3D Print your own CNC - MPCNC Lowrider2 part 1

what if I told you you could 3d print your own large format CNC router for under $500 this is part one of the mostly printed CNC [Music] I do a lot of 3d printing on this channel but I also have a CNC router it works really well but it's stuck in my garage and it was pretty expensive on my channel I like to cover content to which people can follow along at home I recently reviewed the same smart Genma 2:30 18 Pro CNC and I found it to be a great starter product but I'm keen to do more for CNC on a budget when one of my patrons Jeffrey asked me about the mostly printed CNC I was hooked this is the first part in a series on building this lowrider - mostly printed CNC but before we start building it I'd like to explain exactly what MP CNC is MP CN C stands for mostly printed CNC and here is the main model all of the parts you can see in red are thoroughly printed and then we have some inexpensive metal tube to make up the rest of the frame apart from that we have common components stepper motors skateboard ball bearings and nuts and bolts the idea is that you can build a large CNC machine at home for a fraction of the cost of a ready-made metal one assuming you have your own 3d printer - 3d printer parts you can probably build a pretty large machine for under US $500 now for me since I already have a nice CNC router in the garage I'm looking for something different and that's why I've selected to make the lowrider - CNC like the main model you can customize how wide you want it to be by cutting the metal tube to suit but the main advantage here is that for one axis it can be almost infinite length these side carriages roll up and down on the table which means the length of your table is the only limiting factor is how mine's going to work and it's based on the fact that I have this enormous table in my studio this table however has a little secret underneath are some 3d printed lectures I designed and when these and the casters are released it actually becomes two tables and you can configure it in all sorts of different ways for maximum flexibility I wanted a workspace it could adapt to my projects with the lowrider MP C&C I can use one whole table as the CNC base a machine that would cost a lot of money and take up a lot of space can be removed from the table and packed away in minutes how cool is that in part one we're going to manufacture and assemble the parts to get it to the point that you see here in future episodes we'll cover wiring firmware electronics and of course making stuff we're going to start by acquiring and manufacturing the necessary parts sitting on my table is everything I need to make the lowrider - let me explain starting with this box in the v1 engineering shop we have all of the hardware that makes up the MPC and see what was the most interest to me was buying one of the bundles I purchased the bundle that had all of the mounting hardware as well as the power supply stepper motors wheels pulleys and belts I didn't however purchase the mini Rambo I ordered with no board because I already have a ramps and a bunch of other main boards that have built up over the years the order was sent and was received fairly quickly from America and everything was well packaged and everything was present inside you don't have to buy all of this from their shop you're welcome to saucer parts yourself but I was happy to order with the convenience of knowing all the parts were present and counted out I also don't mind doing it this way as it supports the developer of the project our next components are 25 point 4 millimeter diameter metal pipes from the local hardware store this pipe is meant to be stainless steel but beggars can't be choosers and I can always upgrade to it later on it's important to buy the tube first because the kit supports either 25 or 25 point 4 millimeter diameter versions and you need to know which one you're using before you print any of the parts next up the timber for the cut parts the instructions call for quarter inch and half inch plywood but we use metric in Australia quarter inch is six point three five millimeters so I substituted with seven millimeters half inch is twelve point seven millimeters this time I went a little bit skinnier with 12 millimeters the parts that you need to cut a slightly different depending on the exterior diameter of your tube so verify you've got the correct set of files first and then scroll down and download the two DXF files I imported these are sketches into on shape and then extruded them slightly thicker than what I needed I find that when I'm cutting the whole way through something I exaggerate the thickness just a little bit to make sure I can account for any timber that isn't completely flat you can see I also rename them with their name as well as the thickness of the plywood that I'll be using to avoid mix-ups down the track and then imported my files into Curie modo which is a free cloud-based cam program and I set up the job to be completed with a three millimeter end mill you can see it's going to cut all of the little holes first and then the internal shape and then finally the perimeter and that's exactly how it worked when I went to the garage you can see that it does each hole in three passes because I set a step down of four millimeters then it did the internal hole and finished off the job by cutting around the outside of the profile it's very satisfying when you're cutting parts like this for the job to finish and then to be able to lift out the completed part from all of the sawdust that was the six one one plate which goes in the middle of the machine and carries the laser or router and this is the Y piece that goes on the sides a pertinent question is how do you make a CNC router without one to cut out the parts and you have two options firstly you can buy the machine parts from the shop secondly both shapes fit onto an a3 page so there's nothing to stop you from printing them off cutting them out transferring it onto timber and then using a jigsaw and drill to cut up the profiles finally the 3d printed parts and it seems a good time to thank my filament sponsor x3d all of the STL's for the printed parts are available on Thingiverse once again make sure you're getting the correct diameter pipe version but there's a lot there and it can get overwhelming pretty quickly the links on Thingiverse point to this page on the website and originally i tried to work out what parts and what quantities were required by studying these assembly diagrams however somewhat hidden on the website if you come to a lowrider CNC is a lowrider parts page it has all of the parts listed by name as well as the quantities and that's a much better solution to make sure you don't double up or miss any parts I did all of my printing in PLA 30% infill and three perimeters I primarily use it in two three but I also use the artillery three dx1 as well as the CR 10's pro all of these parts are extremely well designed they're oriented the correct way and they don't need any support or rafts if you're following along you should have all of your components ready to assemble now I'm not going to show you how every nut and bolt goes together because I don't think that's necessary instead I'll follow along the instructions point out anything I found tricky and give me some tips along the way to put a lowrider together we will be referring to the assembly page we're going to follow it in order from top to bottom and we're going to use his exploded diagrams to help locate the correct parts and then put them together before I started I took out the bolts measured them with calipers and then labeled the bags appropriately so I could quickly identify which hardware was which besides these diagrams the text instructions for each part of the assembly is pretty brief they only point out tricky things that might not be obvious from the diagrams using these diagrams the way I approached it was like building Lego for each step I would identify and pull out all of the parts and then use a diagram to assemble them correctly so that's how I approach this first diagram for the x-axis stepper motor I got out all of the parts on the table and then I put them together one bolt at a time I secured the first piece to the stepper motor with em three bolts and then I assembled from there threading through the belt idlers and then putting the next plastic piece over the top of that you're going to want a range of tools handy for this assembly including a socket set screwdrivers and allen keys for the most part you'll be doing everything up tight but just be careful with these two idlers you might need to back off a little bit just to make sure they're not pinched and they can spin the vacuum assembly is super easy it just clips together without any nuts or bolts and that brings us on to our first roller assembly you're going to be putting together a lot of things like this the nuts and bolts on the left and right can be done up tightly but you don't do the center one yet increasing its tension will clamp down the roll if they're too loose now seems a good time to test if it fits your pipe and don't worry if it's too loose at this stage there'll be a chance to tension everything later on time to put everything together and complete our first component of the lowrider - I found this part straightforward apart from one thing and that's that I couldn't fit my socket on the nut instead I needed to use a shifting spanner from the side before I could tighten everything down also take care when you're mounting your rollers onto the wooden plate that they're flush against the outside if yours aren't touching the whole way around like this then you've got something in reverse congratulations we finished our first component we'll continue down the page and put together the top of the z-axis and remember there are two of these so you're gonna do them symmetrically I started by installing the Flex coupler as in the diagram but then I remove the lead screw to make it less cumbersome after this I bolted the stepper motor into the large bracket and I would recommend putting the hose bracket in place first because it's gonna be very hard to access that nut once it's bolted to the mainframe each of the end caps have a little lip to stop the pipe from sliding through too much so make sure these are facing upwards at this stage the end caps are only loosely in place because we want to be able to clamp them down later on we'll also need our pair of j spaces on hand ready to insert the pipe you can see here I'm inserted one end slid on the center carriage and this is how you do the other end we're going to orient the bracket with the triangle brace facing inwards and then we simply slide it on at this stage without the vertical pipes it should be fairly easy to get into place we now take the J spaces and insert them up from underneath and push them against the pipe they should sit in place without our finger there now when we insert the pipes from the bottom we should be able to reach through the top push the J spacer out of the way and then the pipe should slide up ready to be secured by the four nuts and bolts it's important with these to not do up any one of them the whole way in instead you want to work your way around doing them up a little bit at a time tightening one in isolation has the chance of flexing the plastic printed part too much and cracking it now's a good time to test the motion of your Center carriage and I'm pleased to report I could slide back and forth with ease let's finish off the mainframe with our side assemblies and once again we're doing two so you'll need to do them symmetrically we're going to start with the sub assembly for the stepper motor and its mounts there's only one thing of note here and that's where the lead screw nut goes in the m3 screws are designed to cut their own thread into the printed part as you insert them this technique is different to the rest of the kit but it will be plenty strong because all they need to do is avoid the part rotating like the last time we had these idlers take care that you haven't done them up too tight and then they can rotate freely also try to align the pulley for the stepper motor with these idlers but don't worry you will be able to adjust it later on it's time to put the bearings and spacer sleeve inside the four wheels at the machine rolls on my technique was to rest them on top and give them a light love tap with a rubber mallet to drive them home you flip them upside down insert the metal spacers and then once again use the mallet to get everything seated nicely with these sub assemblies complete we're ready to continue when we get to putting everything together on the plate I think there might be a diagram missing you can see four three through to six it refers to assemblies but there's no diagrams for those fortunately they're not hard to work out when you're mounting the four wheels you'll need something skinny like an allen key or screwdriver to move the little sleeve into the middle so the wheel can slot down into position it can be tricky but a little jiggling will normally get everything lined up each corner part takes three bearings very similar to what you've done previously the lower corner pieces have this little Ridge that you used to align on each side after that they take another three bearings just like the rest of the machine all of a sudden that big pile of daunting hardware is reduced a little more than empty bags I think normally you would put the whole thing upside down but since I hadn't cut my rods down I elected to put mine over on the side with the wheels at the top and the super motor facing outwards we push the side carriages up and onto the tube when you slide it down to the end you should be able to align and insert the leads group with the stepper motor driver coupler don't forget to tighten both of the grub screws to hold this securely in place as I haven't cut down my tubes my whole assembly is too wide for my table in the meantime I adjusted this by loosening the screws on one end and simply sliding it into place there's a calculator you can use at the top of the assembly page and I'll probably use that in the next video when I trim everything to the perfect width for now however I'm happy with these simple manual adjustments and I'm pleased to report that the whole thing is moving around on the table as you would expect this is such a cool design concept and I'm really pleased to have the first sage of mine finished so there we have it part 1 finished obviously there's a lot more work to do I still have to cut down the pipe on the sides for the z-axis as well as the extra pipe for the x-axis - after I've done this I'll grease the lead screws as shown in the instructions I still have to tackle the belts as well although from my installation if I hope to put the tables back together I might need to design something custom in the next video we'll cover all of that as well as wiring electronics and firmware hopefully getting this thing moving if you don't want to miss it hit that sub button in the meantime leave your thoughts in the comments below thank you so much for watching and until next time happy 3d printing your CNC router g'day it's Michael again if you liked the video then please click like if you want to see more content like this in future click Subscribe and make sure you click on the bell to receive every notification if you really want to support the channel and see exclusive content become a patron visit my patreon page see you next time

Channel: Teaching Tech

Views: 378,781

Keywords: cnc, mpcnc, mostly printed cnc, 3d printing, 3d print, 3d printed, 3d printer, cnc router, laser cutter, v1 engineering, lowrider2, lowrider, budget, beginner, project, maker space, step by step, instructions, guide, tutorial, build, belts, firmware, electronics, how to, diy, genmitsu, 3018 pro, creality, ender 3, cr-10s pro, artillery3D x1, sidewinder x1, x3d, pla

Id: xIGre_E2_og

Length: 15min 1sec (901 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 14 2019