The Ultimate CNC Router Review Buyers Guide, Best CNC Routers

if you've decided to get a cnc router and have been doing research to figure out what is the exact machine that's right for you you're probably finding yourself getting a little confused there are a lot of types of machines out there and there's not a lot of material to really give you good guidance as to how to select the best machine and stay away from things that aren't so good by the time you're done with this video you will be able to go directly to websites and look at some specs and the images and say that machine's okay nope that one's trash this one's solid as a rock and it's the one you need to be getting this is the attitude you're going to be able to approach us with basically you're going to have total confidence in how to select your machine because we are going to deep dive into what you need to be knowing about cnc routers and understanding what you need to be staying away from we're going to cover cnc routers from top to bottom i'm going to talk about the three types of cnc routers then we're going to get into the importance of the construction of the machine the drive systems the operating systems that make them move around we'll talk about some other things and then something most people don't think about which is the company you may be looking at some machines and thinking this is a good machine and not realizing there is very little support after the sale we want a company that's going to be there for the long haul to support us just in case something goes wrong with your machine basically you're going to know more about cnc routers before you get your machine then most people know about cnc routers six months after they have theirs so get ready for a nice deep dive now you might notice that this video is just a little bit longer than usual but that's why i want to make sure you have all the information that you need to give you the confidence to make the best selection for whatever you're getting your machine for whether it's augmenting your woodworking just for something to challenge and a hobby or even to start a cnc business now before we get started i do want to talk to you about a couple things first who am i and second we're going to be using the long mill cnc router as a reference point because this is the ultimate machine after a ton of research that i chose to put on this workbench and number three who this video is for and who it's not for we'll cover that one first just out of respect for your time so who this video is for is for you if you are looking for a piece of equipment for your shop something that you're going to expect is going to last for a very long time and hold up have an old reliable type of sense where the return on investment is which is that what it is it's an investment is more important than the baseline price you're going to be paying for it because you know it's going to pay for itself in the long term anyway roi can either be the enjoyment you get out of it as a hobby or the money that you're gonna make with it as a business who this video is not for is for the person who is looking for a three four five six hundred dollar machine on ebay or amazon and thinking i just want to try it out to see if i like it if that's you i just want to let you know you're walking into a train wreck these machines are kind of inherent with some issues number one they're just not very strong meaning you won't be able to do a whole lot of stuff with them without stressing the machine and having bad cuts out of it number two sometimes more often than not they come with missing parts or broken parts right out of the box number three they are notoriously difficult to get running even me as an expert won't touch them because of that and number four there's very little customer support after the sale or even before the sale so if you insist on going that route just a little piece of advice you're buying an expensive paperweight and this video is not for you so now that we've determined that you are the serious buyer let's talk a little bit about who i am my name is garrett frommy and i am the founder and ceo of idc woodcraft which is a premium cnc router bit supplier for you and your cnc router as you can tell i've been around for quite a while with the gray hair and receding hairline the first 20 years of my career was spent as a journeyman cnc machinist basically i ran a lot of cnc machines and a heck of a lot more parts but i had a lot more responsibility than that as a journeyman i would design specialized tooling to run parts and cnc machines the fixturing that would hold them in the machines have dealt with a lot of cad cam systems and ultimately had the pleasure of purchasing million dollar machines for manufacturing i mean you want to talk about a pretty cool shopping trip the second 20 years were spent as a design process engineer meaning i did a lot of manufacturing work and one of my core responsibilities was to design high-speed production equipment for companies that made lots of parts and that gave me a really keen eye for cnc routers and excellent construction and good operating systems behind them my hobbies have been hiking camping canoeing and woodworking so it was kind of natural when i left the workforce to get a cnc router and because i have all the skill and the heart of a teacher i really want to pass on all this knowledge to you so that i can make your amazing cnc journey as amazing as you want it to be with the least amount of problems finally i've had three successful companies idc being the most recent this interesting as a cnc router bit supply company for you for your cnc router this is like the fastest growing cnc router bit company in this industry but i think that's because of how i think a company should be run which is basically you're not just a sale you are someone who is buying something to make an amazing project so you need to know how to work with the stuff so this company is based on after the sale to keep your journey going and give you as much progress as possible so with that being said that's me let's talk about why i have a long middle as opposed to the other good cnc machines that are out there well that's because of you yes you are responsible for me having a long mill on my bench here let me explain to you in a story i create a lot of content on this channel to teach you to become an amazing creator so for you as a beginner or intermediate i teach you the concept of designing and actual designing in the software and then bringing that design over to the cnc router to set it up properly and of course as a cnc router bit company what bits you need to use and how to use them now in the early days of that content i received an email from a guy named john john was making a gift for his daughter for a wedding present and was struggling with it and so we got on a zoom call where we could see each other and john was one of those guys kind of like me receding hairline gray hair a little bit more robust and kind of had that kind of raspy talk but totally a a teddy bear and john was struggling through this project so we were troubleshooting but while we were talking he kind of opened up and he said garrett this is for my third child and now she's starting her own family i'm an empty nester completely now he also said that he was retiring from the workforce and felt like he was going into oblivion and he didn't want that he wanted a new challenge in life and to have something where he could leave a legacy make things that his kids and his grandkids would remember him by and maybe even teach his grandkids how to do this kind of stuff basically he wanted people to remember him and he still wanted to stay special in the world now john also told me that his wife had cancer and that she wasn't expected to survive much longer so this gift that he was making for his daughter and her wedding was also a memory item for their relationship his wife and his daughter so it's really important to him and it was the reason why he was having trouble that changed my game from that day onward you see the reason john was struggling was not because of what he did but it was because of the piece of equipment that i had like you john puts a lot of weight in what i say and often buys the stuff that i put in the videos or talk about and so he bought the machine that i had and the machine was not that good of a machine as far as what we typically expect to get out of them and so i just realized that i was not putting the best equipment in your hands so coming from the perspective that you are going to buy whatever i talk about i decided from then on there would be nothing but the best of the best on this channel so i got rid of that machine basically put it in the closet and got rid of all those videos because i didn't want people to be buying something that that was going to give them a hard time and i set up four criteria to make sure that whatever i put in the videos in front of you i would be totally okay if you bought it because i knew that it was a good piece of equipment from a good company so here's the criteria that i set up that i want you to pay attention to while you're selecting your machine the first one is you want a good solid structure in your machine now what i mean by that is you want your machine to be rigid the biggest enemy in cnc routers is lack of rigidity and what that means is if a machine is not rigid while it's doing its work it can actually vibrate around in those cuts and make those cuts look really choppy and then you're spending four five six times as much time fixing it when the router should have left a near perfect finish right from out of the gate sometimes you have to fix a couple things but really you just want to get on with the process and finish the work and be really proud of what you've made so rigidity was number one number two was durability a lot of people buy cnc routers to start a cnc business and so as a business you want to make sure that you've got a good solid reliable machine that's going to hold up over the long haul and not have many wear problems or maintenance needs so that was criteria number two the third criteria was the company as i said before sometimes things can go wrong so you want a good solid company that's going to stand behind you and finally number four was the user experience the machine had to have good user experience and that meant that going into the facebook groups of the machines that i was narrowed down to and just watching what people were saying patterns were showing up pretty quickly of things that were going on with these machines and when you see enough of them then you start knowing there's an inherent problem in the piece of equipment so once that was all narrowed down i was down to three good machines but there had to be a best of the best and that really required me going inside of me and saying what do i want out of a company that would go above and beyond and i looked at idc woodcraft and what it stands for and i said the company needs to be like that it needs to be there for the customer for as long as they are in this journey that's where longwill kind of won out because one i went to their website and really reached oh i went to all and looked at their websites and longmill it's very clear when you research their website they are wanting to be part of the community at large they don't care what machine you have they want to provide the resources to you to help you out in your journey and give you all all the resources you need like table builds or spindle controls and and give you all the links just all kinds of stuff like that i felt really good about that one of the things that really kind of stood out was they had a little quality problem that it showed up for about a week and they went out to the community and said hey we found this problem and and we have fixed it but this is what it is in case you have it call us and it also went back to those customers and said we need to fix this for you and they fix it right away so that shows good solid integrity of a company and the character behind the company basically how they treat you up front and to the world is really important like the transparency so so that's why the long mill is the ultimate pick on this work bench here so you've got a lot of stuff this was quite a bit of a talk i want to hand it to you because you stuck around that means that you're serious about what you are getting and the machine you ultimately want to get so we're going to dive into the first thing which is we're going to talk about the three types of cnc routers let's go there are generally three different types of cnc routers the first one is the desktop cnc router now that's like what you're seeing here which is the first cnc router that i had the thing that distinguishes a desktop cnc router is that you can move it around pick it up and put it pretty much anywhere you want to the things about desktop routers that you need to understand is they are really meant for hobby work they are not intended to do any kind of production work even at a low level production and they are also not very robust so they're really just hobby machines to have a lot of fun on if you are not looking for a serious piece of equipment then this is the type of machine you want to get then there is the second type of cnc router which is the industrial level it's a freestanding machine they cost maybe 10 thousand dollars and up and are the types of machines that are really designed to run 24 7 and have a lot of advanced features in them just in case you are looking for a free standing machine you know the ten thousand dollar units and up make sure you get hold of me because i've done a ton of research in that area as well and i have found the company that i prefer to go to because of all the criteria that i have in place so if you want a bigger bolder larger more expensive machine then make sure you get a hold of me and i'll let you know who it is that you want to go talk to for you who wants to put one in your home in a shop in the garage or out in a workshed maybe in the basement don't put in the kitchen like i've seen some people do you want the benchtop cnc router now the difference is the benchtop is a machine that you buy and then you mount it to your bench so it is one where you can put it anywhere you want to the good thing about it it is still a space saving machine it doesn't weigh a whole lot and it's priced in a range where most people can afford it when they want to put a machine in their home for either hobby or small business so the long mill is a benchtop cnc router when you put it together it's this three frame pieces here the left side the right side and the gantry and then i mount it on the table here and then i can do what i want with it now one of the advantages of a benchtop cnc router is the price range they range anywhere from about fifteen hundred dollars to maybe three four thousand dollars depending on the bells and whistles that you get and maybe some other features that you're adding on to it so this is what is the most economical along with the durability and strength for the average home person who is augmenting their woodworking or getting ready to start a cnc business one thing that you absolutely want to take into consideration before you even start looking for a cnc router because this will weed out a whole bunch for you is what you want to make with the cnc router now not the types of projects but the sizes of the projects i showed you a desktop cnc router before that was about the biggest they come the majority of desktop cnc routers are very small in size and almost always a person who finally gets those things running and works with it for a while finds himself very limited and some things they can do because they get people that want to make projects that are this big that those machines cannot handle so whether it's for hobby and especially if you're thinking about starting a cnc business this really is important for you to take into account so when it comes to something like the long mill 30 by 30. this is pretty typical of a standard benchtop cnc machine now they have the identical machine and a 12 by 30 well what that means is it'll cut a piece 12 inches by 30 inches that would be the max which is a pretty decent size whereas your desktops can't do that the 30 by 30 particularly this model will go actually 30 by 30 32 by 34. you usually want to give yourself a little bit more room than that and this is why most people when they buy a cnc router they almost always find themselves needing to get to a bigger machine and so you may even want to move up to a 48 inch machine and long mill actually has an extension kit for this or it sells the 30 by 48 in the mk2 model they also have a retrofit kit for the mk1 if that's something you're interested in getting which is this right here which is a the replacement brackets on the side and of course the gantry gets replaced and then the lead screw the whole point of this is when it comes to getting this kind of hobby and thinking about a business perspective size matters and you really want to think beyond just oh i'm going to get a cnc router here's one of the things that most people do up front is they look at the price first and then consider the machine over time the roi you're going to get out of it not just in return on investment for things that you sell if you get into business but also the return and enjoyment will more than offset the price now if price is a budget for you and i get it sometimes it really is it's better to cry once at least in my opinion and take the pitch in the budget for the long term enjoyment that you're gonna get out of this thing it's just a word of advice that i really want to share with you so really think about the types of projects that you may want to make in the future there you go with the size thing desktops are usually very small bench tops are the affordable machines that you and i can afford and you can get up to 48 inches and you can go add infinitum in the length with a method called tiling which some of the design software programs allow you to do so you might as well at least give yourself the opportunity to go as big as you possibly can just in case you need it now i'm going to teach you about how cnc routers are traditionally constructed and a little bit of a we'll just say a flaw or an inherent issue that is just something that is built into that type of construction and then we're going to talk a little bit about how the long mill overcame that little inherent weakness in traditional machines there are four anchor points we one two there's three and four and those anchor points are separated into two sets so we have the right set and the left set on these anchor points between the front and the back will typically be two bars of some sort here and here that are suspended from one end to the other the gantry will ride back and forth on those beams or bars or posts whatever it may be then you have the gantry which we just talked about is this guy right here and it's tied or suspended on each end and it rides along the y gantry and it will typically have two beams or bars that go across or suspended between each endpoint this type of system that i just explained to you is very common in cnc machines and even in industrial machines however there is a difference when you get to the higher level machines in high level machines like industrial machines those bars are literally mounted all the way along the frame of the machine to keep them rigid and here's exactly why they do that because you can see there is a distance between here and here which means there is a an opportunity for the bars to actually flex and vibrate in the middle and that will show up under a certain circumstance in a kind of a bad way if something happens which i'll explain in just a moment but just suffice it to say between the back and the front this is the weakest point where you can get flex and now you have the gantry which is riding on that flexible part here and now you have the same setup going across here and so you have the same opportunity to flex the most in the middle of the gantry essentially what can happen is you can get a little bit of flex right here when the gantry is in the middle and then you've got the z-axis doing work on your project and it can literally show up in your cuts in your machine and you won't even understand that you are getting a vibration being set up between the two beams that are going across front to back and going across the gantry and is compounded that will show up as something called chatter in your project chatter would be a cut that kind of looks like that and you won't realize that it's actually being caused by an inherent thing in the machine longmill actually did something a little different first of all they did away with the two bar system and opted for an extruded aluminum setup here both on the y beams or y-axis and on the x-axis and they've done away with round bars and went with more rectangular structure now we're going to talk about why this is so relevant in machine design and rigidity and strength but before we get to that i just want to point out that they also anchored this beam and that beam at four points along here so we have we're anchored here there there and there so there's literally no opportunity for flex on the y-axis rails when we look at the y-axis rails we'll say that's about two inches wide and about three and a half inches tall and then we look over here and we have actually slightly different shape the gantry beam is actually a lot stockier than this out of necessity because there is no support in the middle coming from someone who has designed a lot of machines in their time for production use that being me this is a really interesting and unique design based on my experience i'm going to estimate that this extruded aluminum and the shapes and the contours make it about six times stronger than your typical rail system that you'll find on virtually every cnc router out there and it's also an interesting upgrade from the mk1 which is the older rendition that used kind of a triangular type of system to to add in the strength it was a pretty robust machine as it was this one is even stronger and i'm going to prove this to you first of all let's remember this is a rectangle goes like that and it's got a little recess in here for the drive screw and then the gantry is quite a bit bigger and it's got a flat slide there flat side here flat there flat at an angle there then flat on the bottom and it also has a recessed here and then it's got some angles here and here which if you get what i'm about to say is going to blow your mind and what i'm going to show you blow your mind even more in most cnc routers you have a round tube like that that your machine rides on and inside that tube is a theoretical plane that goes around like that and it runs the length of the tube now in that plane not in the plane let me delete that and go like this redraw it we have this plane that runs through the tube and if you apply a force like that okay the force is going to be distributed around the tube and come out the bottom in structure what you want is as much support to prevent pressure like that and so in a tube the actual strongest part of the tube when you're getting force coming down like that is right here and right here but if you look at it closely it's that plane is an arc and it comes across what you would want to have so the structural plane is actually a very short plane and so what happens is as your machine is making its cuts it can vibrate easily because there's not a lot of structural support to prevent that vibration with these planes and you'll understand that when i get to what longmill has done and we're first going to go to the side rail which looks like this and it's like that what they have have here is essentially a rectangle the plane goes there on that side a plane goes here on this side because it's a tube a plane goes that way and a plane goes that way and what you end up having are one two three four anchor points in these planes so when you get forces being applied first of all you've got longer planes to resist that that bending that would would happen and you've got a thick a thick material because of a tube and you have anchor points here to distribute the load into these other planes and of course everything is radiused so when you have a radius on a corner you're distributing all any forces outward into the planes so that's one of the things that makes the side rail so strong but it's the gantry that really blows me away in its design the gantry is shaped like this or the gantry beam and it's a tube as well the walls of these things are about five mil five to six millimeters or a quarter of an inch now every straight edge is a plane so we have a plane there a plane there a plane here a plane here a plane here a plane there a plane here and a plane here so the interesting thing is how many different places these things are intersecting at we have intersection here here out here in space we got one here one here out in space another out in space then we got this intersection another one here another one here another out in space then we have uh this intersection this intersection and that intersection of 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 intersections this makes this whole machine like super duper robust now that little bit of theory might have been maybe too much but when i am looking at this theory and understanding it and breaking it down and all these vectors and where they're intersecting it shows me something that you wouldn't believe until you saw it this framework of this machine is so sturdy from what i just explained to you that i have no qualms of putting 170 pounds on this machine but i'm gonna do one thing more and as long as my microphone wires out of the way and i don't fall off this machine we are actually going to make a project while i'm standing on it chip will you come forward and hit that start button let me get my balance first and we're ready to go there we go all right i got my balance so now chip why don't you zoom into that project so they can see exactly what's happening oh this is kind of fun i've never ridden on a cnc machine before [Music] so what what is going on here is i'm able to carve a project come on back up here buddy chip come on back up so i'm able to carve a project while i'm on this machine so this is with all these intersecting points that i was just talking to you about this is what you can do with your cnc router i don't recommend you do this at home but it is kind of interesting all i want to do is tell you that this machine is a very strong machine and this is one of the things that has sold me on it so we're gonna let this project run out [Music] you know there's nothing poor than watching a cnc machine make your project after you've done the work [Music] and that my amazing creative cnc brother or sister is exactly why i love my long mill now if you just found that just a little tiny bit impressive will you please take a second and hit the thumbs up button just below this video and if you are new to cnc routers you may want to subscribe because there are so many videos on this channel for you as a beginner that you will get up to speed much faster than trying to bounce around all kinds of videos on youtube to try to figure things out now one of the things you may be wondering was what was that blue stuff that was on the project while you and i were cutting it well that's something called aura mask and that is one of the many things that i discuss in the videos on this channel so that's why you probably want to subscribe i have done one better for you as someone who is in the market for cnc router the long mill is not the only thing that you would need to get for your bench top machine there are other things that you need and it sometimes comes as a surprise so what i've done is i've put together a pdf for you that lists out all the stuff that you need to get when you get your cnc router so down below in the description of course is a link for that pdf you click the link it'll download open up the pdf it'll explain everything and i have links for everything as well so now i've got to go clean up the sawdust off the machine here and then we're gonna talk more about the longmill and cnc routers so i will be right back all right she is all vacuumed up and spiffied up now we're gonna get into the drive systems of cnc routers something that you need to know about because if you pick one with the wrong drive system you can run into problems in the future you'll understand that in a little bit now before you get into that i have a special link for longmill that if you decide to get the longmill that i want to ask you to use that link you'll find that down in the description of this video and you will find it in the pdf that you're going to download so i thank you for using the link when you get your longmill now that i've blown you away with how strong the mk2 is relative to other cnc routers in this class of bench tops we're going to start talking about the drive systems of cnc routers now that's what actually makes the machine move around there are three types of drives there's the belt drive the screwdrive and the rack and pinion now rack and pinion is not something that you are going to be involved with at all that is an extremely robust setup where it's a set of gears and you will find those on industrial machines that need to cut through three inches of steel that's what rack and pinion is for the other two that you will find on bench tops are either a belt drive or a screwdriver so we're going to talk about the belt drive and i want to educate you on what it is and why i don't particularly like it and why you want to stay away from it and then we'll get into the screwdrive this is the first cnc router that i had in the videos that if you remember i talked to you about john this was the type of machine that he was trying to make that project for his daughter as a wedding present and a memory thing for his daughter for his wife now i still have to fill you in on what has happened with john but we will cover that later but this machine is driven with a timing belt and you can see this is a wood frame machine the some of the metal frame machines are also run by timing belts climbing belt is a fiber resin type of rubber filled type of material with teeth on it that have specific spacing and timing belts you will find on some of your metal frame cnc routers i am not a proponent of timing belts because there are other things that you need to know about timing belts that most people don't educate you on in the cnc router space and the machines that they're selling to you with these on them number one is that they have to be at a certain tension if they're a little loose like this is loose right now if they're loose then you will have a lot less accuracy in your machine and if they're over tightened of course they can break and wear quicker the one of the drawbacks with this outside of those things is they are susceptible to the environment as well so if you are in an environment that is varying in humidity and temperature a lot this timing belt is going to go through a lot of expansion contraction and and that will reduce the life of it and of course it's something that's flexible so it is going to wear quite quickly now one of the other things i want to say to you this machine it's a cool machine right it's a great little hobby machine it's made by a great little company but if you want to have a serious long-lasting machine this you don't want to get a wood frame machine and there are several of them out there because wood as you know has a tendency to absorb moisture elimina uh eliminate moisture depending on the environment so the machines will swell and contract and so i if you want a serious machine i wouldn't get it if you just want to play around as a hobby then you may want to get something like this so now you know about belt drives and rack and pinion let's talk about the screw drive there are two types of screwdrivers there's the ball screw and the lead screw and the difference is a ball screw is a precision machine shaft with a radiused type of groove cut into it that ball bearings will roll in as the shaft turns ball screws are used very commonly in industrial level machines because they are extremely accurate we're talking down to tens of thousands of an inch or hundreds of thousands of an inch and this is a type of drive system that you will find on machines that are making your car engine components or jet engine components coming from a professional perspective of a machine that's carving wood the ball screw is not really needed we may get down to an accuracy of thousandths of an inch when we're doing woodworking projects on our cnc routers the thing with wood is wood does have a tendency to expand and contract so really trying to get super tight accuracy is not really necessary the other type of screw is the lead screw and the type that you'll find on the long mill mk2 cnc router this is the lead screw also known as an acme thread and these are also precision ground and good up to tolerances to a thousandth of an inch so that would be one with three zeros after it so that's pretty tight and of course like any other drive system the screw is going to be going all the way across the machine along the y-axis on both sides and it's going to carry the gantry back and forth and then you have the lead screw on your x-axis going across the gantry that is going to move the carriage back and forth and finally you'll have one that's going to move your slide up and down which would be your z-axis now one of the things about the lead screw is it is much more tolerant to damage whereas the ball screw if you get any damage on it you are going to have to send it out for repair and that can get expensive and with lead screws they are much less expensive and much easier to replace if you have to replace them one of the things i've been asked about with the cnc router and the exposed screws is does the sawdust hurt anything in the system and really no it doesn't really have that effect but it's a valid concern so the two ways you obviously get away from that is your dust boot and long mill has optional shields that you can get that will block the saw dust from the screws just like that so if that's a concern for you then all you do is add this as an option and i think longmill is one of the few benchtop routers in this type of category that actually has this type of device when it comes to any of these drive systems belt drive the lead screw ball screw even rack and pinion that all machines no matter how well they're built all the way up to the top industrial level have something called backlash now backlash is a degree of play that's in the ball screw and the lead screw and the belt in the rack where it has to be compensated for and usually it has to be compensated for electronically when you're really getting into ultra high precision but when it comes down to the benchtop cnc router it's not as much of an issue however you do want to make sure that you are taking that into account when the company is building the cnc router is building the cnc router and in the case of the acme thread or the lead screw there's an ingenious little solution that takes that backlash out and it's called the anti-backlash nut and this is what it is so the anti-backlash nut is bolted to the frame of the machine wherever it is needed so we have one right back here behind the gantry rail you can see the little screw right there and then we're gonna have the same thing on the other side right there we'll have one on the back of the carriage and also one on your z on the slide going up and down and the way this works to take any play out of the machine is the lead screw actually runs through the nut right here and it's actually it's threaded all the way through and then it has this little screw that comes down and actually spreads that fork just a little bit enough just to grab the threads and just keep them snug so it's an ingenious little thing and it's a very simple item to replace if you ever need to replace it again it's another huge advantage over the ball screw [Music] the motors on cnc routers for the bench top units they either have three motors or four motors you want to get the ones with four motors the reason is is because if you have three you could potentially get some binding in your gantry and i'll explain that in a minute first let's just talk about the motors like the long mill here you want to make sure that your stepper motors which is what these are called they are workhorse motors are very strong you want to make sure they are nema 23 stepper motors these are the best in the class for this type of machine and you will have two on your y-axis one two one for your z-axis and then there will be one on your x-axis right there and these motors will work in coordination with each other through the control system that will come with your cnc router now this is the one for the long mill and it is where your motor control is happening this is literally the brains of the machine so this has been specially designed to adopt for a lot of different things where your base router will have the motors on it to move it around and then you can get what they call limit switches now limit switches are things that allow you to have homing position for the machine that is something you want to get if you are planning on starting a business and are going to be making several different parts i'm not going to really cover limit switches in this but if you want a homing sequence on your machine which there is a huge advantage of then you will want to add the limit switches to the long mil if you get it it's actually one of the things that you want to look for in a cnc router when you're picking it out to make sure you have at least that option a limit switch is something where you can have specific stations for all kinds of different things and you always have the home reference point on the machine in the brains and then everything is referenced from this home position now i'm pointing to this corner because this is typically the home position the front left corner of the machine i prefer to make my homing in the back left corner of the machine just a few minutes ago i told you you want to make sure that whatever cnc router you get you want to make sure that it has four motors on it and not three because you could potentially have a binding in it while it's actually making your project and you don't want that to happen in the middle of a project i'm going to explain why on my little notepad before i do i also want to let you know that a four motor unit technically should be cheaper than a three motor unit and i'll explain that as well in this drawing to set the stage here we have two drive motors to move the gantry back and forth this one here and that one here and it's tied directly to a screw that goes all the way straight up to the front of the machine in other words it literally goes in a straight line along the axis of the motor all the way to here what i just showed you on the machine were the two y rails and then the x gantry is on the machine that goes across or the bridge that moves back and forth like that we have a motor here which makes the carriage move back and forth we have a motor right here which moves the z axis up and down and then we have a motor here and a motor here and each motor is attached to a drive screw or a lead screw and so this motor will turn this one at a certain rate and this one will turn this one at the same rate and that's controlled by the controller of the machine so you're getting a direct force right through the axis of the whole drive screw that will literally drive that direct force right through the gantry so the gantry is just going to move back and forth as the screw is pushing it or pulling it and the only time you'll have binding in here is if you have something that starts to break down a wear down on one side and not the other so we're going to erase that now i want to show you the three motor system and one why you can get the binding in it and number two why it would be more expensive again we have our y-axis rails and our gantry and the gantry is tied on at the ends of where it rolls along the rails here we have a motor over here to move it back and forth and then we have a motor right here to move it up and down and the three motor system there's going to be a motor right back here and it's going to have a single drive screw that comes up underneath the machine and then that drive screw is going to be mounted to a bracket of some sort underneath the machine that's going to will do it like this this is your rail that's your rail this is your gantry and there's your router underneath the machine is the motor and the drive screw and then there has to be a bracket under there that's going to connect to the gantry from beneath so that is underneath here it may be kind of a y shape in this bracket but usually it's just more of a we'll just say it matches the gantry size so let's clean this up and here is why it can bind because there's one drive screw right there and the gantry is rolling out here at some distance x like that and some distance x like that from the rollers out here and if any kind of binding just any kind of resistance happens on one side that is going to be magnified by this length vector and that length vector at an angle like that and so what will happen let's just say this side binds just slightly it's just more resistance the forces are going to go to the path of released resistance and so that's going to actually make this part try to push forward ahead of this part and therefore you start to get this kind of motion or twist in your gantry looking at it from the top so that's the reason you could run into binding with a three motor system the reason it costs more is because you have more hardware whereas you just have an extra motor and an extra screw on the four motor system on the three motor system you get the motor and one screw but now you have all this hardware that has to be fabricated underneath the gantry to hold the gantry so this is customized stuff whereas the motor and the screws are all off the shelf basically when a manufacturer of a machine is going to the three motor option rather than the four motor option they're cutting costs in the motor but they're having to add a lot of extra hardware to compensate for that that's not as big of a deal to me as the binding would be if any kind of resistance happens on one side and that will piss you off when you're in the middle of a project and the machine starts to bend out of shape because it's binding up that's why i go with four motor units all the time getting back into the motion or movement of cnc routers is what is all this stuff riding on well in the case of shafts there may be bearings or another collar that's sitting over the shaft that'll actually just slide on in the case of long mill they have these steel roller bearings and they are fitted with delrin v-shaped wheels that ride along this v-shape on the rail here and there's another one underneath there and on the gantry up here and under here and these are actually very cool because delrin is a plastic but it's near steel hard it's machinable and can be cut to really good tolerances of all the things on the long mill this is probably the the wear item but on the mk1 here the my first machine i've had this for a year and a half and i've never had to replace those wheels so they hold up pretty well and when it comes to the z-axis we have a little different system we have linear bearing rails right here and here and then linear bearings that are right back there and there that this whole thing rides up and down on now that is very common on your z-axis for most cnc routers when you get into some other cnc routers they will have the linear rails going along that length and also on that length the thing with that is they add significant cost because these are precision fitted one of the benefits that longmill did their whole thought process was how can we keep the cost low while the machine still maintains a good tight running operation and so they did this brilliant thing where they incorporated everything into one bar here one bar there and one bar over there and this results in a thousand dollars less in this class and still have the same type of accuracies you can see these brackets here these are solid steel and they are quarter inch thick and when when you get the entire package in it's just very heavy of course i expect to have a heavy machine no matter what when we get into this size all the wires that are running this are in a drag chain so they're all protected if your machine doesn't have drag chain when you're looking at it in pictures pass it up and it goes back here and all the wires come out and they come into the power supply or the controller here and of course the power supply plugs into the outlet control software is what you are going to be working with to know exactly what your cc router is doing and to tell it what to do this is where when you have done all the work on your on your design once it has that in the control software and you hit start there's nothing cooler than watching this machine start dancing around to carve out that amazing project that you worked on for your daughter or son who's getting out of the service or your grandkid your wife whatever it's kind of like watching a campfire and this is where it all comes home when you hit that start button for the first time but it does become a problem if you're getting the wrong control software so i'm going to kind of set this stage and in this way most of the cnc routers that you are looking at like the longmail and whatever else is adreno based meaning it has a specific circuit board on it and you want to make sure whatever router you're working with that you're selecting that is adreno based and it's going to have on it the grbl firmware which is basically the software the hard-coded software in that circuit board and the reason you want that is because it's very flexible with the majority of any kind of thing that you're going to be adding to your machine in the future lasers and spindles and on and on and on so this is one thing you want to look for the long mill is the adreno with the grbl on top of it on top of that grbl is your control software that is actually making your router do its stuff most of the control software out there is free for you and i the idea is you want to get the one that's most current like for what we're using today windows 10 11 and 12 when that comes out most of these softwares are for older windows platforms and they look old and they're clunky to work with and so the one that i recommend is something called g sender it's really easy to work with it's got a lot of automation in the background so you don't have to try to remember things you have to remember in the old ones and the cool thing is it's written by longmill for anybody who has an adreno based cnc router so the cool thing too is it's like when you get it it's optimized for your long bill but if you get another machine that's adreno based it'll work for you too and that'll be on that pdf as well and i'll also link it directly down in the description so if you want to try that out go ahead and get it and download it one more thing about the control software there are some paid ones but like i said go with the free ones but just make sure it's a modern one g sender's about the only modern one out there so i'm going to dive into that software briefly just so you can see it and then we're going to get on to the laser which is something you want to see too this is the g center software if you compare this with other software out there for control software you're gonna see it this is an extremely clean interface and it's got a lot of background features one of the features is when you actually connect your cnc router g sender actually finds it and the other programs you have to start telling the computer or you have to get into the computer and start directing which com ports are going to what that's it's a real pain so this is really nice so i'm going to run over the screen a little bit just so you understand what we're looking at this area with the grid is the visualizer area this is where you're going to see what the cnc router will be doing and while it's doing that for example right now you see this little dark spot right there that's what the software right now thinks your router bit is at based on data over here here is where you set your zero points for your projects you have to tell your router where exactly the project is starting at and then below it are your manual controls to move the router either into position or away from the position so that you can put your project on take it off change your router bit very easy to follow and then down here are a few other features now right now we are on the probe screen right here this part of the screen we will come back to after i explain the rest of it to you because there is an important feature here that you need to know about when it comes to buying your cnc router so we'll come back to it and then down here is information that will be about your project such as the run times and dimensions and how far it's gone through the project now there's nothing in here right now because the project is not loaded up so we're actually going to load a file and it'll be the one we ran earlier i love my long mill and what you're looking at are the tool path that your machine is going to be taking to cut your projects and you see it's got a very nice clean interface it tells you what axes you're looking at like the z is right here so that's up high above the part and it'll tell you where your router bit is at and you can actually do a couple things to make sure you're going to be okay like a test run when you select the test run it pretends it's running it but doesn't actually run the part and you can watch it actually run on the screen i'm going to run that again watch how the lines go from dark to gray so i'm going to hit it and it starts over here then it's moving here and it's taking care of long mil and then it comes up and takes care of the eye so it's very cool and then here's all the data down here to help you know what the same what the machine is doing and where it's at i'm going to hit test run one more time and i want you to watch down here you're going to see this display change now we have a display that tells you how much longer this project is going to run you've got some manual control right here to slow things down or speed it up super easy to work with and the g sender has some features built into it one of the things you have to do on your cnc router is to surface the spoil board before you do any projects so it has a surfacing program in it which most control softwares don't have and so you actually have to write your own surfacing program that takes a little bit of time you have to learn how to do it i've got videos to tell you how to do that but it's nice to have this feature here remember this section of g sender in the lower right corner i said i would be getting back to well we're going to get back to that right now what this section is is how you are setting your router bit zero point when you design a project you have a reference point and that is considered the x y z zero point and then you bring that project over to the cam area to set up your tool path and once the tool paths are set up then the software writes the g code based on that reference point when that code is loaded into the gsender it is thinking and rightfully so because you designed it that way that the zero point is at that position now you have to actually set the router or tell the router where that position is at and that's where you're setting the xyz 0 point and there's two ways to do that number one is manually literally tweaking the machine over using the manual aspect of the software and getting into position and then setting your zero points up in the software here or you can set up your touch probe one or the other this device you don't have to have it but it's a godsend to have it because this will set the tool just as you see in this video right here where it's setting the lightning drill bit from the idc woodcraft store you see it touches the top and then it touches the side of the plate and then it comes around and touches the other side and what that's doing is setting the start point for the cnc router based on the project material and why do you want to use something like this is because this helps you avoid errors you see when we are setting our zero points manually sometimes we actually forget to tell the software to reset the zero point and then we hit go and the router starts cutting in the absolute wrong place and that first cut ruins the project that's why you want a touch probe now there's two styles of touch probes there's this one the corner touch probe which is the video clip that you just saw and then there's this one called the auto zero touch probe and the benefit to this one is you don't have to set in the design software the specific size router bit that you are setting your zero off of without going into a lot of explanation let's just say that you're using this one you have to tell the software that you're setting the zero point with an eighth inch diameter bit or you're setting it with a quarter inch diameter bit and you may forget to set that in the software whereas if you use the auto zero touch probe you don't have to tell it which bit you just tell it you're using the auto zero touch probe the other benefit to the auto zero is you can set your zero points with this with a v bit which you cannot do with this if you're using this you actually have to set it twice if you're using a v bit you have to set it with a straight bit and then you have to set it with the v bit with this it already detects the v bit as it's doing the measurements so i absolutely recommend an auto zero touch probe it'll make your life so much easier so let's go back into the control software and get on with what i was explaining to you before one way or the other get yourself a touch plate my recommendation is the auto zero so we are actually done going over the control software and what you need to be looking for and whatever software you get you want a visualizer you want to be able to set your zero location which they all have this is your manual move around area this is the probe area where you will use that a lot and of course your regular information that is going to be showing up when your project is going to be running when it comes to control software at the end of the day really g-sender it's the most current it's the easiest for you as a beginner to work with it's got a lot of automation in the background so you don't have to change com ports in your computer especially if you're not that computer savvy and why would we want to be messing with that we're buying our cnc router to start creating amazing projects right you might have something you want to make for your wife or your grandkids or maybe you already got some business ideas coming up we don't need to be fiddling with things that we don't really know about anyway and can kind of screw up so gee center period just leave it at that okay you and i have been hanging around for quite a while but we are not done yet we are getting close but we're not done there are a couple more things you have to know about we're going to talk about dust collection and i want to talk to you a bit about design software where you actually create your designs and i want you to understand how design software fits in this whole scheme of creating your amazing projects on your cnc router and then we are also going to talk about the cool feature of laser add-ons and then there's one more thing that you have to know you just have to cnc router bits without them you're kind of a sitting duck and the thing with cnc router bits is most people when they buy a cnc router it's after the fact that they think oh i got to get router bits what do i need they don't even understand about cnc router bits so we'll cover that a little bit after we get wrapped up with that then i want to talk to you about price points you'll be kind of pleasantly surprised at the long mill for a machine that you can ride around on like a rodeo horse while you're carving your projects this has got a nice little price to it relative to its competitors and i'll give you my final wrap up here and i also want to just fill you in on john you remember john was the guy that made me change my game to make sure that i put nothing but the best of the best in the videos for you that i create so we'll get to john now before we start into the dust collection if you want to learn the stuff subscribe this channel this is where you're going to master your cnc creating you still have to learn it but you're going to master it a lot better here than you will on other channels because i dive deep into stuff just like that i do teach you on the longmill cnc router i'll talk about the software that i teach you on gsender is what i what i work on and teach you on so if you want to ride with me you got to ride with the equipment too and we can ride on our long wheels together yeehaw and if you feel like you've gotten more than you ever would have learned about cnc routers then please give me that thumbs up that comment down below subscribe to the channel get that pdf one other thing because i create so much content for you to teach you to be an amazing cnc creator and i do it using the long little cnc router which is my router of choice that longmill has been very generous by giving me a very special link when you use that link to get your long mill i get a little bit of credit and that helps me out for creating this type of content for you like this video here to teach you everything you need to know before you buy your cnc router so when you buy your longmill please use that link and thank you for doing so so with that we are now going to get into the dust collection when you're carving your projects on your cnc router you are cutting wood and you're making sawdust and that sawdust gets everywhere and the worst is when you're cutting something called mdf or medium density fiberboard now mdf is basically it's sawdust glued together and when you start cutting that on your cnc router it's very small particles and it suspends in the air and it just floats everywhere and everything gets dusty most of your spoil boards are made of that now spoil board is the holding surface of your project they call it a spoil board because eventually it's going to get spoiled when you're cutting out projects the router bit cuts into it it's just par for the course and you absolutely have to have a spoil board in fact if you get the long mill i have a spoil board file for you with what they call g-code i'll talk to you a little bit about g-code in a little bit don't worry you don't need to know it but the whole point of this is is you want to manage your sawdust so that all starts with the dust shoe or the dust boot now this is an attachment that goes on your router like this now this is made specifically for the long mill and it's magnetic and it just pops right on and pops off most dust shoes they bolt on and yeah of course you have to take them off with bolts there's so many different types of dust shoes but when you get your long wheel you just get the dust boot or dust shoe your vacuum hose sits right here and when the router is down in this area the brushes are just containing the saw dust and there's only one place for the air to go in here and then back out this tube by virtue of your vacuum so you need to have an attachment tube with that which is something else i recommend which is this exact tube right here it comes off of amazon there will be a link for that in the pdf and down below it's a 20 foot two and a half inch tube and for me it goes down to my shop fact when it comes to dust collection just get it okay it'll save you some people do enclosures for their machines to contain the sawdust and it contains the sound a little bit and this is what i'm talking about what an enclosure is you can see that the cnc router that somebody had is actually inside of a contained box or contained area where they can control the dust and the sound if they need to and this is a resource that you can find on longmill as well they have information on enclosures as well there are so many resources on the longmail website regardless of which cnc router you have i do recommend that you check it out it's up to you but this dust shoe dust boot absolutely necessary there is another element that you absolutely have to know about and have when it comes to making these awesome projects that you're going to be making with your cnc router and that is the design software you can't do projects without it so let's say you want to design this i love my longmill sign which is very easy to make or you want to get even better and make something that a lot of people like to make which is stacked text i love cnc and you can see that's multi-layered the i love is one layer and cnc is on a second layer these are really cool projects or you want to do a 3d relief like this lion here or what everybody wants to do inlays inlays once you get the hang of them are quite easy to do and by the way i have step by step videos for you as a beginner of how to do every single one of these things so you can come up with something very personalized for your daughter who got married and you want to make an established on 2022 type of science however you have to get that idea out of your head and into electronic format and get things laid out exactly the way that you want them to express whatever you want to express let's say your daughter or your son is just getting out of the military of course you're very proud of them and you want to honor their service to the country so you have to design this whole idea first we use design software not just to get it out there but to get it laid out exactly the way we want to especially just have an idea in your head and you don't quite know how to get that idea to get it to look right that's where the design software comes in now before i go any further if you are a brand new absolute green newbie beginner to this whole cnc router world i've introduced a whole new thing to you i've talked about control software and now i'm talking about design software so i need to pull back to a bird's eye view so you understand how design software and the cnc router all come together in this scheme of things and the flow of them because there is a specific flow so i'm going to talk to you briefly about the three core elements of cnc routers that have to be at play in order for your idea to turn in to an awesome inlay those three core elements are cad cam and cnc now cad is computer aided designing and this is where that idea of yours gets out of your head and onto a computer screen that you can start to work with manipulate and make it look exactly the way you want it to look then we have to take that design over to the cam area where we have to prepare it to run on the cnc basically we have to tell how we're going to set up the router bits to actually carve out the project the way that we want it to be carved out and once we have done that then the cam will actually write the g-code the language that the cnc router understands and once that's done then we pass it into the control software or cnc and your control software is part of cnc so let's take a look at this project that i have made for my grandson this is a memory project of a day that we had that was very special to him and me and you can see it says to my grandson gabriel we will never forget that day and then it has a quote there so i'll get into the quote but i have two grandsons hunter and gabriel now hunter was busy with some friends for a couple of days and gabriel was a little bit bored so i just went to him and i said gabriel do you want to have a guy day today he said what do you mean papa said you know you're kind of bored let's just do this man-to-man kind of thing let's go out and do something cool and he said yeah let's do that papa and so i took him to the local festival and we were doing all kinds of stuff gabriel was kicking butt on the balloon popping with the darts shh papa was behind him but gabe came away with a few stuffed animals from that and of course at the water gun thing where you have to get to the top faster before the other one gabriel and i had a water fight that was so much fun and the girl behind the counter she was so mad and of course we took some of the rides and at some point gabriel saw some cowboy hats at one of the booths where you're throwing the ball to knock down those fuzzy things and after about twenty dollars trying to make it work you know how that goes i finally gave the the guy behind the counter a pretty substantial tip and he gave us both cowboy hats at the end of the day gabriel asked me papal can we go get some ice cream it was hot that day so i said yeah and we were sitting down eating our ice cream and gabe looked up at me and he's got like ice cream cone stuff all over his face and he says papa we had a guy day didn't we and that just made my heart melt and i looked at him and say we sure did buddy we sure did as we finish our ice cream we went walking down to the river which was a block away from the ice cream place to sit down and hang out and then some lady who was about my age ran up behind me and she said excuse me but i just saw the most beautiful thing in the world and it took a picture of it and she showed me on her phone as a picture of me and gabe holding hands with her cowboy hats on walking away and she said i wanted to capture this moment for you i have grandkids and i know what it's like and so she sent the picture to me and it was just the iconic moment of that day and so that's exactly what i wanted to capture to give to gabriel and now we just when i see him say babel can we have another guy day can we have a guy day and it just it just so melts my heart that i have made that impression and so i had to make that project and it really touches my heart i get teared up every time i think about it and talk about it and i just kind of got lost into this little story but this is why we make these kind of projects and get them laid out exactly the way we want to so now you see the design here the next thing i need to do is generate the tool path for it so that's what the cam section is tool path is where the router bit is going to go to actually carve the project so we dictate that set it all up and at the end of the day now we have this project and we can literally see exactly what it looks like and when we get it fine-tuned we go back and forth to the design to get it exactly the way we want it then we tell the software to write the g-code and then that g-code gets imported to the cnc into the control software and at that point we simply load up our router bits and start to carve out our project that's the way these three things fall together and the flow of this so if you were confused before now we got it straightened out we have cad which is design you get the idea out of your head into digital format we have cam where we take your design and we tell it how the router bit is going to cut that project out and then we have cnc where we transfer that g-code over and the router starts to do the work that we have originally thought about in our mind now you get this picture now i want to talk to you about the software and what i use and what i recommend there are free design software and there is paid design software for cnc routers and virtually all the software for cnc routers has both cad and cam in it that means you only have to buy one package there are some design packages where you have to actually buy both or get both and i don't like to do that i like it to be all in one as much as possible to keep things simple so this is why i suggest you find software that has cad and cam in it or design and prepare one of the things to be careful about that is making sure the software will actually be able to create a project the full size of your cnc router if you get the long mill you want to be able to capture the entire area of this or of the 30 by 48 whatever size your machine you have so you'll see in software there is the desktop versions and the pro versions the desktop versions will only limit you to a certain size for example vcarve desktop only allows you to design up to 24 by 24 inches where as if you have the vcarve pro that will allow you to make projects as big as you want if you get a desktop cnc you absolutely want to get the pro versions of the software now there's two that i recommend one is the vectric vcarve pro and the second is carveco vcarve pro is what i train you on in all the videos i do however i will be making videos on carveco soon you as someone who is here because you're serious and you want to get something that's going to last you the long term i suggest you just get the vectric software or the carvco software get the good stuff the free stuff you get what you pay for right free now we're going to talk about the very cool add-on which is a laser etcher that you can put on a cnc router if you look right here there's a little something different that i put on the router to show you and it's called the laser beam this is actually one that is put out by long mill made for the long mill it's got all the controls that will plug right into it lasers on cnc routers are very cool add-ons where you can augment the projects that you carve so you'll carve something very cool like a marine logo and then you etch in the name of the person or something for your grandkid grandma's recipe that's handwritten my favorite is taking my grandkids handwriting and using the cnc router to either carve it or use the laser to etch it i'm going to show you a few things with the laser beam we'll just first take a quick dive into it so i can show you exactly what you should get with a laser this is the one that long longmill actually provides for its machine it is a 7 watt laser and it has a blower that actually blows air down where the laser is doing the burning it needs that because you need to get the smoke out of the way it is literally burning if you don't get the smoke out of the way it interferes with the laser beam that's going down there and this is a very powerful unit it says seven watts so this is called a diode laser and lasers that you get for your cnc router they are not cutting lasers per se they are etching lasers where they will etch on wood just like this cool line which i'm actually going to show you in just a second you can get some cutting out of it this here this samantha was cut by this laser right here this is mat board now matte board is what you find on pictures see it's about a sixteenth of an inch thick so you can make some very cool things so let's just look at this thing for a minute we're gonna run this and you can see now that i got the board down but with lasers of course you have to have protection because they will burn your eyes and you can see that the laser now is just starting to run around the line and it's almost as cool to watch as the router when it's carving except you do have to wear these glasses so i've zoomed in a little bit to see a little bit better on this and you can see it just just kind of works through it so it's very cool and i'm just gonna let you watch it for a second i will speed this up a tad and this is what you can do with a laser attachment on your cnc router the cool thing is is this is made specifically by long mill for the long mill there are other cnc routers that have laser attachments but sometimes you actually have to buy them third-party to get them to adapt to your machine because your cnc router company does not provide that longmill is one of the few that does that but isn't that cool sometimes it takes a little bit of adjustment i just whipped this one out so you can see a little bit of soot mark on here so if i turn the beam down a little bit as far as power it would be even better over the next 10 minutes you and i are going to be talking about something that you absolutely have to know when it comes to making your amazing cnc projects and that is the cnc router bits now what i'm going to do is cover the core bits that you have to have to get up front and this is something that confuses a lot of people after they get their cnc router because they suddenly realize oh what bit do i need for what by the time you're done with this little segment you will know exactly what cnc router bits you need to get started with what we're going to do here is cover the first top five bits that you absolutely have to have in order to start creating your projects and then we're going to get into the other four that you would want to add to your first set of bits that will allow you to do about 90 percent of the project work you ever designed so this little ugly guy is the first one that you absolutely must have this is called a surfacing flattening bit and it's an absolute must this is what you use first when you get your cnc router before you start creating projects this surfacing flattening bit has two purposes the first is to flatten the spoil board or the work surface that your projects are mounted to the work surface like you see here is called a spoil board and that needs to be parallel to the motion of your cnc router otherwise the cuts in your projects will come out uneven so it's standard procedure to have this bit to flatten your spoil board on your cnc router before you make any projects i have videos that teach you how to do spoil board surfacing the other reason this is used is because when you have a raw piece of stock or a warped piece of stock you'll want to clamp it down and then come in and flatten it out with this bit before you start carving your project so it's it salvages or smooths out raw wood or rough or warped wood surfacing bit is the number one that you absolutely have to have number two is the quarter inch down cutting end mill this is the workhorse of project making this bit will remove a lot of material in virtually every project that you create it'll be your go-to bit for most of the projects that you end up creating and you will use this the most this is something like you see in this house number sign project where you have to remove all the material around the numbers and the border this is the bit that you will be using the must have bit in your set now sometimes you want to get finer detail in your project especially if you're doing letters for example in this i love cnc stacked text sign you can see the letters have a pretty tight corner to them the quarter inch down cutting bit cannot create those corners and so that's when you want to use this bit which is the third most important bit to have in your arsenal this is the 1 8 down cutting end mill and this will get into this finer areas that the quarter inch can't get to we can call this a little brother to this guy right here now we've covered your 2d type of work when i say 2d you're cutting the bottom of the project and the side of the project then we get into v-carving which is something that everybody does if you want to carve letters then you're going to need to get into your v bits and the 90 degree v-bit is the most popular bit you will be using 90-degree v-bit does letter carving like you see in this project right here where it says million and if you notice the line underneath the word million is a line that varies in width as it goes further away that's what v bits allow you to do where the down cutter bits don't allow you to do and that's what makes cnc routing so amazing is when you can use bits like this but it is this bit here the 90 degree v-bit that you always start with this is the next most important bit and then when you want to get into finer v carving detail such as the lettering on this sign where it says six figure the lettering is a lot smaller and the 90 degree v bit won't give you clear cuts because the lettering can get too thin so that's where you want to get into this bit here the 60 degree v-bit this also does finer detail work like swirls and what have you that you may want to do so these are the five bits that you want to add right up front when you order your cnc machine the quarter inch down cutter the eighth inch down cutter the 90 degree v-bit 60 degree v-bit and the surfacing bit now you notice that the shank of these bits this here this one and these two are all quarter inch shank whereas the eighth inch diameter has an eighth inch diameter shank so you want to make sure that you get an adapter collet for that set as well which is what this is here you'll insert it into the adapter collet and then you'll insert the adapter collet up into the router tighten everything down and you'll be set to go this is the basic starter set that you want to have and this is available on the idc woodcraft store now if you want to get to a point where you can carve virtually 90 of your projects then you want to add four more bits to your arsenal and the first would be the 16th inch down cutter this is where you get into the fine detailed flat bottom work that you would create with the quarter inch and the eighth inch and do a lot of detail work the 1 16 inch is the one that's going to add all that fine detail i like to think of the 16th inch as the little lady of the down cut bottom cutting trio so you want to get the 16th inch down cutter let's move that and we'll put that right here then to get into really fine engraving like this doily you see here notice the size of the quarter compared to the cuts in the project that's done with this bit right here this is the 30 degree v v-bit engraving bit and it allows you to do incredibly extreme detail in your carbs so this is a really nice one to add if you want to get really good detail in your projects now we get to the accent work these are the other two that you want to add to your arsenal to create the accents and something else which you will like here in just a moment this is the quarter inch ball nose end mill and this is the one that's going to add all the accent to your project you notice on this project here that the ball nose actually created the radius around the edge of it this just gives it so much more character when you do something like this to a project the quarter inch ball nose is the one you want to use for that so this is another one that you want to get into your set and finally one that you really will like everyone likes to do 3d carving well you can start your 3d carving with this one right here which is the 1 8 ball nose end mill now it's a fairly large bit for 3d carving but if you notice this horse carving and look at the detail in the legs and the main and the size of it and compare the size of it with the quarter sitting next to it you'll see that you can actually get some really cool detail with a 1 8 ball nose so the 1 8 ball nose is another bit that you want to add to your arsenal and again you have a 1 8 shank a 1 8 shank 1 8 shank so you want to have the adapter collets this is actually the full blown starter set that i have on the idc woodcraft store until i came up with this there was no full set out there so literally it's the world's only most complete cnc router bit starter set out there and one of the things i add to these things is you get a free 1 8 down cut end mill because you do use that a lot so that's an extra bonus gift you'll get that card with it says here's your free bit and i also throw in a 1 8 up cutting bit now this is a flat bottom cutter which means you can actually peck drill with it at the same time and do a lot of aggressive cutting with it so in the entire set that you are getting from the idc wood craft stores the most complete cnc starter bit set on the planet you get one two three four five six seven eight nine 10 11 12 13 different pieces there's one more thing you have to know about cnc router bits and that is the feeds and speeds when you order your bits it's not just plug and play you have to set up your software so it knows how fast that router bit needs to turn in the router and how fast it moves through the material while it's cutting if the feed and speed is too high you're going to burn up your router bit if it's too low then you're going to break your bits so you need to know that information and unfortunately virtually every cnc router bit company out there does not provide the feeds and speeds information to you you have to actually go back and look it up on our website if it's at the website i provide all that i give you a pdf that has all the feeds and speeds for every router bit that is in the idc woodcraft store i've done one better though i've also given you a database where you can simply install it into your design software and you don't have to do any manual entry all that information will be there in one shot now i don't have it for all design software i've got it for the paid versions so if you have that then you'll have that information i've also gone a little bit further than that you as a brand new cnc beginner you need to know where to start so i provide you with projects as well starting with this router bit holder i give you the g-code basically what that means is it's plug-and-play follow the instructions set up a piece of 2x6 and hit go and in about 10 minutes you'll have your router bit holder the next project is this little merry christmas block very easy to make and set up and looks great very country-ish type of feel to it the next project is actually something that will be your first full-blown project it's this welcome sign i don't provide the g-code for it you set that up but you get the vector for it this welcome sign was my first full-blown major project that i designed and i want you to have it the next thing you're going to get is the warrior woman project now this one is a little dear to my heart my niece isabelle when she was six had a brain tumor very aggressive brain cancer that most children don't live from but she survived thanks to saint jude and now she's 19. she's a little compromised because she had some of her brain taken out however she has always been a warrior to me so i made this project and by the way everything that comes into idc would craft five percent gets donated to saint jude because they saved my niece so the warrior woman project is very dear and special to me and if you know somebody with cancer you can make that for them i also give you two glass etchings a willow tree engraving and a tree of life glass engraving yes you can engrave glass on a cnc router you have instructions to tell you exactly how to do that with the files and finally the last file are clamp files when you buy clamps for your cnc router usually a set of four will cost you 50 to 100 dollars and most of them are made of metal sometime in your cnc router journey you're going to crash into that clamp and guess what's going to give your router bit it will break so you have a cnc router you can make your own clamps and i provide you the g-code file to make your own clamps again it's plug and play you just follow the instructions that are included with it and before you know it you'll have 24 clamps there's two more things i'm going to give you you remember that welcome sign well that's a word and people buy words yes us c and sears you and me as a creator we make words and so i have taken the top 50 words that actually sell that people buy and i've compiled it on a list so you will get the top 50 words that sell list and finally you are going to get a list of all the videos on this channel so this list is sorted for you as a beginner you just start from the top and work your way through and it's all set up for you all you have to do is just watch each video and learn from it when you get the complete starter set from idc woodcraft you don't just get router bits you get the 13 piece set seven starter design files for beginners to get you started a feeds and speeds table so you can populate your database with the right feeds and speeds you get a feeds of speeds database upload and a video that tells you how to load it into your software the top 50 words excel list and you get a sorted list of all the videos on the idc woodcraft channel before we move on to the next and last thing we're going to be talking about which is pricing of the benchtop cnc routers there's one more thing that you're going to get with this premium set of cnc router bits and that's a 100 guarantee for finish and durability and interestingly no other cnc router bit company out there offers a guarantee why do you think i do that well you can thank john for that john you remember the guy who was struggling with that project for his daughter who made me say there was going to be on this channel and anything that i did nothing but the best of the best of the best i find it interesting that when you buy cnc router bits from other companies they don't provide you anything else but a bit they don't give you the data with your bits you have to figure it out usually the hard way and then go out and try to figure out what the settings that your router bits need to be set up at i'm handing you that data there's no other cnc router bit company out there that gives you starter projects to teach you as a beginner how to start becoming the amazing creator that you're going to become and there's no other cnc router bit company out there that creates content for you like this to help you along help you understand this entire process of this amazing creative space of cnc routers that's what you're getting with this premium set of cnc router bits made in the united states under really high standards everybody that works at idc woodcraft they understand my standards i'm very selective at who i hire and they embrace it because this is a creative space to help you with your projects and give you the best possible tools that i can put in your hands so that's what you're getting with the cnc router bits and you can thank john for that which i will wrap this up with what happened to john after we talked about the pricing every single cnc router bit at idcwoodcraft.com carries the same standard so every time you go back to expand your set with other bits you're getting the same guarantee it's just the way it is with the way i run this company that's why the companies i deal with like longmill they have to have the same standard all right with that let's move on to the last thing we're going to talk about pricing of the cnc routers well my cnc brother or sister guess what we have come to the end of this video with one more thing to talk about and that is the pricing of the benchtop cnc routers i want to tell you about john too what happened to him you remember john the guy that his wife had cancer and he was struggling making that project for his daughter it's a sad story with a nice happy ending so we'll wrap this thing up with that before we dive into pricing one final reminder please give me the thumbs up by hitting that thumbs up button down below if you felt like you got something out of this and of course that comment i really really want to know how i did in helping you know how to select the machine that you want to be getting and the ones that you want to stay away from i've subscribed to the channel and of course when you get your long mil if you choose to get this machine to please use the link that i provide so i can have a couple cups of coffee and maybe a hamburger so let's talk about the pricing of the benchtop cnc routers they can actually go as high as five and six thousand dollars and as low as thirteen hundred dollars but let's kind of frame this out the average bench top cnc router is about three thousand dollars with an average range of two thousand two hundred dollars to four thousand dollars so what determines the price of the benchtop cnc routers number one is the amount of components that go into it number two is the processing that those components have to go through meaning if there's a lot of customized components in it that jacks the price up number three things like ball screws bring that price up the linear bearing rails that are all over the machine that brings it up those two combined can actually increase your machine by fifteen hundred dollars to two thousand dollars and then finally is the off the shelf element of the machines this is one of the things i really like about the long mill is that the bulk of this stuff that's on this machine are off the shelf and it's actually what has affected this price the long mil 30 by 30 base unit now when i say base unit that's without the router is about thirteen hundred dollars and some people have asked me thirteen hundred dollars they said why is it so much less expensive and it's because longmill designed this thing in such a way to keep the price down while still maintaining the structure the quality the accuracy of the machine it's it's actually from the engineering perspective of me this is brilliant designing so this is why the long nails is less expensive and at the end of the day when you get this with the router and the dust shoe and a couple other things now you're going to add a couple hundred dollars to that but all in all you're going to do that with any of the cnc machines that you get the 30 by 48 the long the long one the mpk2 is about 1700 the other machines in that category interestingly enough now you're talking four thousand dollars five thousand dollars so these are at a much lower price range and they're still excellent machines so at the end of the day you now know why i have gotten this machine for its build the company the cost and the customer experience that's the final take on the machines you already know that why now i have a long mill and why i have chosen it but you also know how to pick out your machine and so now you have everything you need to know to make a very educated decision let's wrap this up with john the cnc brother of ours who got into this a couple years ago bought the machine that i used to have was struggling with a project his wife had cancer wasn't expected to live and he was going to retirement was feeling kind of lost it actually came out to be a really nice story after tragedy his wife did make it to the wedding of his third daughter and she died about a month later of course john was devastated and not long after he called me up and he said garrett what router do i need to get and i said john i don't know so i told him and i promised him that i would figure it out and the long mill is the ultimate machine that i landed on and so john got a long mill john embraced it because he needed something to fulfill him after that void of losing his wife kids moving out retiring and just going through a major major change in life and he just john just loves doing it and he started a little business doing it and as he was running that business he met a lady and ultimately married her and this little cnc business that he started has gotten so busy that he bought himself a second longmill and that's keeping him busy but he's happy as a pig and a pig in mud i guess is the way it is flies on that's the story of john there is a moral to this story that i do want to share with you and then we and i are going to say goodbye shake hands and i can't wait to hear what you have made a decision on as far as your cnc router the moral of the story is if you're looking at cnc routers and you're hesitating there's a reason why you're being drawn to it a much deeper reason maybe you need to do something that finally is yours and you feel that creative expression inside of you that really wants to come out and you maybe you're afraid you won't have the confidence that you can do it that it's new technology my word to you is jump off the diving board even if the pool looks empty you it will fill up on the way down the thing is we hold ourselves back from potential joy and the creativity you have the videos on this youtube channel i'm here to help you and the cnc years and the facebook groups they're very giving people you can go into the facebook groups and ask there and in the end life is about challenges and taking on the next challenge this is your time and this is what you're being drawn to go for it take the plunge you'll figure it out on the way just like i did like our brothers and sisters and sears have done and you'll be making some amazing projects for your grandkids your kids your friends and who knows maybe you'll start a really nice little successful business but in the end of the day it'll be all yours and you'll be creating with that my cnc brother or sister go out and get your cnc router and start creating

Channel: IDC Woodcraft

Views: 165,989

Keywords: cnc for beginners, cnc router, Garrett Fromme, CBC, cbc router, vectrix, longwood cnc router, long wood cnc router, long board cnc, cnc router review, bullnose bit, cnc, cnc machine, cnc router projects, best cnc for beginners, cnc woodworking, desktop cnc, cnc tutorial for beginners, woodworking, desktop cnc router, garrett fromme, idc woodcraft, best cnc machine, cnc router woodworking, cnc projects, buying a cnc machine, what to know about cnc machines, best cnc router

Id: wLVNF0L-ZdU

Length: 107min 57sec (6477 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 25 2022