CNC Router & Designing For Beginners - Garrett Fromme

hi i'm garrett with idc woodcraft and i am so glad you've come to this video especially if you are brand spanking new to cnc riders i'm talking to the person who is just getting ready to order one all the way to the person who has got it built it's all set up and you're about ready to cut a project but you haven't cut anything yet or maybe you've tried this video is intended to save you a ton of time i shoot a lot of videos about cnc routers and design projects i tell you about router bits and how to make money with a cnc router or any cnc machine and as a result i get a lot of questions and i have seen a pattern in those questions basically these questions come up over and over and over again which means that's not out there or it's really hard to find the answers to so you spend a ton of time on youtube or in facebook groups trying to figure this stuff out this video is intended to answer a lot of questions that you have or are going to have guaranteed what i'm going to do here is take you through a process from start to finish of a design as a beginner on a cnc machine or a router in the right way what we're going to do is we're going to design up a square and a circle really the place that you should be started not at a complicated project i've seen way too many people ruin a good piece of wood break router bits because they got way too gung-ho in the beginning ready to make something i mean i know what it feels like because i was like that too but i want you to put the brakes on and just follow along with this process here of what we're doing and why the reason we're doing a circle and a square is because we're going to check your cnc router to make sure it works right and we're going to do a couple other things like dry run your machine in the beginning so you know how the thing runs let's look at cnc routers kind of like a marriage you can't just jump in and be married you got to kind of buddy up with it get to know it build that relationship with it you got to know how the thing works so that's why i want you to slow down watch this entire video get all the tips and tricks that you're going to get in this video which you just don't find out on youtube as far as i know at least not compiled into one video and get all your questions answered at the same time we're going to take this a step at a time all the way through the process and i'm going to try to explain every single part of this from the design of this to generating tool paths to generating what's called g-code or the language that your cnc router understands so it knows what to do and then we're going to take the g-code files and we're going to transfer from the computer over to the control for the router and then we're going to do a few things from there i'll talk a little bit about router pits miscellaneous things but you're going to learn a lot along the way and you're going to learn more than what some more experienced cnc rider owners know you're getting little tips and tricks so watch this thing all the way through it's a long video but you're going to learn more in this one hour than you will in 40 hours of searching around in youtube that's a promise so without any further ado me you the longmail and the software are going to walk through this process let's go okay we are in the vectric design software i just want to remind you that you can do this in virtually any of the softwares that are available out there that of course they each do it in their own different way but when push comes to shove the process is still the same so what we're going to be doing is we're going to first design up our square and our circles to check our router and then we're going to do tool paths and then we are going to take that g-code and i'm going to show you how to get it into your control software i'll explain what that is when we get to it and then we're going to run the little test program out on the router so you being the person who has just gotten into this and some of these little things that you might be struggling with hopefully we'll get them answered here so i'm in vectric this is desktop and the first thing we're going to do is just create a new file which is right here typically when you open up vectric you're going to see something like this with this stuff on the side this is your job setup and what a job is is literally the piece of material that you're going to be working on so what's out here would be the piece of wood piece of aluminum brass glass and we want to get it to the proper size so the piece that i'll be doing the test cut on is 13 wide by eight tall and it's three quarters of an inch thick since our test cut is on the top of the surface and we're not cutting through we're gonna set this to the top of the surface and then we're gonna set off the center of the project all right and then you want to be set on standard right here for your resolution and click ok so we're going to quickly draw up these two shapes they're very easy in any of your softwares are very basic first thing we're going to do is create a circle and that circle is going to be on center right here so we select our circle command and we want our circle to be 5 inches in diameter so we're just going to click five we want to select the diameter button and we want it to be starting off the center of the project so that's what this are these two boxes are for here so you want your x to be zero your y to be zero and then i click create and you'll see now we have that circle on the center and that circle is five inches in diameter so we're going to close that and then go to rectangle and select that now in the vectric software you have options of selecting your rectangle start point off the center of the rectangle or any of the four corners we want to go off center and again we want our x and y's to be zero we want our rectangle to be square on the corners so we have that selected and our rectangle size is going to be six by six and we click create and there's our rectangle so we close that and now we're done with our shapes if you are a vectric user then listen in because i'm going to teach you about a bad habit that i've seen a lot of people make or do when they're dealing with electric software when i do a lot of one-on-ones um it's just not a good habit let me explain let's get back into this whenever you are doing shapes or text drawing lines you're working in what's called cad computer-aided design and that's what this whole area is over here it's for your computer-aided design far as creating tool paths that's a completely different process that's called cam now if you use the vectric software i've seen this far too often people use this tab up here in the upper right corner way up there and this area pops out here this tool path area this is the wrong way to do things and the reason is is because this area over here is your cam area completely separate from this on the left side which is the cad area i always encourage people to toggle between the two rather than pull menus out like that this is meant for quick fixes okay so the way to toggle between the two is this little blue button right up here so you select that and you can see now we are in the cam area so now we're just going to cut a profile out around the square about an eighth of an inch deep and then we'll do the same thing to the circle and we'll do it with a 3 16 diameter end mill now i want to take a minute and explain to you what profile is or profile cut so we just designed a square and a circle and we're going to cut these out and the way to cut them out is by following the line of the square in the circle or following the profile so what a profile cut is essentially you're cutting along a line that you've created it can be a curve it can be an arc it can be a closed box or circle like this letters anything as long as you're tracing along the lines that's what's called a profile now let me give you another example of what i mean and this will probably give you the aha moment so right here we have a deer head and this was cut out on a cnc router interestingly enough someone just took the half had that drawn out they flipped it over or mirrored it and then they cut it out but it's very clear in order to get that deer head you have to follow the outline of the deer head and the antlers that is a profile cut so now i think you got the aha of what a profile is now i'm going to tell you what the difference is because sometimes you're going to hear the word pocket as a matter of fact a lot you're going to hear the word pocket i created a beginner's video project that any beginner can make which is this house number sign i'll put a link down below in the description and you can see that it has raised numbers on it the boundary around it is also raised that means that we had to cut out the material inside here like that that's called a pocket so if we just cut along the lines of the o that's a profile if we cut out everything around the project to recess it that's a pocket if you got an aha give me a thumbs up why am i doing it with a 3 16 as opposed to a quarter inch or an eighth inch the reason is is because the 3 16 is like the silver bullet of cnc router bits for the straight flat bottom bits because they're the 3 16 can replace both the eighth and the quarter down bit that's why i added it to the idc woodcraft store if there's uh an interest in that bit there's a link down below and anything else i'll show you there will be links in the description okay so what we're going to do is we're going to cut around the outside of this square and the outside of the circle and that will enable us to measure across the square to see if it's six inches and then of course up and down and then across the circle to see if it's five inches so we're going to cut that using a profile toolpath and that's what this button is right here so we're going to select the profile and now we're going to select our shapes so we're going to select both the rectangle and the circle okay so i'm going to show you a little trick even if you've been using vectric for a while pay attention what i'm about to show you because this will give you like that little edge up on making better time on your projects when it's running watch this notice that when we selected these two there's a little green dot right up here at the top of the circle and one down the lower left corner of the rectangle those are considered start points for the router bit what that means is when the router comes to cut the circle it's going to start up at that green point there and then it's going to make its cut around clockwise or counterclockwise same thing with the corner down here now this is just an efficiency thing to think about in the future when a bit comes all the way up here and it's done making this cut it's got to pull out and then travel this entire distance to start this cut and that's always time consuming what i mean by that is that one dot is right here on the circle the other one is down here so what the bit is going to do it's going to start here make its cut all the way around and then pull out and have to travel across that entire distance there and then come back in and make the circle cut that travel time added up over multiple pull outs that your router bit is going to do on complicated projects adds up a ton of time on the runtime of your cnc router so that's what we're going to fix right now so we're just going to do a quick fix up what we're going to do is close this tool path out and i'm going to press the end button while the rectangle is selected now we haven't both selected so that's okay i press n and you see all these little dots come up these are called nodes and these are transition points for the software to generate its q-code from and you'll notice that there's a green node at the top of the circle and there's a green node at the lower left corner of the rectangle the green node represents the start point of this vectors that we've drawn so that's why that's happening so in order to change that real quick we're simply going to hover over the upper right corner of the rectangle and we'll press p and what that stands for is start point so now you see we have a green node there so that's going to be the start point for that okay so we are done with that i'm going to hit escape and we're going to reselect these things and we're going back into the profile tool path so we select that and now you see the two points are closer together so this will be a little bit more efficient essentially what we just did was instead of having the router bit start down here and then when it finishes that cut have to come all the way across that distance to go here now we got the start point here it'll come all the way around and it only has to travel that distance instead here it doesn't matter but in the future you want to pay attention to that okay so first thing we have to do is just tell the software where we're going to start at and we want to start it off at the top of the material so we're going to say 0 and then our depth of cut is going to be 0.125 8 of an inch and then we have to select the bit so we currently have the 3 16 bit selected so we're just going to go with that and so i'm going to cancel but you would just hit the select button and change or select the bit that you want now it's always good to check the edit button just to take a look at the feed rates of the bit so you see i have a 70 inches per minute feed rate and a 70 plunge rate so i'm going to be plunging directly into the material i'm going to slow that down a little bit so i'm going to make that 25. the reason i had it at 70 is because most of the time i don't do a direct plunge i will ramp into the material in this case we're going to do a direct plunge i will select ok and now we've changed that plunge rate now we are going to be running around the outside of each shape so we want to tell the program that we are going to cut around the outside and so we want to have the outside selected if we selected on then the bit would be cutting over center on the the shapes and then we would not be at six inches so we want that to be on the outside now i want to take a minute and explain to you when you're doing a profile cut what on the line inside the line and outside the line mean and why it's so important to pay attention to it so let's just pretend that this square piece of wood is the square that we have drawn and we ultimately want the piece of wood to be the size or the cut to be the size and in this case it's six inches wide by six inches tall and that's what we want to be able to measure we actually want to get our calipers or measuring tape right on there and get to know what that size is okay so we've got that down just pretend this is the line that the square that we drew let's pretend this roll of electrical tape is our 3 16 down cutting end mill that we're going to be using on this to cut this so we can measure it when we tell the software to cut on the line it is taking the center of the bit and it is putting it directly on the line and it's going to cut around just like that so there's a problem here because now we have cut out half the diameter of the bit on this side half the diameter of the bit on that side when you add that up that's 3 16. we are now 6 inches minus 3 16 in our size when we're telling it to cut inside the line it's going to take the edge of the router bit or the center of the router bit it's going to split the diameter in two and then take that difference and move the router bit inward so that this edge of the bit will cut along the line and therefore we're cutting a profile inside the box that we have drawn and now we have a box that is 3 16 plus 3 16 minus 6 inches even smaller in this case we want to be outside the line so outside line we'll take the router bit center split it in half and then add that to the size that it's going to be cutting and now it's going to be cutting around the box like that therefore giving us that six inch box on each side or that six inch measure here and here so i hope that explains to you and clears up specifically in profile what inside the line online and outside the line mean if so give me a thumbs up and then we will simply click at the bottom calculate all right so there are our tool paths now we want to take a look at some a couple things first of all we had sharp corners on the rectangle but you see it's rounded here this will still create a sharp corner basically the edge of the bit is rolling around the corner this path is literally the center line of the bit remember the rectangle is on the inside just a little bit now what i'm going to do is i want to show you the tool path in a different way we're going to go up to split screen right up here at the top and we're going to take a look at both screens the design screen and the tool path screen and you notice that there are the dashed lines these are the areas that we've selected and then there's another line that has arrows on it there's one here by the rectangle one by the circle the rectangle arrow lines or the arrow lines in general are the center line of the bit as it's going to be traveling around us cut and you see on the rectangle that line is on the outside which is exactly one of what we want it to be so that effectively this will be the 3 16 bit circle right there and this line is the center line of the bit but you notice on the circle it's actually on the inside so what vectric is doing it is seeing this as a solid area and so it's going to look for the next line and put the bit on the other side so we're going to create two separate tool paths for this so what we have to do is go back into that tool path we just created and we are going to come over to this design area hold shift button down and click on the circle so it gets deselected and then we're going to come back and calculate that so now we're just running the rectangle as you can see over here the circle is not being touched and it shows up over here by the blue line being our tool path here's a little shortcut for you instead of having to create a brand new tool path for the circle we can just come into this tool path right click it click the duplicate button and now it has created a duplicate of this one so now we know that this one is going to be the rectangle as well so we're just going to click into it and come over to the 2d area and select the circle without holding any buttons down and you see now the rectangle is no longer selected and then we're going to leave all the other settings as they are and we'll just change the name since we have now a second tool path we're going to call it circle and we will calculate and now the tool path is on the outside that's exactly what we want so we're going to come back over to this first tool path we're going to right click and rename it square enter and we are set up so we just run this out real quick so we will run preview all tool paths we click that and that's what we have so i want to make sure that it's only one pass per what i mean by passes is the number of times it needs to go around to get down to the depth that it needs to get to so i'm going to slow this down for just a moment and by moving the slide bar and do that again preview all tool paths and see the rectangle is going twice in the circle one twice there's a reason for that we're going to go back into both of these i'm going to select the rectangle first and i'm going to go to the edit button and here is why it did two passes up here our depth of pass is 0.125 that's our final depth but here under pass depth we are telling the software we can only go 0.1 per pass so it has to make that second pass to reach 0.125 so all i'm going to do is add 0.025 to that so now it says 0.125 click ok calculate it we'll do the same for the circle click ok calculate and now we are going to reset and preview all tool paths there's a rectangle and there's the circle so now we're good to go okay so now you know how to run a simple tool path and you learned a few things along the way what we're going to be doing now is how to create the g-code or the file that's going to make the long-middle cnc router run or any cnc router a few things that you learned here you learn about moving the nodes so you can get your router bit to start at a different point you learn about setting up the depths and you learn that interesting thing of how to create the tool path on the side that you wanted to you remember that was on the wrong side of the circle and we had to get it on the right side of the circle and that was just a little thing in vectric that we have to compensate for in a different way by duplicating a tool path which is something else you'll learn hey if you're learning something here and you appreciate what you're learning give me a thumbs up and you might want to subscribe if you're brand new to the cnc router stuff what i'm giving you is the basic stuff and you are learning how to get this kind of stuff up and going really fast this is stuff nobody shows you how to do all right so let's get in here and i'm going to show you how to save the tool path and then we're going to get into getting it over to the router and making the router move so let's go all right so in order to save the g-code we need to go to this button right here in the vectric software where it says save tool path select that and a menu is going to open up now we know that we are working with a 3 16 diameter flat bottom end mill this is a down cutting bit on both of the tool paths here so we're just going to select tool paths so we select all of them then we're going to come up here and make sure we are writing gcode for all visible tool paths now visible tool paths are anything that is selected down here which is both of them and then you want to make sure your post processor is set up post processor what is that i have to take a minute out and just give you a brief overview of what a post processor is and why it can be really important to your cnc machine so a post processor is a little program that tells the cam software in this case vectric but any software that creates tool paths it tells it how to write the gcode file that's going to run your cnc router sometimes cnc routers have specific commands so i'll give you a pretty basic idea of what i'm talking about right here on the long mil cnc router we have a trim router that is mounted on the router that actually does the cutting it's very common on these type of cnc routers that trim router has an on off switch so we manually turn it on and off however some routers have what they call spindles and spindles are controlled by the black box the controller that runs the cnc router so that does not have a power switch so the software the g-code is going to tell the controller when to turn that spindle on how fast to make it spin and then when to turn it back off again and so when you have a spindle the post processor is going to tell the cam software to insert the codes that are going to turn that spindle on and off now that's just one example there are various other examples for example if you work in millimeters or inches that takes a certain code and your post processor is going to tell the software that it needs to be written in metric or in inches so this post processor thing is kind of important if your post processor is not on a list and you have a cnc router that maybe the long mill cnc router 1finity bob cnc any of these like home based bench top type of cnc routers most likely 99 of the time they have the adreno based platform or circuit board and firmware that they're working off of and in that case and you can't find your post processor in this list that i'm going to be talking to you about then just pick the grbl or the gerbil post it it's gonna pretty much work for your machine and if it doesn't you'll get an error along the way and your machine won't run anyway let's get back into this i'll talk to you more about this post processor thing i just want to make sure you understand what a post processor is and why it's an integral part of this entire process of getting your cnc router running come on let's get back into this now we're doing the long mil cnc router and so the post processor to use for that is the gerbil inch or grbl inch post processor if you click that you get this long long list of different machines here just find the gerbil and use that and actually the gerbil works for the majority of machines out there and then we just click the save tool paths now it's going to open up to directories okay so now we're ready to literally save the g-code but there's a couple different scenarios that can happen here so i want to kind of talk about that first number one is if you're running your cnc router directly from the design computer that you're doing your design work on and that computer is actually connected to your cnc router then you will save the g-code to somewhere on your hard drive the second one which is the technique i use is i have a dedicated laptop that runs my cnc router and most cnc router owners do this it just keeps things simple you can do your design work up in your office what have you and you'll have your cnc router in your shop garage basement whatever it might be that way you're not tethered to the router while it's running or whatever it may be you got a separate computer that's actually running it and that is what i recommend you that you do some people actually have this laptop that's running around or not even connected to the internet i'm not like that i like to keep my files updated and i've never had a problem with that so if you want to have a second laptop the control software that will be running your cnc router does not take a lot of processing power and so you can buy a cheap laptop if you have an older one that's good this is an older one it's probably about 10 years old it runs just fine or runs the router just fine if you don't have a second laptop for that i've got a couple links down below for a couple that i found on amazon that are really inexpensive there is one thing that you definitely want on a laptop and it's you want three usb ports you want the one for the router plugs into it you want the one for the flash drive to plug into it and sometimes you have a wireless mouse and you need that to plug into it so at least three maybe four but the ones that are down below in the description those have three ports you'll do just fine now there is another scenario with this g-code stuff where you load your g-code onto a flash drive and you literally plug it into the control box of the router and simply hit a go button and i don't like that one little bit because you can't see what your router's doing you don't have control over there's nothing you can tell because you don't have a nice control display to run your machine and pause it whatever you need to do so a little winded but the three scenarios i'm just going to rehash one is if your design computer is tethered to your router then you can save your file directly to the hard drive if you use my kind of setup which i totally recommend a second laptop dedicated to the router then you're going to want to put it on a flash drive and transfer it over to this machine and the third scenario is the putting it into the black box just put it on a flash drive stick it in a black box and hit and go don't do that if you're stuck with that i'm sorry so what we're going to do is we're going to put it on the flash drive here and then we're going to transfer it over to here all right i know that's a little winded but i hope that gave you some insight get a cheap second laptop if you can't really afford it just do your work off of this guy here your primary design laptop and you'll do just fine okay so let's going back to the stuff okay so now that you know i'm going to use a flash drive i'm going to put my flash drive into the computer and then i am going to open it up if it shows up there it is and i am just going to save this program to the top level and i'm going to call this program test router and simply click save all right now let's just take that out and put it over in here and now we get into the control software here and start moving the long mil cnc router around we are now on the other computer that's running my cnc router so controller is the device that actually runs your cnc machine where it's like a display or readout you'll have heard of several of them you might have heard of mach 3 mach 4 js cnc universal g-code sender g-sender there's a whole few of them so the most common one that's out there right now is this one it's called universal g-code sender and i am not a user of this anymore i used to use it i use g sender but i'm going to show you how to work with this briefly to get your project loaded in now this is not connected to my router i'm not even going to connect it because i don't like using it anymore but when you have it loaded up and you're ready to bring your file in you simply come over to this file open button select it and then find the directory where your file is at so we have a test router right here so if i click that double click it and now you can see there's a circle on here and the rectangle is oh where's it show it's right there you can see it right there so that is our project in universal g-code sender and that's how you load it up and then once you have your machine set up and zeroed out then you'll simply hit the button right here and hit go now we're not going to be using this so i am simply going to get rid of this and we're going to go to what i do use which is g sender a much smoother program or lighter weight it's designed as current to the the most current windows it's got a lot of features you will not find in the universal g-code center or any of the other control softwares and it's got a much more pleasant layout and you can see it's just a very clean layout i really really like it and gsender you can get it off the longmail website it's completely free and it works on any cnc router out there that takes the or works off the adreno platform okay so the first thing we need to do is make sure our router is connected and that's with using this little box up here when you hover up you'll see a little flashing icon there it looks like a plug and it's going to drop down and simply come down until it highlights and then select and then when you see a green check box you got it now the other thing you're going to see when you hover over it it'll say disconnect so if you click it again it's going to disconnect the router from the software here and so now we have to just click the unlock machine and we're going to send the machine home okay so while we're waiting for the long mill to get to its home position a couple things i just want to tell you if you're brand new to cnc routers subscribe to the channel because i cover all the basics for you also i've got a lot of links down below for you of videos for beginners reviews even on the longmail cnc router and if you don't have a cnc router yet and a long wheel may be one that you want to use when you do your research i'll ask you to just use that link down below that says long mail website what happens if you decide to buy the loan mail i get a little bit of a commission it helps support me and what i do here so i don't have to go back to work i can make videos for you there's a lot of other links down below talk about router bits there's other video links down there for beginners to help speed up your journey into cnc okay let's get back into the controller and move on with this little testing of your cnc router and learning how to handle all this g-code stuff and all that other stuff come on we've got the machine ready to go and now we're just going to load up the program in the g sender you simply come down to the load file button here select it and then you go to wherever your file is and there it is test router and it loads it up and there we go so that's it all you have to do is put it on a flash drive put it into a directory load up the g sender in the computer that you use for your router and then simply hit the load file button now here's a little tip for you if you want to delete that file and come up with something else you can either hit load file again and you'll bring up a different one so let's just bring up one i did a video on right there and then i want to bring the other one test back and there it is or you can just hit the x button that will unload the file now all we have to do is basically hit the go button but we have to set the router up first so we're going to take care of that right now so right now the long mill cnc router is in the home position which is the front left corner and obviously i can't work on it right now like that now the home position just so you know the front left corner is traditionally the home position so when you get your homing switches for this then you want to set it to the front left i will do videos on that okay let's get this thing back out of the way so we're gonna go into the control software and simply move it back so to move it around you just go to this manual area over here and that's these buttons these blue buttons are your different motion buttons so your y plus button will move the router away from you your x plus button will move it to the right and of course c plus will move it up and then the other buttons are respective to that and then the little angle buttons there that'll move the machine out away so i'm just going to push this one right here we're going to go y plus just to move the router straight back now before i actually press that i want you to notice over here we have three different buttons so these buttons determine the speed at which the router is going to move you have very slow so you get good control over it kind of a moderate rate there and then this is a rapid rate that's the button we want to be set on and when we change it we're going to change these numbers down here so for example the x y it says 0.2 and when i go to rapid it says 1. so that's really the distance that is going to be traveling but if you notice the speed here is 250 inches per minute when i select the normal it's going at 118 inches per minute when i do the precise it's going at 100 inches per minute so we're just going to set the top button now we're going to press the y now okay so now that we have the router out of the way we got to get our project piece down so i'm just going to say when you're doing this kind of test keep yourself with cheap wood don't try this with the good wood and this is something you always want to do before you like work with your router in the beginning you just want to know what it's doing and how it works in fact before we even cut we're going to do an air cut but we're going to get the project set up first so there's a couple ways you can clamp this board down to the table the traditional way is by using regular clamps and that's usually what i use but there is another technique that you may not know about that i haven't shot a video on about and we're going to cover it right now it's using ca glue you've probably heard the term it's this it's basically super glue that's a big bottle of super glue this is made by starbond and starbond is like really well known in this industry because it can do a lot more than just hold stuff down but we're going to deal with that right now so they've got a spray that you use as well this is what they call an accelerator when you put the glue down and you spray this it dries and cures really fast so we have that and we're going to be using painters tape and a putty knife so i'll show you how this works right now so the first thing you want to do is make sure your spoil board is as clean and free of dust as possible and then the same thing with your project piece now you see i've got some cuts on there this board is from when i originally checked my cnc router we're going to take three strips of painters tape make sure there's no buckles in it we're going to put it across the project one on one edge one in the middle and one on the far end there's no rocket science to this then we're going to take the putty knife and press it down now what we're going to do is just get a general guide as to where the tape is so i'm going to take three pieces of painters tape and just use it as markers where the strips are on the board and then we'll put strips down on the spoil board in the respective locations make mistake pull it up put it down again links for the ca glue stuff is down in the description okay now we're going to take our putty knife press the tape down here as well and we're just going to double check make sure our strips are lined up and now we take the ca glue now this is the thin stuff it's like regular super glue this is starbond brand i said it's a very well known brand in the cnc industry woodworking industry we're going to take it and run a bead down each piece of tape now you don't want it too light but you don't want it too heavy if it's too heavy it will squish out onto your spoil board make sure you cap it back up because now we're going to use the accelerator the accelerator makes that glue set very rapidly a quick spray on each one then line up your board and hold it down for about 5 or 10 seconds and before you know it your project is secured to the table now we're going to put a center mark on the board because we're going to set up our router for the work and our project is off center of the board center the circle center of the rectangle and so let's get the machine in position and we are not going to put a bit in yet we don't want to put a router bit in we are going to drive on the machine and one of the things we want to do is just take the z down a little bit not down to the surface of the project but just down now that we have the router generally set we don't need to be exact right now but we've brought the x and the y relatively close to the center of the board and z is down a little bit so now what we're going to do in the g center is simply zero all three of these where it's at right now by clicking this zero all button so when i click that you see all these three numbers went to zero and now all we have to do is just hit the start button without turning the router on because we want to make sure that the router is going to do what we expect it to do so you might be wondering why are we doing an air cut without a router bit without turning a router on well there's two reasons man both of these reasons i've seen so many times that i have to sit here and talk to you about this unfortunately i've seen way too many brand new cnc router owners get way gung-ho and as soon as they get their machine in and they do a little bit of design work they put a router bit in and put a nice piece of oak or a piece of walnut down you know they're premium wood and they hit the go button without understanding how the cnc router works or how the g-code is going to be working and what inevitably happens is they end up botching the job by getting all kinds of miscuts and a nice piece of wood or they break the router bit brand new router bit at that so that's why i'm sitting here telling you whoa nelly put the brakes on let's go through this kind of process right up front until you can get used to the machine and how it's going to be cutting and then you start putting on the good lumber please just do it this way and this is exactly why we're doing this so now we're just going to hit the start button here and watch it run out it'll be very quick and we are off and running and it is cutting the rectangle first well it's just moving along that path so just so you know this is a cnc machine cnc machine is a cnc machine it's what you have on the end that makes it what it is in this case a cnc router so it's just going to move around the way you tell it it doesn't care what's in the machine and by the way i have a story to finish with you that pistol to the head story so i will tell you after we're done with this little section here it's cutting the circle now or moving around the circle now we know that it works it's moving just fine so it's time to put the bit in so we're going to put the 3 16 down cutter in but not just yet we're going to brush our teeth first now really we're going to use the toothbrush to help get any sawdust out of the components of the router in the nut in the collet and in the shaft because whenever you're cutting sawdust gets up in there and it causes problems that it'll actually affect the holding of your router bit and when you're having that kind of problem over time you're doing a nice job it's cutting for an hour or two hours and that router bit slowly starts to slip down into your project and starts to ruin the project and there's nothing more frustrating than that i did a video about sawdust a couple of them you want to understand that just know get the sawdust out every time you change the bit i can't stress that enough and tighten things up if you have a makita router you have two wrenches use them both don't use the red pin on the router to try to tighten things down you'll break your router and now we have to set our x y and z zero so what we're going to do is set the x first and we're going to switch from rapid to normal in the g sender software and we're going to move it around and get it over that x that we have on our board and now you go to the top area and you have x y and z buttons you see next to the x it says 0.4 minus 0.4 you click the x and it goes to 0. same with the y it says 0.4 right now click the y and now we're at zero but we're not going to do z there we need to set the z to the proper height which is the top surface of the material and we're going to do that with the touch plate and this is it it comes with a long mill it's an aluminum plate and a little magnet they're wired together in such a way that when the bit touches the plate it'll close the circuit and it'll set your z0 for you very easy i always recommend touch plates right now the plate isn't fitting in so we have to raise it up a little bit one thing don't take it too far over the plate maybe half of an inch 15 millimeters whatever because when you try it it'll set off an alarm if it has to travel too far and then attach the magnet to your router and now we're going to go down to that touch plate area you see right here it says z touch now you have several options here when you click the drop down menu or drop up menu it says z touch x touch y touch x y touch and x y z touch we're going with the z touch so there's a button down below and you click that button to start to cycle and you get this box come up and it doesn't start to move this is the most brilliant thing that has been added to any control software and g center is the only one that has it what this does is there to confirm that you have things set up properly what happens is when people don't have it set up properly sometimes they forget to attach the magnet and they run the cycle and the bit comes down and runs right into the plate and when you have a pointy bit it breaks the bit so this little thing is going to confirm that you are set up right now you see this little red light down here and the switch or the button here is grayed out and my cursor has a hash through it that means we can't start the cycle yet we have to actually literally touch the plate to the bit to get that light to change and then the button will change and we'll be able to start the cycle so we lift the plate up and touch it and you see the switch turns green and the cycle start button is now active now you see the light turned red again that's because i put the plate back down the circuit is broken but we can now start the cycle so all we have to do is press the blue button and it starts and the bit comes down and it touches the plate moves up a little bit and comes down a little slower and touches plate again and now our z is set we're good to go remove the magnet and remove the touch plate and turn the router on and hit cycle start and there we go so what's cool is the software will trace the path as well as watching it physically you can see here in gsender it is actually following along the path of the rectangle and you see it started in the top corner and then start at the top of the circle again so that was from that node setting that we did so now we're finishing up the circle and it's done so now we turn off the router and get it out of the way so we can start doing our measurements how do you measure well we're gonna do it with calipers but look at that that's what mdf is it's all dusty so calipers you want a set of calipers if you are doing cnc routers you have to measure stuff and this is a set i like it's got a nice big screen to it it's accurate it's industrial about 40 bucks i think i like the color it's called ace meter i'll put a link down below in the description to get this set i'm going to stock them soon in the idc woodcraft store so now we're going to measure several points to see how the router cut and this is exactly what you want to do with your cnc router because if it's out then you have to do some settings in it or setting changes so we're 5.992 it's supposed to be six it's very close 5.994 and then we check it in the x direction or y direction i'm sorry and 5.992 i got a little focusing problem going on here and 5.993 so i'm very happy with that then we'll check the circle now we're caddy corner on the circle 5.985 a little bit smaller 5.982 so it's a little bit small but i'm very happy with that now you just take a metal scraper or some sort to lift the board up get it off the bed the ca glue works awesome remember there will be links down below for that and links for a whole bunch of other stuff for beginner and i'm probably going to have a setup sheet or a sheet for you that tells you everything that you should have with the cnc router so now we clean up our mess just want to congratulate you for making it through this video you've learned more stuff than what most cnc's learn over the course of maybe four or five months and unfortunately they learn it through mistakes they spend a ton of time on youtube trying to get their answers facebook groups and they never really get the answer and have to try to figure it out themselves and end up ruining a lot of projects along the way very frustrating so now you've got some of the foundations to help avoid doing that so congratulations you might have to watch this video again just to make sure you got it down

Channel: CNC Routers, Beginners & Beyond - Garrett Fromme

Views: 139,260

Keywords: cnc for beginners, cnc router, Garrett Fromme, cnc beginner, neginner cnc router, new to cnc router, cnc router for beginners, longmill, long mill, longmill cnc router, sienci labs, vectric, vcarve, aspire, cut2d, cnc router bits, cnc router tips, cnc router tricks, tips and tricks, gsender, universal gcode sender, ugs, profile vcarve, what is aprofile toolpath, benchtop cnc router, desktop cnc router, shapeoko, xcarve, bobscnc, onefinity, best cnc router, benchtop cnc

Id: l1oh8nekPu4

Length: 55min 32sec (3332 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 04 2021