Mistakes CNC Beginners Make | Wood CNC Router

hey guys so today we're going to talk about the seven mistakes every cnc beginner makes when they're first starting out let's get right into it mistake number seven not knowing how to charge for whatever product you're making notice i didn't say not knowing what to charge what to charge and how to charge are two totally different things as a beginner i think it's more important to understand how to charge than to know exactly what to charge because you're learning so how to charge it comes down to three different categories you have your material cost you have your machine time and you have your personal labor time material cost to me personally i take material cost and mark it up 30 so if something cost me ten dollars i'll mark it up thirty percent and sell it to the customer for thirteen dollars in material cost next is machine time that is gonna val that is gonna vary greatly depending on what machine you have and how often you use it so if you have a five thousand dollar machine but you only use it two hours a year well your machine cost is going to be much higher than the person that has a five thousand dollar machine and uses it and using it 20 hours a week or 40 hours a week right so machine cost is also going to be varying dependent on what type of machine you have and how often you use it the next one is personal labor personal labor is the most overlooked thing by beginners when they're first starting out so when you're first starting out you think oh my my time doesn't matter much i'm learning and this is the learning curve well let me let me tell you you will never stop learning on the cnc so as early as soon as you get the very very basics figured out you can start charging for your time because you're always going to be learning i've been doing this six years now which is not a crazy length of time but i'm still learning every single day so make sure that you're charging for your time now what the value of your time is i can't help you with that if you're retired your value of your time is going to be totally different than if you're a single mother with four kids right so understand what you're worth and actually charge for that when you're doing a product because that's very very important when you're first starting out so before i go on to the next mistake just know that i'm giving a summary of what i think is important for beginners to know if you would like a more in-depth version of whatever i talk about or other topics please comment in the comment sections below and i will gladly make a video more in depth at whatever topic you're wanting me to talk about thank you mistake number six not understanding your machine's capabilities so whether you have a machine like this a machine like this a machine like this a machine like this you need to know whatever it's capable of you need to know how fast you can run it how slow you can run it what horsepower you have that's all going to determine what you can cut with it or what size bits you can use so when i was first starting out i always made the mistake of running my machine way under its full potential and we'll later learn in these couple other mistakes how to actually maximize that potential and what mistake i always made now with that being said you have to understand what your machine is capable of most beginners when they're first starting out are not going to utilize their machine to its full capacity and that's okay you need to learn you need to test it right but when i was first starting out i was so scared to go ever above this quarter inch bit right and then i got kind of brave and so i started using bits like this one that are made for the bigger models of cnc right so this is a half inch bit two and a half inches or three inches long and this is a quarter inch bit huge difference in the size huge difference in the capabilities of whatever machine you have to run right and so just know that a hobby machine like this will never be able to do what this bit needs to do right maybe a bit like this is a lot more suitable for a machine like this right so as you're going through your through the machine and as you're learning be sure you know that you cannot run this bit through this machine and expect to do the same thing and provide the same power as a bigger machine would but also know that maybe you're running this bit way too slow or way too fast which we'll get in later um or you know you're you're overdoing it or underdoing it i actually had in my past i ran this bit on this machine to try to cut out something that i definitely should not have been cutting out and believe it or not it actually started bending this right here it started bending this giant metal plate this bit right here right so that was far exceeding this michigan's capabilities but this bit right here will probably never hurt this machine unless you're just absolutely just going crazy fast with it right so understanding your machine's capabilities is very important and be sure you're not babying it and also be sure you're not doing what i did and trying to force it to be this giant hulk machine when it's really just a hobbyist machine mistake number five proper maintenance to your machine now your machine's expensive most likely so you need to give it the attention it deserves now my machine has lasted me all five years i've probably put over 5000 hours on it there's been weeks i've ran it 80 hours a week there's been days i've ran it 24 hours a day right so making sure that my machine is correctly lubricated is very key to lasting cut quality and the longevity of your machine now i'm going to show you the three things that i've used throughout the years to maintain my machine and keep it working properly so any moving parts need to be oiled and greased some way shape or form the most important things i typically um grease or oil are anything that's really guiding the machine along guiding the bearings along so you have these rails a ball screw a rail and ball screw on the z-axis and then whatever is right here that moves the machine uh forward and backwards right so i typically use i i personally have always used this like a garage door lubricant which is a silicone based lubricant that you know it doesn't it doesn't attract dust right so i don't like to use heavy grease or oil or anything like that because it attracts dust which may cake up on your machine which may um over time build up and it's not good right so i always just used a silicone based lubricant that i've always just kind of just sprayed on my machine every once in a while and then i just wipe it off and that's it super simple nothing to it and i say every once in a while i mean you know if i don't if i'm not going to use it for a long time i'll spray it on there before i leave and then when i come back i'll spray it on there again or um if i've been running it heavily heavily all day maybe i'll do at the end of the day once again it takes about 30 seconds but it will it will pay for itself i promise and if you ever have any rust spots on your machine maybe you let it sit and didn't lubricate it or anything like that just a scotch brite pad from your neighborhood walmart just go to the kitchen section pick up a little scotch brite pad buff off the rust do not do not use sandpaper um sandpaper may scratch whatever moving part it is and it'll distort your cut just a little bitty bit so scotch scotch pad scotch brite pad work just great so the three things that i've always used to maintain my machine were silicone based lubricant a rag and a scotch brite mistake number four not understanding there's the learning curve and thinking you're going to be an expert alright guys so i've been doing this for five years now i have four different cnc's uh two different brands and really three different sizes of cnc's and i am still learning every single day i have no people that have been doing cnc machining for the last 20 years and they still make mistakes so as a beginner as you're going through this process as long as you understand that mistakes are going to happen you'll be in a lot better shape i remember the first thing i ran on it it took me i think six or seven different tries just to learn how to set an origin and how to how fast to run my bit and so just know that you're gonna break bits you're going to dig a giant hole into a project it's going to slip out sometimes you're going to run over a hold down clamp and break your bit and the clamp's going to bend and your your spindle may hit something just know that those things are going to happen and and they really don't stop you're going to make these minute mistakes and maybe you don't set the correct thickness of your material or you don't go in the right spot all that stuff mistakes are going to happen just just know right away that you know that is never going to stop i'm sorry it's not going to stop um so as you go along just just make sure you understand this concept because this is a very complicated machine that's capable of a lot of stuff and for you for you to expect to learn it very quickly is not going to happen it's unrealistic so take all your mistakes and try to learn from them just like everything in life and you'll get there you'll get and you have a better grasp and understanding of what the machine is capable of and what you're capable of running with it mistake number three not using the correct material so today i have with me three different pieces of wood and all of them are wood right but all of them are going to mill totally differently and they're going to be used for different applications so i have a piece of plywood with me just a piece of pine plywood i have a piece of walnut and i have a piece of just a two by f a two by eight piece of pine right each one of these are all wood they're all from trees but they're all going to mill totally differently now if you're using plastics or acrylics or corian or something like that that they all have different densities they're all going to mill a little bit differently but those are almost they're a homogeneous product so once you figure out how to do one sheet of acrylic you'll kind of figure out how to mill all sheets of acrylic right but wood is particular in that you know each different species of wood is going to mill differently and have different tendencies and then you have plywood and then you have mdf which is micro density fiberboard if i'm not mistaken right and so it's a whole bunch of tiny particles of wood all glued together right so now you're worried about cutting through tiny particles that are glued together and this you're worried cutting about in this piece of plywood you're worried about layers that are glued together that you're cutting through and pine it's a little bit softer wood in walnut it's a little bit denser wood right or walnut or maple or oak or whatever dense wood you're working with right so let's give you let me give you an example so if you want to do a 3d carving you probably would not use plywood for a 3d carving because the layers would chip out likewise you probably wouldn't want to use pine for a 3d carving because it's so soft that you're going to have it's maybe really fibrous right it may have a lot of fibers and the carving is not going to come out well but if you're testing a carving you may want to use pine and pine may work for carvings but for me on when i do 3d carvings i like to use something denser like walnut or maple something that has a very tight grain and it carves and it carves very well and holds detail very well but now if i'm cutting out simple cutouts walnut is very brutal and kind of hard on your bits so it's going to cut and you may have to cut a little bit slower and not cut as deep on a piece of walnut as you would with a piece of plywood or a piece of pine right if i was first starting out as beginner i would probably use pine as much as possible because pine is very forgiving um just you know just buy a one by four at the store or one by six or even this pine plywood right if you're learning how to do uh cuts just cut out a piece of plywood or you know just cut out of a board right because it's it's very forgiving it's a softer wood so if you're too fast or you're too slow it's not going to do any harm to your machine or your bit because the it it's just softer right where walnut you have to be more exact or maple or whatever hard wood you're doing any kind of dense wood you're going to have to be more exact and kind of know your feeds and speeds and know what kind of bit you're using a little bit more so choosing the correct material for the job is something that you're going to learn over time but it is a mistake that you're going to make in the beginning um and and you know even when i do walnut and oak even though they're both hardwoods they're going to mill totally differently than than you would ever think right so just know as you're going through this you're gonna you're gonna make mistakes and learn what material is the correct material to use mistake number two not using the correct bit for the job so in the world of cnc there's hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of types of bits but really it narrows down to four categories category number one is your sign making bits so that's your v bits they typically come in a 90 degree a 30 degree and a 60 degree size that's just a typical three that may come in more degrees but your typical one is 30 60 and 90 degrees then the second type of bit is your profile bit your profile bit puts that nice edge on whatever you're making it puts a nice profile right and so a profile bit may also go on the inside of your material and make some kind of nice decorative design your other types of bits you have your straight edge bits those are the bits you can buy from home depot that typically have one to two blades on each side and those are just the ones you probably grew up with that your your father or your mother used when they were working on stuff and then you have your end mills those are the ones that have really cool spirals and they look really cool and you really didn't probably see them until you got into cnc machining those are the most popular types of bits for cnc's out of the compression bits you have i mean there's there's numerous types there's all different shapes and sizes all different possibilities but just no compression bits compression end mill bits correction so just know end mill bits are the really cool spiral ones okay now out of the end mills for beginners we're going to talk about the basic three you have up cut down cut and compression so i have today with me fred he's the box that's going to demonstrate what an upcut does what a down cut does and what an end mill and what a compression does so an up cut bit how it works is that whenever it cuts on the side of your material okay the spirals are designed in a certain way at a certain angle at a certain um degree that they make your chips go up or whatever material you're cutting the little the particles that makes them shoot up so whenever the bit my arm is the bit whenever it's running across your material it's going to want to send all these chips upwards what happens when it's sending these chips upwards and ejecting them from your material it leaves a little edge on it okay and so now i'm your up cut bit i'm cutting and i'm cutting and i'm cutting and i'm cutting well what it's going to do is leave a rough top side and a clean bottom side so an upcut once again is known for leaving a rough upside and a clean bottom side once again because the bit is cutting and pushing chips upward and this is kind of fibrous on most wood and so it's kind of going to leave like a fibrous edge you'll notice okay a down cut is the exact opposite of that so down cut bit now fred's not happy okay and so a down cut bit what it does is it cuts okay and sends your chips downwards and most likely a down cut bit all the chips are going to stay in whatever path you're cutting okay so they won't get ejected upwards okay so your bit's going to cut sending all your chips downwards it's going to leave a clean top side and a kind of like a loose bottom side a lot of times this will curl under or curl out or it'll bend a little bit and so you won't get a super clean cut on the bottom side okay now let's get on to compression bit so compression bit is the best of both worlds it has a up cut side on the very bottom part of it and then a down cut usually a quarter inch up on whatever bit you're using so what it does whenever you're cutting out material so let's say you're cutting out i don't know whatever material you're cutting out it's going to leave an up it's going to go up on a certain part and so it's going to leave the the bottom edge clean and then it's going to go down at a certain point and it's going to leave your top edge clean so just know a compression bit has an up cut on the bottom and a down cut some at some point on the way up the bit um personally this a smaller cnc like this is probably not going to use a compression bit greatly because you usually have to take a half inch pass with the compression bit even the smallest compression bit you have to take a half inch pass at a time and sometimes depending on what material you're using this machine may not be capable i personally don't use compression bits that often because it's just not what i need and not what i'm doing but there is huge benefits and using a compression bit when you want a clean edge on both sides so once again an upcut bit is going to leave a bad bottom side a bad top side a clean bottom a down cut bit is going to leave a bad bottom and a clean top and a compression bit is going to leave a clean edge on both sides now the thing i would use the up cut bit for let's say you're you're cutting out a piece and you need the the edge you're going to be able to router off right you're going to put a round over bit or something like that on it so whenever you're cutting it's going to cut this let's cut your material out and you're going to have this edge on all the sides well now you can just sand it off and then you have a nice clean edge right and a down cut bit say you want this top side to be very clean and the bottom side you don't really care about that is when you use a down cut bit and a down cut bit may leave some frizzies like this on the bottom side but it's okay because it's not going to matter you can once again sand that off now an upcut bit what it's going to tend to do also it's going to tend to shoot as it's shooting your chips upwards it's going to want to pull your material up so on an upcut bit make sure that you have enough hold down clamps so your material that you're cutting doesn't bounce around and vibrate and like a down cut bit it's going to want to hold your material almost down to the table so if you don't have sufficient clamping i would go with a down cut bit because it's going to want to tend to hold your material down to the table so the moment we've all been waiting for the number one mistake cnc beginners make when they're first starting out is running a bit too slow and i see this happen with every cnc beginner that i ever met and it also happened with me so i know this from personal experience i'm talking from personal experience most of you if not all of you are probably running your bit too slow what happens when you run your bit too slow is that you have burnt edges bad cut quality is taking longer to do a project so maybe now that project's more expensive and last but not least and the most expensive thing probably is that you're burning up your bits and uh they're either breaking or they're turning black i'll show you a couple pictures of mine um that happened these are actually my bits that i've burnt up in the past but you know the overarching thing is always running your bit too slow logically it makes sense to run it slow right because you don't want to hurt the bit or break the bit or um you know hurt the machine and and maybe you know you just want to baby the machine right because it's very expensive but that is the wrong way to think about it and once again understanding your machine's capabilities and what bits you use all this kind of falls into play but whenever you run your machine when whenever you run your bit too slow why it gets warm is that it's it's starting to rub okay and whenever it rubs if you think of um let's think let's go with your hands right so whenever you're what what a bit wants to do is cut okay so what it wants to do is cut wood fibers kind of like this it cuts and it comes around it cuts again it comes around and cuts again and cuts again okay but what happens when you run it too slow is that friction starts to build up right and it starts to build up and immediately starts to get hot just like your hands would and all of a sudden it starts with this screaming noise the screaming noise like and then you know you know that your bit's running too fast so if your bit is screaming like that go you're probably running it too slow and what goes around the industry is that if it's screaming it's probably screaming for more so feed me so two things you can do to stop that screaming which probably means that the bit is heating up and you know it's becoming a dull bit is you can either a slow down your rpms or b speed up your feed rate depending on what your machine is capable of hey guys thanks for watching i really hope you all learned a lot please let me know in the comments below any future videos you'd like me to do give me a like and don't forget to subscribe

Channel: Cuttin It Close

Views: 205,011

Keywords: CNC Router mistakes, CNC beginners, tips and tricks for CNC, CNC router help, Wood cnc mistakes, how to run a CNC, How to use my CNC, Woodworking, CNC woodworking help, CNC tips, Mistakes CNC Beginners Make, CNC router wood, Feedrate, chipload, tool life, running a cnc, upcut bit, downcut bit, maintenance, CNC troubleshooting, setting up my CNC, cnc setup, cnc woodworking, how to charge for CNC, correct bits, CNC business, cutting on a cnc, how much to charge on a cnc

Id: Qi2JdlK8puQ

Length: 21min 13sec (1273 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 30 2020