The 3018 PRO - Is It Worth Buying? - Review and Getting Started

welcome to the Swedish maker this week we're finding out if this CNC is worth buying and I'm also gonna make a small sign so stick around till the end to see how the finished result looks like so I got this on gearbest on a flash sale I'll leave a link down below to the exact model I got but it was shipping from Spain to Sweden which was really good when there is a local warehouse it takes a couple of days instead of ordering from China which is a couple of weeks this particular model I think is the same as most of the 3018 CNC machines it's got a engraving area or build area of 300 by 180 by 45 millimeters and the 45 is kind of I'm not sure about that because you have to adjust the motor some and it's also dependent on what bits you have how deep you can go into the world the motor is 120 watt 10,000 rpm I think so far I've it seems kind of good the control software is Gerber control and what surprised me was that the software I haven't used this but the software now came on a USB stick instead of a CD which is really hard to use when you're on a Mac at least so one good thing about this is you can actually replace this motor and use a laser instead if you want a laser engrave and the lasers are bought separately most most of the time it comes with some 10 v carving bits they're all the same so if you want to do something else than be carving you should get some additional bits as well other than that it comes with these small clips that are used to hold down the workpiece on the table here and all the bolts and nuts came in this little box so it came with this manual which was not IKEA style at all it was really hard to follow this and most of the time you're better off just watching someone else build it on YouTube but in my case the x-axis stepper motor had to be mounted on the left because these two back elite pieces were actually mirrored and from what I've seen online there is absolutely no one else having their stepper motor on the left side but I asked around in some forums and I some people have had this issue as well so what I had to do was I had to change some of the wires on the control board so it comes with this 24 what power supply and this USB cord that goes from the control board and directly into the computer now I have done some carving on this I did some just simple signs at first and then last week in the video I used fusion 360 to make a ring box and it actually worked so so it can do other things than just cutting out letters but one of the limitations that is bothering me is actually the build height so what I had to do with the ring box and the material wasn't even that thick but I had to raise the motor a bit so unscrew this screw and raise the motor a bit and then put the bit a bit higher into the socket here I also made a sign for the workshop that is hanging outside of on the door and it looks really good for that project i spray-painted the letters with some gold paint and then i sanded it down and i sanded it down too early so the gold letters are not showing really but it can be done so one other thing that is kind of annoying are these little clips and as you can see the bolts that came with this are not that big so if you want to clamp something a bit bigger down they are kind of useless but then again you could clamp a smaller piece of plywood or something to the plate and then drill your workpiece into the plywood that's one option that I haven't done yet I actually haven't used the software that came with it so far I have only used easel and fusion 360 so for the sake of this review I'm just gonna make a quick project where I'll be using a small piece of scrap walnut to make a sign that says please don't put any more ads in my mailbox but in Swedish so I've got into the easel software and the first thing I want to do is set up my machine if you haven't done that already and you can click set up your machine here and my machine type is garble I'm going to use Arduino my rail size is 500 millimeters I have an m8 rod and I am using another spindle motor I'm gonna set it to 10,000 and I'm going to confirm my settings and then you can actually test if your wiring is correct before doing anything so I can try to see if the spindle the x-axis is right and if the y-axis is right and if the C axis is right like that so if it isn't working you can click no here and see if they can help you solve that problem I usually go with automatic spindle control save and if you want to try it you can turn it on and turn it up so you know it's working and I don't have homing switches so I'm going to disable homing and then finish so the first thing I want to do is change the size of my work piece here and it says birch plywood and this is walnut so I'm going to choose walnut and the size of the walnut is 169 by say 30 millimeters and the thickness is 8 millimeters I think so now I can see my workpiece and this is where my design is gonna go and I'm just gonna make a simple sign so I'm going to use the letters here and I think I'll go with Blanche so as you can see here there's some some fonts says Pro and you can add more profiles and with ezel you have for free pro days a month unfortunately I used mine up but if you want to print with another font or do something with pro if you want to do something that needs easel Pro you can do that four times a month so they're really generous with that I'm gonna choose Blanche and my sign is gonna say annyeong deck LOM tacky and then I'm going to move this and it's too big so I have to make it smaller like that and I can actually go up to edit here and say centre to material and there's nothing showing on my walnut piece here in this view so I need to change the bit I'm using and I'm gonna say other and my bit is actually 0.0 three million inches and now you can actually see the sign so when you've gotten this far you need to place your workpiece onto the build plate oh one thing one more thing the letters if I mark them here I can see how far it down is going to carve so I'm actually going to set this to four millimeters I think now let's hit the carve I've already measured the material so I'm fine there I have secured it down you can actually try to move it with hand and see if it's secure and I can confirm that my bid is 0.03 nine inches which is one millimeter yeah now I have to set my work Cyrille confirm your work zero point and I do that with these buttons here so I'm just gonna move the spindle to the right position and that seems kind of good and I'll lower the spindle head as well so I actually put a piece of paper in between and then I lower the bit by small increments of 0.1 millimeters and you can sort of feel when it's down and it's tight so I can say use new position then it says raised a bit turn on the spindle and carp [Music] so what I did with the sign there was that I actually spray painted it white and then I sanded it down and the letters become more distinct now onto the big question should you get one of these it's kind of hard to say but for me it was really worth it because I it pushed me into learning see and see engraving and machining and and a lot of things around it like fusion cam and yeah kind of the entire thing before I before I had this I I was really hard for me to make a decision on to buy a CNC so getting this that cheap kind of made me learn CNC machining I guess and I might get a bigger one in the future I might upgrade this one but for now I'm kind of thinking like in ProjectWise I think that I am going to make something and I adapt it to the build size I have but if you're like me you just want to try out a CNC this was a really good starting point for me and it does actually work kind of good I have some things to complain about like the clips there are just rubbish the height to the to the bit is really not that much so it's hard to do something with thick wood yeah it's working for me and I really enjoy using it so I might get an ex-cop or something else in the future but for now this is just fine for me alright I hope you liked this video please subscribe if you haven't hit the thumbs up and I will see you guys next week for a new project by [Music]

Channel: The Swedish Maker

Views: 607,630

Keywords: The Swedish Maker, cnc, cnc review, CNC machine, cheap cnc machine, cheap cnc engraver, Chinese cheap cnc, review, getting started, CNC sign making, sign making, CNC cutting, CNC carving, 3018 Pro, Sainsmart, Genmitsu, 3018 cnc, CNC 3018 Pro

Id: MFkz4IztVsU

Length: 13min 18sec (798 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 26 2020