Router problems

[Papajohn7 (John Eustace)]

I am now on my 3rd C3D router. I have about 7 hours in total on my 5 Pro. Router bearings are going. I just installed my 3rd router. I notice that the batch number on the routers are all the same. Has Carbide had a bad batch of routers? I am almost scared to start a job with the new router.

[WillAdams (William Adams (Carbide 3D))]

It’s a large batch, and there seems to be a bit of variability.

We will keep sending replacements under warranty until you get 12 months of usage and I think “Third time’s the charm.” has been the rule for folks, and usually the worst case is a third unit which works well, while the first replacement usually works for folks. Working out the statistical math on what percentage of bad units there are is left as an exercise for the reader.

[Papajohn7 (John Eustace)]

Why would you keep shipping from the same batch if you know there is a good possibility of problems. It is very frustrating as a customer to keep having problems. I would think it would be in the best interest of CC to have a happy customer from day one.
Not sure what you mean by reader working out statistics?

[WillAdams (William Adams (Carbide 3D))]

It’s a very small number of the batch which is bad — low enough that pulling and testing individual units isn’t really workable.

If one wished to make a statistical analysis, given a certain number of units it should be possible to do fancy math to determine what percentage are bad if it is probable that a second unit will be good, and almost certain if two units have been bad, that the third will be good.

[CliffordSommer]

I burnt up my router motor- brushes blew apart. So I ordered 2 replacements.
Got 3 hours out of one new motor, and the second new one started making noise after 15 minutes of run time.

[WillAdams (William Adams (Carbide 3D))]

A couple of considerations:

• it’s not really possible to “baby” a cut — that just leads to rubbing because the machine isn’t advancing enough to form a complete chip — feeds and speeds need to be adjusted in synch so as to maintain chipload, see:

Feeds & speeds

• avoid slotting — cutting a slot just as narrow as the tool results in near constant high tooling engagement which makes a cut far more difficult and results in awful noises — where possible avoid slotting and add geometry and cut as a pocket

Making vacuum hose adapters

While cutting up vacuum extension wands for this is expedient, it’s a bit problematic given that Shop Vac recently filed for bankruptcy, was bought at the last minute, and production hasn’t caught up. I need a receptacle for the Sweepy 2.0 dust fitting — one option would be to purchase one from Woodcraft, but Carbide 3D sells blocks of HDPE: which looks to be just barely big enough for things to fit. Measuring the hose fitting I get a diameter of ~63.5mm — offsetting that twice we arrive at…

and/or

Adding geometry to cut as a pocket with a finishing pass

One technique which is often suggested to avoid slotting is to add geometry around a part which one wishes to cut out and cut as a pocket down to tab depth — here’s one technique for that. In this case, the project is a bevel gauge which will be cut out of 0.0625" (~1.5mm) thick aluminum: [bevelgauge] Due to the narrowness of the angles, an 0.03125" endmill has to be used, so after importing and scaling the file (we will be cutting out one which is 3") we select the perimeter and offset it tw…

and consider leaving a roughing clearance and taking a finishing pass.

Best Bit for full cut through

One which has a cutting flute length equal to or greater than the thickness of the stock — pretty much any tool should work. Big thing is the toolpaths — if cutting out, rather than just cutting a slot: [image] Offset to the outside by endmill diameter plus 10% or so: [image] [image] [image] Then cut as a pocket: [image] down to tab height or the penultimate pass: [image] then move the contour down to below the pocket and start cutting at the bottom of the pocket: [image] and…