A CNC Mill For Less Than $200 - Is It Worth Buying? (CNC 3018 Pro)

have you ever been scrolling through ebay and one of those listings for a cnc machine for like 200 bucks pops up and of course you know a lot better than to actually buy one well this is one of them frankly i've wanted one for a long time just really to see what 200 bucks can get you nowadays now i'm not expecting too much from this machine but if i'm able to make parts with it i'll be pretty happy with it anyway let's get this box opened and see what we have now there is going to be some assembly required these small cnc machines are generally sold as a kit but it shouldn't be too difficult to put this thing together so according to the book this machine is the 3018 pro there is a regular 3018 for a little bit less money i think 20 bucks less but the pro looked to be a more substantial machine at least online and i really want to give this thing a fighting chance at actually working and credit where credit is due these manuals look a lot better than they used to going by the photos what we have are two pieces of plastic that work like some sort of enclosure for filming purposes i'm probably not going to use this now it looks like the frame of this is going to be made from 20 by 40 v-slot aluminium extrusion there's a bit of swarf left in the hole so i might go in with the tap and clean it up before i assemble it the table is also going to be another piece of v-slot extruded aluminium it seems to be pretty sturdy though which is a good sign and we also have what looks to be our linear rods and our trapezoidal thread lead screws i'm guessing there's going to be some sort of anti-backlash mechanism somewhere in the kit if there isn't we're going to be in a lot of trouble it looks like they've packed in a lot of screws so hopefully we don't have any left over we have a bunch of springs and i guess this is going to be a part of that anti-backlash system now that's one thing i wasn't expecting or at least i didn't get from the photos the gantry columns are actually made from plastic as are the front and back pieces of the frame now the plastic is pretty solid and it's also very thick but at the end of the day it is plastic so this might cause us some problems down the line now what we have here are some really tiny stepper motors going by the dimensions these are going to be nema 17 for small mills of this size that's probably going to be big enough but honestly these things are tiny they've included some spanners and hex keys i'm guessing to help put it together and to undo the collet on the spindle now it looks like what we have here is a very basic clamp down kit it's just some hex bolts and some thin steel i've used this type of clamp down system before and they never work all that well in time i'll probably end up replacing this for something a little bit more substantial now looks like the z-axis and motor is pre-assembled for us according to the spec sheets it's a 150 watt 775 motor which is pretty small though it is a pretty small machine 775 is a pretty common motor size so we can always replace it for a much bigger motor in the future now it looks like the whole assembly is made from plastic which is a big red flag plastic is probably going to cause a lot of issues down the line in terms of rigidity so it's something to look out for and i might need to replace it i'm guessing this is the offline control board so we can control the cnc machine without the need for a computer and it looks like we have the main gerbil cnc control board as far as first impressions go they've done a pretty good job everything's packed in really nicely nothing's damaged and it looks to be really well made now putting everything together is pretty straightforward and it should only take about an hour or so the instruction manual is pretty good and it's pretty clear on where everything goes i would recommend if you can just going through the tapped holes with a compressed air gun or at least a tap because there was a fair amount of swarf and junk and other grit that was still in there that needed to be cleared out and for good measure all the holes needed a bit of deburring afterwards the rest of the build is pretty much just correctly bolting stuff in and getting everything properly aligned when you're assembling the gantry columns there is a fair amount of alignment that you need to do with some of the v-nuts and that is a bit time-consuming getting everything aligned up but that really is the worst of it if you can i would recommend having a set of one two three blocks or at least a try square on hand that will help you align the table to help make it square having a set of calipers is also really handy when it comes to setting the position of the gantry supports so they're both the same distance from the back of the mill wiring the board up is also pretty straightforward the board is nicely designed everything's spaced out and properly labeled which is really nice to see at least compared to some of the other cnc boards that i've had to deal with over the years just make sure you don't confuse the x y and z axis when you plug everything in finally i'll plug in the offline controller and fingers crossed that when i flick the switch it all turns on and thankfully it seems to be working everything seems to be moving quite well without any problems overall the build quality is pretty good and the assembly process went without any issues and i also like the offline controller it's really simple and straightforward to use so like i said at the beginning of the video this is the cnc 3018 pro 3018 being the x and y cutting area of 30 centimeters by 18 centimeters frankly this is a pretty big cutting area considering the overall size of the machine measuring it it comes out to be about 400 mils wide by 330 mils deep by 220 mils high for what i paid i'm pretty surprised with how big it actually is now i also was surprised to see the vevo logo on the machine this is the same company that i bought the dividing head from if i was going to make a guess i would say that this is just a rebranded generic 3018 pro i don't think vevo make them themselves i have seen other generic ones that look almost identical to this one so i'd suspect that there's one factory in china cranking all of these out and other brands just slapping their logo on it now the spindle on this machine uses er11 collets this one came with a 1 8 inch collet and a bunch of 1 8 inch cutters so it looks like they gave us 5 2 degree engraver bits i'm not a huge fan of these v-bit engravers and they also gave us some four flute end mills for the sake of chip evacuation i think one or two flute cutters might be better suited to the work here than four flutes now the size of the machine is probably going to limit us but it's not a bad idea to get your hands on a quarter inch er 11 collet so you can use larger shank end mills or router bits i'll definitely need this for when i make a waste board now one thing that i didn't notice initially when i unboxed it was that the spindle attaches to the motor using two grub screws it's pretty similar to how the chuck attached to the motor on that 40 lathe that i picked up last year in fact i'm pretty sure they were both using the same 150 watt 775 motor the problem with doing it this way are the issues that it can cause one is that it's not hugely rigid the shaft is only a few millimeters thick and it's probably going to bend under load it was a big issue with the lathe so i'm expecting to see it here the second problem is it's not a hugely precise method of attaching a spindle i'm expecting to see a lot of run out or wobble in the spindle i'll attach a test indicator to the spindle to see the run out and as you can see just in the spindle alone we're almost getting 0.1 of a mill of run out or wobble in the spindle just for reference the big import mill that i have has less than 0.01 millimeters of run out so this is almost 10 times that now i did try to reduce it by loosening one side and tightening the other grub screw just to try and push it into concentric alignment and it might have improved it a little bit by maybe 0.01 or 2 of a mil but it's still pretty far out of whack turning the motor on you'll be pretty surprised that for such a small spindle it's really loud i mean it's almost as loud as my big milling machine and there are a lot of vibrations coming from the spindle no doubt that a lot of it is coming from that spindle run out but i'm sure a lot of it is coming from that collet nut now depending where i go from here i'll either make an enclosure for the mill and i'll probably end up replacing the motor as well because it's crazy how loud this thing is the final thing i'll address is the rigidity of the machine and as you'd expect it's not that great the frame itself is surprisingly sturdy for being held together by only plastic and aluminium it doesn't flex all that much and neither does the gantry however there is a fair amount of movement in the table there's a fair amount of backwards movement in that anti-backlash spring it probably has to do with the fact that the spring was not all that strong so i think a lot of it could be fixed by using a stronger spring however there is a small amount of upwards and down movement in the table which would be a little bit harder to get rid of unfortunately though there is a lot of slop and movement in the z-axis and most of it is coming from that linear rail and its guide and this is unfortunate because we really need this part of the mill to be as rigid as possible i can see this causing a lot of issues when it comes to machining so if there's one area that i need to upgrade in the future it's probably going to be this with all that out of the way let's get into actually making something my preference for doing this is always to use a computer even though i can use the offline controller i plug in the usb controller and i'll install the drivers and software that came with the included usb the included gerbil controller is a program called candle i haven't used it all that much it's a little bit basic but it works just fine i know there are other ones out there but this one is doing okay so i'll stick with this one for the moment using candle you can look at your g-code and control the cnc machine overall it's simple and straightforward and it should only take you five minutes to get it working to put all of this into context i bought one of those cnc 3040 machines about seven or eight years ago and setting vata was a complete nightmare just figuring out what pin was to do with what on the control board to actually wire it up in mach 3 was a huge pain plus i also needed a pc with a parallel port this compared to that is just night and day they've made it so much easier to do in the seven or eight years since i bought that machine and i really appreciate it i used to have a few videos of that on youtube but i can't find all of them at the moment now back to the 3018 i'll first do a test in some pinewood the program came with a few test files which will just be a few letters engraved onto the water to do the engraving i'll be using this single flute engraver bit i'll clamp the wood down using the stock clamp down kit that came with the router to prevent the bolt from digging into the table i'll be using the disc that i made for the big mills clamp down kit and after using this once i can tell you that the first thing i'll be replacing will be the clamp down kit the box just too small for the slot and it's not that nice to use i'll move the bit over to where i want the work to start and i'll set the origin on the pc and i'll also set the z origin finally i'll click go [Music] and purely as a wood engraver i think i can give this thing a pass the resolution is pretty good and the letters are coming out really nice and crisp [Music] so far so good the next thing i'll try would be the same g code in aluminium to give it a chance i'll slow it right down and i'll reduce the depth of cut now some cutting oil really helped it here but it is struggling quite a bit i'm sure you can hear it and see it in the footage but there is some deflection with the cutter i'm pretty sure all these issues are stemming from the spindle rigidity as well as the lack of rigidity from that z-axis frame i'm almost certain that if i'd used one of those v bit cutters it would have probably broken the card left a bit of a bur which i'll sand down to be fair to the mill this grade of aluminium is not the nicest alloy to machine so a burr is no surprise with it cleaned up it actually looks a lot better than i thought it would there are some parts that turned out better than others but i was expecting it to look a lot worse i don't know i'm kind of impressed i switch over from an engraving bit to an end build so i can actually cut out a profile i'll be using fusion 360 to make the g-code i don't normally use fusion but it has a pretty good cam software and it has a post processor for goebbel code which means it can make g-code for google machines which the 3018 is i'll have to do a long video on cad and cam but all i'm doing is telling the software what i want cut how i want it cut and what cutter that i'm doing and it's generating the tool paths for me and the model that i'm using is just a bottle opener that i found a few years ago i do the first cut in the same pine that i used before i'm doing a one mil death of cut at about 300 millimeters a minute i am having to vacuum it all up since the end mill's not evacuating chips that well but so far it's cutting quite well there are a few burrs on the wood but so far i'm not getting any chatter and it's cutting quite well after the cut i could see that there was a fair amount of wood built up in the flutes that pretty much confirms that a move to a one or two flute cutter would be the way to go i also tried the same code with some hardwood the one nil death of cut was probably a little bit too much for this machine to handle even with a reduced feed rate in the future when i'm doing hardwood i'll probably reduce it to a 0.7 or 0.5 millimeter depth of cut that would probably suit it a lot better so for wood this mule can certainly get it done the next thing that i want to see is how well it cuts plastic i used some double side tape to tape down some 3ml acrylic now acrylic is pretty messy to machine but it machines up quite nicely i'm using the same g-code as before doing a one mil depth of cut though i'm able to take it a little bit faster than i was in the hard water with the cut done the edges are a little bit rough but some needle files can easily fix it up well that looks to be done pretty nicely finally i'll try machining some aluminium i have seen people use these machines to machine aluminium but typically they're upgraded in some way usually a bigger spindle and some method of making it more rigid here i'm only doing a 0.1 mil death of cut and it's still struggling the biggest issue at the moment is just that lack of rigidity i'm sure if i could improve it i could machine aluminium without too many issues well for 200 i'm impressed i know it has some problems but i'm still impressed with the quality and what it can do if you want to learn basic cnc and basic cad and cam this might be worth considering just know that there will be limitations and you know what this can be a lot of fun to use even though it does struggle a bit i've had a lot of fun using it over the past few weeks with the standard machine i would recommend sticking to only plastic and wood but for me that's not enough over the next few weeks i'll try and pull it apart and see what i can do to upgrade it and hopefully we can get around to machining aluminium in a few weeks time i'm really excited into seeing what i can get out of this machine and hopefully turn it into something that's being capable of being called a mini mill anyway i hope you enjoyed that thank you very much for watching see you next time

Channel: Artisan Makes

Views: 2,424,744

Keywords: CNC, CNC 3018, CNC 3040, Mini CNC, CNC machine, CNC mini milling machien, CNC milling machine, CNC router, CNC 3018 router, CNC 3018 pro, CNC 3018 pro mill, reviwe, CNC 3018 pro review, CNC 3018 review, CNC3018, 3018 CNC

Id: K9pjduKSsKs

Length: 19min 23sec (1163 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 12 2022