep, having invested much time and effort to modify the belt tensioners so I can tension the belts in a straight line. I also added a sea holes baseboard made with a 12mm slab of 6061 aluminium plus 3x 40mm stiffener bars and two complete modular vices from Saunders Machine Works in the USA. The 840 holes are threaded for M6 bolts. The machine works well and I am satisfied with its accuracy and rigidity now. I would want a 4th axis that could be plumbed into the existing system once a suitable controller could be sourced.

pic - image of my machine

 

[spiritburner]

Hiya, looks a nice setup you have, yes controllers are a pain but if your aiming for a Black Box you wont have any problems, its a good controller, the only downside I would say is the onboard stepper drivers, I do prefer external amplifiers in case anything goes wrong but you cant have everything.

It hasnt stopped me from purchasing it

On my new build which is for me and is currently in pieces on a table waiting to be unpacked is the new X32 controller from OB along with lots of other lovely stuff but only on pain of death am i allowed to open the lot!

I am currently building a 100 watt C02 for a friend over here, then mine and then a Workbee for a client.

I am also toying with the offline controller as well to complete the machine. fully for myself, it looks very nice I have to admit.

I have a friend in the UK who makes amazing lasers and CNC to order as well,were working together on a new type of laser rotary which should we hope goes to kickstarter as some point in the Spring.

Keep in touch and we can talk controllers and other things when youre nearer to it.

Cheers
Photos is a 160 Watt CO2 , nearly finished now, the tube is mounted on the top rather than inside, allows more space on the bed and makes negligible difference to the power for having the additional optic.

 

[user 43593]

I like the work you are doing. I can see that a re-think may be in order. I am open to anything that is an improvement on what I am using. I know that a spindle rather than a trim router is likely to be a better option. I will DM you with my e-mail address so that you can notify me when you go live on kickstarter with your laser rotary. I am happy with my 4.2W JTech blue diode laser and potentially was looking at a stacked diode set up. Some of the Chinese made ones like Atomstack are now able to give output values around 33W and the additional heads for fibre lasers are also an attractive addition. anyhow... DM. sent

 

[spiritburner]

yes no problem, the diode arrays are very good and have come a very long way in the last 3 years, far more than I ever thought possible pre covid to be honest, we knew they were under production but just not how good they are. Have a look at LaserTree, they go up to a 40 watt array now and are actually very good lasers, we have a 20 watt on trial now and its pretty amazing and if you want to play with titanium and Inox marking then they are very good for colouring as well as "engraving"

They are just one manufacturer though and I am working on others to let us have a model for review.
Although I favour C02 lasers myself it wont be long before Diodes arrays will replace all small C02 lasers i am sure as the power levels get higher there wont be any need for a small C02 only machines apart from some Acrylic work perhaps but there are even work arounds for that now.

I prefer stand alone machines over drop in modules to swap between fibre and diode , they just dont have the real power you need, if you are looking at a fibre machine you really need to start at a minimum of 30 watts or higher, the small ones are fine for a beer mat or small cylinders but you will outgrow the power delivery so quickly and youll be wanting to work on brass coins and the like so soon and thats where you need the power.

If you watch some 50watt fibre videos youll see what I mean and what you can do in skilled hands but you are talking a lot of money with the lenses and full setup.

cheers