My assault on the wood begins now.
…
Couldn’t help it. It started raining about 5 minutes after I got the CNC machine inside this evening. But I’m skipping ahead.
I decided to give the CNC machine a tuneup before continuing with the cut on board 2.
I used Simple Green to clean the grease and sawdust off of both X and Y axes, and then put on white lithium grease instead. I ran both axes back and forth a couple times to get the grease nice and evenly spread. The axes sounded a lot better, and were running pretty smoothly, too.
I also swapped out the “somewhat dull” endmill for a brand new one. I set the machine up to cut, and left to go make dinner. I checked it several times, and everything was going smoothly, right up until the big parts had been cut out and the little parts didn’t have enough “meat” left on the board to hold them together. They rocked and rolled around a bit, finally jamming into the bit, so I stopped.
Man, the CNC workflow is complicated. I can understand how long it must take to get really good at it. I mean it’s not just getting the graphics right and the MOP right, you have to make sure the toolpath is going to work, too. There’s a lot to it all.
Anyway, the parts that were left to cut out were all more or less rectangular, so I decided to finish cutting them with the chop saw. That went quickly, and reminded me what a nice clean cut looks like. I was working pretty fast, so there’s a lot of tearout on the backs of the parts, but I got it done.
Board 2 is finished. Halfway there!
I may have to re-tune the machine before I’m done with board 3. I have a feeling that sawdust is really not the friend of those exposed drive screws.
Here’s a photo of the front of the Y gantry, with the gantry sides:
It’s pretty big, wider than my shoulders. Here’s a “for scale” photo:
I suppose it was supposed to be; the Y gantry is going to be 52″ wide after all. It’s just good to see the thing start to take shape.
I have a bigger pile of parts to process now. All of it needs to be sanded, and several pieces need to be recut or need more work in one way or the other. But I’m getting there.
I got the saw put away, the dust vacuumed up, and the table moved inside, when it started raining. Let’s hope I can sneak in a few more dry days to get this done. Maybe I’ll put up a canopy.
I’m really looking forward to being able to retire the Book CNC. And I’m hoping that the Blackfoot will be as accurate as I hope. I have a feeling that the first job on the new machine will be cutting out another copy of itself, because the first one is going to be a little ragged. 🙂