Newbie - Just Ordered, A few question

#28

@WillAdams your a good sport with all the questions, thank you for helping. Can I make one small suggestion regarding my experience with purchasing from carbide. Given that I ordered the DeWalt spindle a long with a bunch of bits, it would have been very helpful had someone notified me that I was going to need an 1/8" collet. Its a bit disappointing when you get everything and you’re ready to go and realize you don’t have the right collet. Maybe I missed it some where, but given someone had to put the entire order together I would have thought they might have taken the time to reach out to me to see if I wanted to purchase the collet. Now I have to pay additional shipping for that when it could have been included in my original order or either the machine itself, or the materials I ordered.

Not a criticism, just my two cents to pass on to the team.

Thank you again for all your help, I’m sure more questions will come your way.

#29

That’s a very good point, and one which we should be aware of up-front — at one point in time (maybe even now still), Elaire was getting so many orders from the wiki for the Dewalt collets that they were cross-examining people about which machine they had so as to ensure that they got the right one.

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#30

So one of the things I’m most interested in, is cutting plexi / acrylic. I’ve been reading quite a bit on here and one of the things I’ve noticed is that acrylic needs to be cut at low RPM’s and low feed rate to prevent both chipping and melting. The problem I can’t get my head around is that the DeWalt DPW611 has an RPM range of (roughly) 16k-28k. With that in mind, what are the solutions to achieving slower RPM’s?

I’ve browsed the wiki, but are there any other quality bits of information you might have a link to, or a place I can look?

Thanks!

#31

You get different results with extruded vs. cast acrylic. I suspect the acrylic Carbide3d tested for feeds and speeds was cast, but they didn’t even go slowest speed on the DeWalt: http://carbide3d.com/shapeoko/feedandspeed/ . You probably want to keep the feedrate up (65 in/min from the chart) so you don’t melt the plastic.

If you want to go lower RPM, you could look up superPID.

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#32

That chart should be much easier to find…I’ve never come across it in all my searches. I’ll almost always be using extruded acrylic.

#33

The other big thing for plastics is to at least consider using a single flute endmill.

The feeds and speeds chart isn’t that hard to find:

Unfortunately, since they’re images, they don’t show up in search engines — one of these days I’ll find the time to re-key them into the wiki — really wish we could switch to an SVG of them at least, though I’d liefer just see a real HTML table w/ text as text which one could copy-paste from.

#34

Here’s an Excel Online version that should be copy and paste-able as text: https://1drv.ms/x/s!AjBdKfoZ_mVHazdhLKCP0tj5I5A

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Molten hdpe, help a noob
#35

Thanks! Well, that settles that.

The time spent copy-pasting is a lot easier to justify — thanks for the leg up!

Notes:

  • typo: Polycarbonite vs. Polycarbonate
  • style? Carbonfiber vs. Carbon fiber

I’ve started this and will work on it as I find the time. Thanks again!

Well, got a start at it. I’m still kind of weirded out by how the Dewalt and Makita dial settings don’t always correlate — hopefully I’ll find some time to verify / experiment w/ those settings, and I’d be glad of anyone else who could do so.

#36

I notice a lot of people are using Fusion360, is Fusion360 both CAD and CAM or just CAD?

Lastly, how do you add more end mills to Carbide Motion?

#37

Fusion 360 is CAD, which has a CAM module.

Endmills get added to Carbide Create — Carbide Motion is just communication / control and doesn’t care what endmills are associated with a given path (there is no support in Grbl for cutter compensation in G-code).

I think one of the tutorials shows adding a tool, see:

Note that V-bit is taper, not overall bit angle: http://www.shapeoko.com/wiki/index.php/Carbide_Create#Tools

#38

Thanks for doing that!

Managed to get things copied / up-dated. I would like to ask that you put a hazardous or other cautionary note next to the entry for lead in your list (trying to get Carbide 3D to do that as well — why do we even have an entry for it? What’s the context for cutting that?)

All copied / pasted into: http://www.shapeoko.com/wiki/index.php/Materials (and there’s a sortable table there, which worries me some — asking after it now).

#39

So I built a touch probe, and I connected it to the probe pins on the board, but now I’m unsure what to do. I clipped the alligator clip to the end mill, placed the touch probe under the mill and typed in G38.2 Z-26 F100 that started the lower the mill on the z-axis, but it never stopped…it just kept trying to go lower. I was under the impression it would just stop when it touched the plate. I have tested the plate for continuity and it works.

What might I be doing wrong?

#40

Tested the probe connector on the board?

#41

I had the connector wrong on the board…oops.

Ok, so now its connected, I’ve test continuity through the connector and its good. So for the steps, heres what I tried:

  1. Move the mill into a position
  2. connect the alligator clip to the end mill
  3. send command G38.2 Z-26 F100
    This is where it goes wrong, nothing happens, and I get an error message that says “Probing Cycle Failed” and then in the MDI tab it says “Not Homed” even though I homed it previously.
#42

Hmm, maybe this doesn’t work in Carbide Motion?

Try a different communication / control program?

Or, contact support@carbide3d.com and someone who actually understands this stuff will respond.

#43

No problem. I added the HAZARDOUS to Lead and fixed the typos you mentioned earlier (they’re in the original Carbide 3D sheet also).

Lead in any amount is bad for you if ingested or absorbed internally. How about lead from 360 Brass?

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#44

Thanks!

The lead from 360 brass is pretty tightly bound up in the alloy, and isn’t much (2.5–3.7%) — so long as it doesn’t get melted so as to release elemental lead into fumes from being melted or ground up incredibly finely, AIUI, exposure risk should be negligible.

I grew up w/ folks who would melt wheel weights on the kitchen stove for casting bullets, and remember watching in fascination a traveling tradesman melt down and re-cast lead dead-blow mallets in a garage parking lot — an occasional instance of exposure is probably not going to cause health problems — the problem is the bio-accumulation, so we should all exercise every caution reasonable.

#45

Which one do you recommend trying?

#46

Try Universal G-Code Sender, bCNC, or Chilipeppr — those seem to be the top three. I think UGS is the easiest to install if you have a machine which will run Java apps well.

If you’re using Windows, GrbGru is awesome.

#47

So I emailed carbide3D.com but haven’t heard back. I’ll give UGC a shot today.