A Portable CNC Mill

December 28, 2012 by Brian Benchoff 30 Comments

Proxxon

Second only to a lathe, a mill is one of the most useful tools to have in a shop. For [juppiter], though, a proper multi-ton mill would take up too much space and be a considerable investment. His solution to his space problem is actually very clever: he converted a small, inexpensive benchtop mill to CNC control, and put everything in a nice box that can be tucked away easily (Italian, here’s the translation).

The mill [juppiter] chose for the conversion was a Proxxon MF70, a very small mill made for jewelers and modelers. After buying a CNC conversion kit that included a few NEMA 17 motors, bearings, and mounting plates, [juppiter] set to work on driving these motors and controlling them with a computer. For the stepper drivers, a few industrial motor drivers were sourced on eBay, driven by an i3 miniITX computer built into the mill’s box. Control is through a touchscreen LCD and a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse.

So far, [juppiter] has crafted a very elegant wood and brass CNC controller that allows him to jog the axes around and set the home position. It’s an excellent build that really shows off the power and ability of these inexpensive desktop mills.

Desktop Mill Built As A High School Project

October 10, 2012 by Mike Szczys 43 Comments

This desktop mill would be impressive coming from anyone, but we’re really excited that it was made as a high school project. [Praneet Narayan] built it during his design and technology class. As his build log shows, he worked with a range of different tools to make sure he had a rock-solid platform on which to mount the motors and cutting head.

The uprights of the frame are made from two steel plates. After hacking them to rough shape with a plasma cutter he finished the edges with a mill. The two parts were then tack welded together so that the mounting holes could be drilled in one step, ensuring alignment between the two sides. The rest of the frame parts are built from extruded rails but he did machine a set of mounting plates to pull it all together. You can see the finished machine milling a message in MDF in the clip after the break.

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Adding Digital Readout To A Non-CNC Mill

September 24, 2012 by Brian Benchoff 28 Comments

In the quest to add a digital readout to his mill, [Yuriy] has done a lot of homework. He’s sourced a trio of very capable scales, researched what kind of hardware his DRO should be based on, and even built a very cool display using seven-segment LEDs. After nearly a year of work, [Yuriy] finally hit upon something that works well: an Arduino and an Android tablet, perfectly matched for one of the prettiest machine shop displays we’ve ever seen.

[Yuriy] based his build off a trio of digital scales he bought from Grizzly. These scales bolt on to the frame of his mill and send data to their own display. An Arduino was used to pull the data off these scales and sent via Bluetooth to a Nexus 7 Android tablet.

Considering a DRO solely based on an Arduino and a character LCD would look a little chintzy – and the fact Arduinos can’t do floating point arithmetic – we’re really impressed with [Yuriy]’s very elegant solution.

Thanks [Lee] for sending this one in.

Turning A 12 Year Old Mill Into A Modern Workhorse

August 9, 2012 by Brian Benchoff 20 Comments

Even though the Roland MDX-20 CNC mill fetched a pretty penny when it was first made available 12 years ago, there were a few features that made any builder lucky enough to own one scratch their head. The only way for a computer to communicate with this mill was through an RS-232 connection, and instead of a normal control protocol such as GCode, the Roland mill uses a very proprietary software package.

[Johan] fixed these problems and at the same time turned this wonderful machine into a tool for the 21st century. Now, instead of running a very long serial cable to his mill with a serial to USB converter at the end, he can just plug a USB cable into his mill with the addition of an FTDI USB to serial chip wired directly to the mill’s circuit board.

Stock, the Roland mill used a very strange proprietary communications protocol. [Johan] was able to reverse engineer this protocol by tracing out a few simple shapes and curves and taking a highlighter to the printout of the resulting file. Instead of the outdated software package that shipped with his mill, [Johan] can now export tool paths directly from his CAD program and send them over a USB cable.

It really is a shame such a nice machine like [Johan]’s mill suffered from the glaring shortsightedness of Roland executives 12 years ago, but at least now [Johan] has a machine that should easily last another decade.

Mantis9 PCB Mill

June 13, 2012 by Mike Szczys 30 Comments

This is the Mantis9 PCB mill. It’s the first time we’ve featured the project, but it’s already well known by some as it keeps popping up in the comments for other CNC mill projects. Yes, it’s made out of wood — which some frown upon — but we’re happy with the build instructions and the especially the price tag (parts as low as $85).

We did feature an earlier revision of the hardware back in 2010. Subsequent versions changed the frame to use an open-front design, but it’s the build techniques that saw the biggest evolution. The problem was getting the holes for the parallel rods to align accurately. In the end it’s a simple operation that solves the problem; clamp both boards together and drill the holes at the same time. A drill press is used for all of the fabrication, ensuring that the holes are perpendicular to the surface of the boards. From there the rods are given some bronze bushings and pressed into place. Only then are the platforms secured to the bushings using epoxy. This is to ensure that the bushings don’t bind from poor alignment. We think it should end up having less play in it than other builds that use drawer slides.

Check out a PCB milling run in the clip after the break.

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A Personal Manufacturing Stack Exchange

May 30, 2012 by Brian Benchoff 6 Comments

Over on Stack Exchange, there’s a proposal for a new CNC/3D printer site. It’s a personal manufacturing stack exchange, and hopefully we’ll see some awesome discussion when it’s eventually created.

Stack Exchange is already well-known for hosting the most useful programming site as well as awesome sites/forums covering everything from LaTeX to grammar. The proposed Personal Manufacturing site is sure to provide a ton of advice and discussion covering the hardware, software, electronics, and toolchains of CNC routers, RepRaps and mills.

The personal manufacturing stack exchange hasn’t been created yet – a few more people still need to commit to use it. Once that’s done, though, we’re sure to see a lot of very helpful advice and discussion from the Stack Exchange community.

Kudos to [Michael] for sending this in.

Designing A Self-replicating Milling Machine

May 14, 2012 by Brian Benchoff 14 Comments

For his senior design project at Swarthmore College, [Julian] decided to build a metalworking equivalent to the RepRap. [Julian]’s final project is a self-replicating milling machine, and hopefully giving some serious metalworking power to all the makers with CNC routers and RepRaps out there.

At first glance, [Julian]’s mill doesn’t look like something you would find in a machine shop. The machine is built around a tetrahedral machine tool frame, giving the machine an amazing amount of stiffness with the added bonus of a degree of self-alignment. The spindle and motor are off-the-shelf units, but the entire bed assembly is made by [Julian] himself.

Right now, [Julian] still considers his project a very early prototype; there’s still a bit of chatter issues he’s working out, and the cost of the finished machine – about $1200, not including many hours of fine tuning – means it isn’t as competitive as other options. Still, [Julian] made a mill from scratch, and that’s nothing to scoff at.