3018 PRO - Making your first cut

if you ready to make your first cut on your 30:18 Pro CNC machine and stick around because that's what we're doing today so if you haven't built your machine already there is a link in the description below to last episode where we assembled our 30:18 Pro CNC machine in today's episode we're going to take a look at making our first test cut we're going to look at the machine itself and set that up with a piece of wood then we're going to move over to the laptop and set all the software up needed then finally we're going to load in a test file send that across to the machine and hope everything works so let's get stuck in there two halves to get in the machine ready the first against something on the bed ready to cut and the second is getting the tool into the spindle to do the cutting lighter I like to get the bed ready first because if you're moving your hands around trying to adjust the clamps and there's a tool in the spindle you run the risk of cutting yourself or injuring yourself going into them so let's look again the piece of wood clamp down would you shoot in the standard clamps that come with the kit the way these work is you can spin the wing nut to apply pressure on the front of the clamp they just simply slide it in go over the wood and then apply a bit of pressure I'll do that for all four there we are the piece of woods now firmly in place next thing we need to do is look at inserting the tool I like to keep the covers on these until you're ready to use them just to protect them the way the spindle works there's a hole in the middle you slide the bit up into the hole and then use this to clamp it in place let's do that now you want to make sure it's pushed in as far as possible the further out the tool is sticking the more risky run of chatter which is where it's bouncing about and put in to tighten this up you can do it a little bit with your fingers then you'll need to spanners to security in place at 14 and a 17-mile pinch that up you don't over-tighten it because it'll make it difficult to get the bit out later that's the machine setup now we can move over to the software so with the machine ready we can there take a look at your laptop or your PC the ease of saved all of my files in a folder on the desktop I'll also put a link to this in the description below the first thing we need to do is install the driver the drivers were allows your PC or laptop to talk to the machine will open this off let the driver run install itself and then when it's done they'll close the windows down the second thing we need to do is install the software the software that comes with the machines is called candle Afghan candle can be a little bit unpredictable so what I'll use instead is UGS platform that Universal g-code sender this can be downloaded from their website simply by searching UGS nightly build and the first result that will be the download page so let's go ahead and load up that software in the bin folder you'll see two options the first is for a 32-bit machine is second is for a 64-bit machine I happen to know my laptop is a 64-bit machine so that's the one we're going to use today this can take a second to open so with the software loading let's go ahead and take a look at the layout at the moment you'll see that all these buttons on the left hand side are grayed out this is because the software is not connected to the machine yet if your job controller panel doesn't load then it will just be on one of these other tabs and switch it over to the job controller down here we have the console this is where you'll see the g-code being sent over to the machine and over here we have the controller state this runs live as you're controlling the head around and you'll see these numbers are just as well up the top this is where the soft wire connects to the machine itself the board number this loads is default but if yours doesn't show this number then you may need to change it the comport will vary for different computers and different machines I'm bearing on the USB port that you use in to just drop that down and select the one that you need I happen to know that the one for my laptop is comport for if their port is not showing then click the refresh button and it should load it in obviously you CNC machine does need to be turned on first it's the communication method we know that our machine uses grbl and that's what loads are standard so we'll also leave that as it is the next thing to do is click the connect button and what this one they do is connect to the machine and make sure that everything is live all these buttons have now come to life and it means we can start using the machine itself one of the most important areas is this job controller down here this allows you to move the head around and position it for your home position when you need to do the codes if this is the first time using your machine it's a good idea now just to run some tests and make sure that everything moves correctly before we do any movement though please notice that these figures down here these control how fast the head moves and the increments that they move in millimeters so for example if I want to move the X or Y axis now it will move in ten millimeter increments and the feed rate is at a thousand so for now let's just do a test and move the head to the right and then we'll take it back and now if we take this up to 40 ml and do the same again before we send it back though we're just going to take the feed rate up to 2,000 and it should move back twice as fast there you are similarly for the steps always on the Z this controls that how many millimeters that the axis moves up and down so if we press down now does that axis should move down five millimeters does that axis just move slower than the other mid the other axes just because it needs to be more precise will also pull it back up obviously when using these numbers at the lower the numbers define of the movements and also the lower the speed the more you can control it without any jumping about so we'll take that back down to a thousand for now and we'll also take this to 20 mil just so we can get ready to load our test program in what I'm going to do now though is just roughly position the spindle in the middle of the board one thing to note is allowed this is pointing forwards and backwards what this is relevant to is the head the head moving in relation to the board so when I click for the head to move backwards the board will actually move forwards and this is because it's moving the head towards the back of the board okay what we can now do is load in our test file so go to the open and load in the test file and this loads live in the visualizer over here now this is three-dimensional so you can move it about and rotate it and what you'll notice is that at the moment the test polishes are simple 50 millimeter square I happen to know it will cut about one millimeter deep as well the important things to note this orange triangle here this is the head and this moves live so if you may move the x-axis across you'll see that jumps across as well the other important part is this green stem here this is the home or the starting point for the test code now you don't have to line this up with anything on your on your bed but you need to know where it is because you have to set the zero point in order for this for the machine to know that that is the starting point for the piece the other thing on this diagram you'll see the yellow lines the yellow lines of the cutting path that it will take so this starts here what it will do is pull up it will come down to this corner come down it will then cut the path all the way around come back to where it started you will then raise back up and return to the home position what we need to do though now is come back over to the machine we need to set the home position and lower the z-axis to touch the board so what we're going to do is just bring the z-axis down slowly you need this just to touch at the top of the wood so what I'm going to do is adjust the step size down to one millimeter so we can control it much more finely and then bring it down slowly there are different methods for doing this one of the easiest methods is just pouring a piece of paper underneath but once you feel that the tool is touch the paper then that means it's close enough to the wood so now that's just touching the wood what we need to do is if we return back to the visualizer we'll say that the head is all the way over here but we need to now tell it that the head is where we want the cut to start to do this we click the reset to zero bottom you'll see that's jumped back over to here when we click the send button to send the information over to the Machine this will move live along the path that we've just gone over so let's do that now do our first test cut and there we have it that's all done but what I want to do is just run over that again and we'll simply do the same test quit again fit to the soil so let's really cut what we just did we loaded in the test file we then jog the controller until we found where we wanted the file to start we sent it with the play button and we let it run we'll just do that once more so we'll move the x-axis over and let's find a new starting point about that I should do it and then we'll lower the Zed axis down until it touches the wood again and now what we need to what you'll notice on the visualizer is that the yellow arrow is no disappeared resume a we can see it's all the way over here this is where it is in relation to the original test code we did what we need to do is tell it that we know that the new position is the new home point or the new zero point so we'll come back up reset the zero it's brought it back into the middle of the cutting path and then we'll send it across again and what you start up and cut another square what you might notice is that one went a little bit deeper I think I just lowered the Zed axis down a tad too far but we're still got this square cut and there we have our first test cut pretty easy right but what I'm not showing you on the video is the five or six hours it took me to get to this point I was having issues with the x and y-axes german are then we're having software issues where it wasn't compatible with my laptop or things wasn't functioning correctly I guess what I'm trying to say is these machines are not perfect and there is a learning curve to do persevere with them and you will get there and get the results that you're after that pretty much wraps it up for this episode on the next episode we're going to be putting the laser module in and doing some testing with that and seeing what fun we can have been using it in a different way thank you very much for watching if you liked the video please click like and also subscribe and I'll see you on the next episode

Channel: James Dean Designs

Views: 199,547

Keywords: 3018PRO, 3018 pro, 3018 pro CNC, CNC, CNC for beginners, 3018, 3018pro build, 3018 pro assembly, small cnc, desktop cnc, laser cnc, woodworking cnc, woodworking, building 3018, building 3018pro, testcut, test cut, first cut

Id: mUO6d7MaeCA

Length: 14min 31sec (871 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 28 2020