Terrific info as always. I’ve been using the two wrenches that came with the machine…I might invest in a couple of better quality ones. Good to know that I don’t have to really crank the chuck and over tighten it. That flying router bit 30 years ago still haunts me.
Thanks for sharing!
So I’ve taken all of the advice and decided to try and put together a nice, safe set up. I’ve got some 1/4” plexi on three sides (22” tall”), a nice place for my laptop and added dust control. This is a game changer. Let me know your thoughts. I’m open to any suggestions to make it better. Thanks again for always being willing to help out the community.
Cullen, I’ve got my new dust collection system set up and deep sweepy leading the way!! Seems to be doing an awesome job. Dust collection is awesome! I can’t believe that I cut anything without it…LOL. I’m cutting down in my basement and my wife isn’t going to kick me out of the house…. This is great!!
Your dust collection is similar to mine. I call mine the diving board. It works well. My only issue with mine is if I do a tiling job I would have to remove the dust collection diving board to get the material through the machine. Since I rarely do tiling it is not a big deal.
I had an SO3 XL for a short time and made a side boom for the dust collection. It worked well. I made it out of 2" electrical conduit and it could swivel if needed.
This is my SO3 Diving Board.
If I ever remake it I will put it on the side like on the XL.
Wow, both of those are MONEY!!! Awesome designs…I’m sure I’ll change mine when I get a little better with my machine…but this set up is working well right now…It’s the first time that I wasn’t completely covered in dust after cutting something…I love it!! and most of all…my wife is gonna love not having 1/2" of dust covering the upstairs!!!
Thanks for sharing your set up!
Hi Rob. It should be possible to work in either imperial or millimetres. It is the relationship between the numbers which is what matters.
I am looking at those numbers for feed and pass, your #201 cutter and the results you have pictured. The pictures show tearout at the top of your workpiece, rather than a nice clean cut. This is strongly suggestive that the cutter is proceeding too fast through the workpiece and is tearing the top layer of material as it passes. The depth of cut looks a little too deep for the speed of the cutter through the workpiece. The workpiece material is probne to tearout and voids. Some people may suggest to you that a downcut cutter will fix this issue. It may but the problem of feed speed and size of cut has not been addressed by that solution.
You can go back to millimetres if that is your comfort zone and then you do not have to try and grasp the imperial measurements and their implications. That speed of 75" per minute equates to 0905mm per minute. If this were my own workpiece I would be dropping that speed to 1000mm/min. In carbide motion you have the ability to dynamically adjust the rate of feed up or down during the cutting process.
The 0.060" pass depth is more than I would subject a cutter to in the first instance. It equates to 1.524mm and the reason that the depth may be too much is that the cutter is engaged in using 100% of its surface area when slotting, cutting the material directly without having any relieving spaces surrounding the cutter. In my world, I would start at 0.5mm and watch, listen and feel how the machine is working. If the cut is too heavy, you will hear the machine fighting as it moves the cutter forward and you will likely feel some vibration through the trails.
Initially, you could aim to have a quiet and comfortable machine that does not feel strained. It will preserve your machine and your tool life. You can always ramp up the cutting speed and depth, depending on material desired finish orf the workpiece
This link shows an olive wood carving. It is very nice wood to carve and for my roughing pass, I used a two flute 6.35mm (¼") cutter at 1000mm/min and a pass depth of 1mm at 10,000 rpm. Note how clean the cut looks.
For my finishing pass, I did not wish to sand the model detail at all because I wanted to retain the details as carved. I used a circumferential toolpath (to avoid repetitive lines like a ploughed field when using raster cutting) with a ball ended two flute cutter of 0.25mm (0.00984"). I was using a 3D pass depth at 18,000 rpm. The pass depth for a 3D carve like this carves the whole of the depth all at once in that specific line of cut, hence the very small ball ended cutter.
mm to inches: be sure to use some form of 1inch = 2.54cm. Otherwise you will exacerbate any accumulated variance with each conversion.
EDIT: 2.54 has infinite significant figures (so in theory, with each conversion one isn’t accumulating variance in their math).
Thanks for the advice. I’ll give the smaller depth and slower feed a try. Thanks.
Hey Will…. I’m running in to a new issue that I’ve never been faced with…… About 1/4 way through cutting my project I get message that the cutter isn’t connected. I stopped everything, restarted the computer, turned off the CNC, and started everything back up…. It did it again…. This time in a slightly different spot, but still the same “no cutter connected” message. Thoughts?
Usually when this happens after a period of successful operation it is worn carbon brushes — try replacing them.
Also check for a heavy load on the same circuit (refrigerator?).
Dumb question…. But what carbon brushes? Where? And how do you change them? I don’t have anything else on the circuit. Extension cord ran to a power strip. Only the computer and cutter connected. The router portion is actually plugged in to another power strip on the backside of the table on a different circuit.
Interference from the arcing of the brushes in the router.
Near the top of the router are flat screw driver caps. One one either side. Unplug the router, remove a cap. The brushes are below that, . Install the new brush, install the cap, rinse repeat for the other side. An extra set of brushes were included when you got the router.
I see the flat screw plugs… I’ll change these out. Hope it fixes the issue. This has been driving me crazy. Thank you!
Btw, I did have the router plugged in to the same power strip that my dust collector is plugged in to. Do you think that might cause the issue?
Old brushes standing on end. New brushes laying flat. Don’t look like much of a difference. Thoughts?
Apparently a dry well, but worth checking — try running an “air job” with no stock and spindle and dust collection off
Going to do the dry run now. I’ll let ya know.
I put the old brushes back in. I took the router off of the dust collection circuit and have it plugged in with only the laptop and machine. I’m doing a run without a bit (router is on) and no dust collection. Let’s see what this does.
So how will an issue with the router cause the machine to lose connection with the computer? Seems like those are entirely two different things. I’d understand it if the router had some type of feedback to the motherboard, but the router itself isn’t tied to the board at all. Just can’t wrap my brain around how that would affect the connection.
I’m definitely not doubting you about this…. You all are the experts and have forgotten 20 times more than what I know about this right now…. Just trying to understand how these are related.
One last thing…. I did change out the usb cable to something a little beefier. Not sure if that will make a difference or not. But it can’t hurt.
The wearing carbon brushes increases the distance between the brush and the matching part of the motor which increases EMI.
A better quality USB cable may help, esp. if it has connectors which hold more securely if a loose connection was the cause of loss of connection.
