Powerful CNC Mill That Fits on a Desktop

[Music] hi i'm levi and three or four months ago i started one of my most ambitious projects yet i wanted to design and build a robust desktop cnc mill this is a project i've been interested in for a long time in that last semester i took an advanced metal working class which gave me access to an entire metals lab so we're talking like a hundred thousand dollars or more worth of really cool metal metal working equipment and in that class the final project was just something of your choice your goal was to just make a thing that involved all the machining processes there were example projects that were like building a hammer or some other simple tool like that but instead i wanted to take it all the way and use this as an opportunity to build something super cool i also knew that i wouldn't have access to all these really cool tools forever i knew that i would be moving away over the summer for an internship and then i would be moving away yet again after that to go to college so i figured i could use these tools to build myself a mini version of one of those tools the cnc mill that i could then take on with me so i wouldn't need the entire metals lab i could kind of take a little bit of it with me wherever i go so that's the idea i wanted a cnc mill that could fit on my desktop but that was still as robust as i could possibly manage and i've owned a small cnc router that's in a similar family as the thing i want to make and i've had that for a long time but i want to build something that can do a whole lot more namely i want to make something that can cut steel my current little router could never do anything like that but if i could cut some ferrous metals that would be super impressive and would actually open up the the possibilities of things i could make going forward so the plan is to make a cnc mill and the goal is to cut steel oh yeah and and one more thing the time i have between starting this project and when i'm moving out is two weeks so i need to design and build an entire complex system in two weeks but before we do get into this big exciting project i need to thank this video sponsor which is atlas vpn atlas vpn is making the internet more accessible and secure for everyone atlas vbn currently has a massive deal on their three-year plan costing just a dollar 39 per month with a 30-day money mac guarantee this deal won't last forever so make sure to take advantage of it via the link in the description you're on youtube so you probably know what a vpn is but if you don't it allows you to redirect your internet traffic through encrypted servers around the world masking your data and your ip address this allows for cool stuff like access to geographically locked content censorship avoidance and increased security on public wi-fi atlas vpn goes above and beyond the norm with the data breach monitor after inputting your email the data breach monitor searches the internet to see if any of your personal information has been leaked on any data breaches or data dumps by notifying you when such an event takes place this tool puts the power to preemptively and proactively protect your valuable personal information the internet can be seriously ruthless even for people who really know their way around for me the biggest benefit of using lsvpn is its ability to counter many of the tricks hackers use you can even use their tracker blocker tool to prevent data brokers from stepping on your privacy and to reduce things like malware ads again they have a great deal going on it's just a dollar 39 per month with a 30 day money money-back guarantee this deal is limited time so take advantage of it via the link in the description i started this project with the cad model as is the norm i loosely based this design off of the nomad 883 which is a commercially available desktop cnc machine which has a lot of the stuff that i want mine to be able to do the key difference though is that i just beefed up everything to constrain my linear actuation i have 20 millimeter stainless steel rods for my gantry assembly i've designed aluminum plates that are 25 millimeters thick in certain places and the whole thing is inside of a 3 16 steel box [Music] this project had a lot to tackle so i decided to start with the the steel box which is the main frame the main reason i started with this is just because i knew i could do a lot of it at home remember i only have two weeks to do this so i have to be as efficient with my time as possible i need to be working on this every waking moment if i start with something that i can work on at home that i can make progress at home and in the metals lab and i can be as efficient with my time as possible the metals lab has this big beautiful cnc plasma cutter that i use to to cut out all the panels for my steel box the machine is bright orange with this funky green sludge so i got some really cool shots of it in action when i first designed this box and cad i wasn't super happy with it just because it looked really thin and kind of flimsy but once i started to handle this steel and and feel what the actual pieces were like i was kind of thinking i probably should have dialed it back a bit because this thing is massive it's so heavy i had to pick up and move all these steel plates into my car so that i could bring him home to to work on it over the weekend and that was a a monumental task that was there was no small feat i got the pieces home and then i spent the entire weekend working on that box the first thing i had to do was drill out the holes made by the plasma cutter this was especially painful because those holes are hardened by the plasma so i tried to temper the steel back by heating it up with a blow torch and then i drilled it out which worked pretty well it also warped the piece a little bit but i got that figured out then i ground off all the draws and i cleaned up every single edge on every piece plasma cutters tend to cut at an angle and i needed that to be straight for everything to go together correctly so i spent a lot of time with the grinder and then a lot more time with the wire wheel cleaning off all the rust and preparing the plates and there was even a casualty i caught my favorite jacket which you see me wearing the whole time in in the the wire wheel and chopped a hole right in the middle of it so so sad next step was welding the frame together i almost certainly didn't need to but i really wanted this box to be really sturdy so i opted to weld the entire length of every external scene and this thing is kind of like a cube with some bits chopped off so because of that you can't just deform one piece if you wanted to form one piece you have to deform all of them really and this is actually my first real welding project so as far as first projects go i think this one's pretty cool that being the case the welding was pretty nerve-wracking for me but it was also really fun and in the end i'm pretty happy with how my welds turned out but i'm not gonna give you any super close shots of them because you know i don't want people screaming at me i was a lot less worried about the quality of the welds and i was more worried about the the plates warping due to the heat the accuracy of the system is not really dependent on how straight the plates are but if they get really out of whack it could affect the accuracy fortunately though i was able to take it slow and i didn't get any warping really at all so now i guess i can add welding to my resume so that's cool [Music] i then spent an ungodly amount of time grinding it smooth and making it look pretty i gave it a good decreasing and then i was ready for paint then i gave it a couple coats of primer and a few coats of glossy white paint and all of a sudden it looks like a real thing like seriously i don't know how i made this because it looks way more professional than most things that i touch and i do realize that white paint is going to get dirty really quick but it looks really nice now and that's all that matters to me for the moment so at this point the big box thing is done and all the important bits are not done the primary mechanism is based around two big chunks of aluminum the chunks are a lot bigger than any stock i had available so i had to kind of make my own stock i did a lost foam casting to make two big chunks of aluminum those could then be machine square and then their fancy features could be added after the fact machining these block square was wonderful i'm very new to machining and i've always thought that it looked pretty fun but in reality it's it's so much more fun actually doing it going from this rough black chunk of metal to something perfectly smooth and shiny is just an absolute blast at this point my stock was all prepared and i was ready to use what is the the king of the metals lab the the haas 3-axis cnc mill but before we get to that we need to talk about this man right here this is mr schubert and he is single-handedly responsible for making this project possible not only has he taught me everything i know about machining and metalworking not only did he spend countless hours in here helping me out on this specific thing but he just straight up gave me all the stock i needed to do this entire project which would have otherwise been by far the most expensive part all the aluminum all the steel i needed he just gave it to me without his skills and expertise and without his generosity this project would have been entirely impossible not to mention that mr schubert is just a great guy all around to to talk to to pass these many hours in the machine shop with it was a pleasure to be able to spend all this time with him and i am so thankful for all of his help along the way now that i've got the necessary thanks out of the way we can get to the haas like i said this is a 3-axis cnc mill it's the real deal it can do all the materials you want to do this thing is beautiful and terrifying simultaneously because it is so very powerful it has an automatic tool changer so what that means is once you get everything set up which can take a little while but once you do get everything set up it can effectively output a pretty much a finished product my tool path did leave a tab on the bottom that i had to mill off manually but other than that it was a finished product and our hoss had all the best tools in the machine shop so all the finishes were beautiful and pristine like mirror finish kind of stuff on this aluminum working with this machine was so fun and just the fact that i can press go and then it just does everything is mind blowing a few of the pieces needed to be cut from this quarter inch thick aluminum plate the woods lamp has this big cnc router i suppose it's intended to be used for wood but it can also do aluminum so we used it for these pieces the main thing you're seeing here is the fixture plate it's where all the stock material gets bolted down to it also has over a hundred holes each of which you need to be tapped i'm not going to show you that i just want you to understand my pain and with those pieces finished along with a little bit of off-camera magic all the the pieces i needed for this machine were finalized and i was ready to move into assembly assembly for this thing was just an absolute treat i've spent every spare moment from the last two weeks straight uh building this machine so to be able to just finally get everything together and then just run with assembly it was just such a a blissful experience things were fitting together it ended up taking a lot longer than i expected it to but you know gave me the opportunity to really savor the moment this whole thing is so beefy and heavy it's it was just exhilarating to to put the whole thing together [Music] and now you're watching me have a silent existential crisis as i realize that the very final piece does not fit i guess this project was just going too well so i decided to completely face plant right at the finish line and now in the next day i'll be driving a thousand miles away leaving my project unfinished but fear not because our story has a hero and our hero's name is jesse jesse of husky machining so i let him know the problem i was having and he was happy to take it off my hands jesse sent me a beautiful shiny smooth replacement to all my specifications that did actually fit i'm very grateful for his help here he does great work check out his channel i'll leave a link for it in the description i will say that this mistake was not entirely my fault when i designed the cad models i designed everything based off of the manufacturer specifications or as best as i could find and that wasn't an issue except for this one piece the dimensions that the manufacturer gave were extremely off so yeah they didn't work at all admittedly i really should have known not to trust those numbers and i should have measured it myself but you know i was in a time crunch so what are you going to do [Music] i should be good to try and make this thing move i should also mention that i've had a cnc router before this and i'm just cannibalizing all the electronics from there and sticking it on this so i do expect it to work and i'm not worried about destroying the other thing because this is replacing that five millimeters in the positive x-axis wrong direction y and x need to be flipped i can do that okay so all the axes move in the correct direction i think the only next thing is to try out some test cuts let's see what this thing can actually do i have attached this little vise here i have a two flute quarter inch end mill here i believe this is tungsten carbide so it should be pretty resilient i'm not gonna be running any g-code i'm just gonna be jogging the controller back and forth to take some cuts as far as feeds and speeds go i'm gonna be guessing so we'll see how that goes this first piece is oak so it's a relatively hard wood i mean it is hard wood everything should be good to go so i guess i will just try and cut it and here goes nothing i mean yeah i cut it it definitely cut it [Music] in conclusion it cuts wood without any difficulty i got some bar stock aluminum in there hardware store aluminum so an unknown alloy bringing down the feed rate i'm trying to just touch it here we go uh it's super ugly um i eventually realized that i didn't have the right collet size for that quarter inch end mill i switched out to an eighth inch bit which i do have the correct bit for it's also two flute tons of carbide see this works yeah that was a lot better [Music] that's so much better it's a smooth finish oh and i mean they're not like good chips but they're a whole lot more of an actual chip than what i usually do it's not just aluminum dust well i like that i like that a lot okay in conclusion it can cut aluminum those first tests those don't count now we have the the holy grail of desktop cnc mill materials what is this mild steel i can cut anything i would ever want to cut on this machine this whole thing's pretty darn robust so i i think it could probably handle it okay i'm just going to try and touch the surface and i think the the name of the game for steel is to keep a low rpm here goes something there's also there's a possibility that the piece is like not totally flat in there and it'll like hit halfway through or something so i really need to sneak up on this because if i accidentally take too deep of a cut i am breaking some [Music] [Music] well it's a good thing we did that and that looks like a a cut to me [Music] yeah i think we're cutting steel it's definitely cutting through it and it's not like jagged edges or anything either it's straight lines i'm calling that a finished project so i successfully designed and built a desktop cnc mill and it cut steel i am ecstatic with how this project turned out this thing is built like a tank the final weight is 90 pounds it's it's it makes me so happy just looking at it the shapes the the form of the all the exposed rails it was a blast i'm decently confident that you could throw it off a two-story building and it wouldn't do anything more than scratch the paint and though it couldn't take very deep cuts into steel as was very much expected it certainly was cutting steel and if you give the machine enough time it could certainly cut some very usable parts out of mild steel that allows you to do cool stuff like making custom transformer cores or custom motors being able to machine ferrous steels does really open up the the amount of stuff you can do especially the amount of electromechanical stuff you can do significantly the only problem though is something that i really should have been aware of in hindsight but i was kind of wearing rose tint and glasses so i wasn't paying attention it's the fact that bringing a 90 pound big desktop cnc across the country to go to college or for an internship is not even remotely practical i kind of told myself in the beginning that i could take this with me wherever i go so i could have that machining capabilities no matter where i was in the country um but you know it's still really big it doesn't it wouldn't fit in a dorm room at all and honestly i'm fine with that initially i just was looking for reasons to build it because i knew i really wanted to build it and then in the back of my mind i was kind of aware that it wouldn't be the most practical thing given what i'm going to be doing in the future but whatever i wanted to do it i did it it works great i'm happy so yeah this project was exhilarating it was so fun i got to work with such cool machinery got help from some really cool people mentors i i did a lot of machining practices that that i've never done before there was so much learning to to make this this project's pretty different from some other videos i've done and i like that i don't i don't want to be confined into just building you know actuators i want to build like everything pretty much and this furthers that dream so if you like this kind of big ambitious project um subscribe to the channel i'm gonna make all the cad files available via my patreon so if you want to support me on patreon you can support me my work and you can get the files to potentially make this machine yourself you can join my discord server to engage in conversations about cool projects like this see what other people are working on and contribute to projects even just follow me on instagram for some other pictures of stuff i'm working on links for all these things will be in the description thank you again to atlas vpn for sponsoring this video and and and making these like large projects possible thank you to mr schubert for giving me the material his time all of this this project would have been totally impossible without him and an additional thanks to jesse at husky machining coming in at the last moment to give me that final part to finish this this cool project i hope you enjoyed it i know i certainly did um but that's all i have for you today bye

Channel: Levi Janssen

Views: 73,729

Keywords:

Id: YVhQuyheqI8

Length: 20min 13sec (1213 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 20 2021