Unboxing of desktop CNC from MIB instruments China

aironeous
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Re: Unboxing and setup of desktop CNC from MIB instruments China

Post by aironeous »

I will stop posting new items to this thread when I am done with setup. I should have renamed this thread to include setup in the title as you really don't know about the hardware until you do setup and try to cut a few things right?

OK finally It's Sunday and I don't have a hangover and so I am out in the garage trying to get something going here.
I used a hacksaw to cut off a piece of purple heart. Usually when I was in school before finalizing the stock size in a project in vcarve or mastercam I would take a piece of stock and square it on all sides using the mill in school with like a 1/4 or 1/2 inch end mill. So either I would cut the stock to match the vcarve file or vice versa.

My piece of purple heart is 3.130 X 7.005 X .835 before I square it off. Trying to put the vice from MIB on the table in this orientation the slots on the vice do not match the table.
13040021.jpg
13040022.jpg
I suppose I could drill 2 holes into the table and tap them but I've never bought a tap set and I think it is best I play around with this for a while before I decide on the best place to put those tap holes.

In the other orientation even if I put the vice all the way to the left the handle on the vice will hit the gantry support on the right unless the smallest stock is used and anyways the stock in this position is past the X limit on the right hand side anyways.
13040023.jpg
13040024.jpg
13040025.jpg
The largest width that the vice can expand to is 4.275 so my stock will from now on have to be max 4.27 if I want to use the vice to square it on all sides. I will have to adjust my buying of end mills now as this tiny machine will not use double end mills because most are too long.

rej
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Re: Unboxing of desktop CNC from MIB instruments China

Post by rej »

I have followed this entire thread and enjoy it, please continue.
http://www.3dsigncamp.com
http://www.roctechusacnc.com

aironeous
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Re: Unboxing of desktop CNC from MIB instruments China

Post by aironeous »

I had to cut off an additional amount from my stock to get it into the vice.
This is my mickey mouse to get the vice on there for the time being.
13040027.jpg
I don't have a dial gage right now to true it straight. I will have to buy one.

After trying to square the piece by milling it on all sides looking down on the vice you can see that the lower vice jaw is crooked.
13040028.jpg
I wonder if I could heat up the base of that lower jaw where it meets the long screw on the vice with a torch and clamp it against a known perfectly square steel object and straighten it that way?
It is also taller (Z) on the right side than the left by about 30 thousandths.

While I was using the metric end mill provided by MIB I had the spindle speed at 75%. The end mill I used had diamond patterned flutes. I think it is meant as a both up and down cut end mill. I know there is a name for this type of end mill (that I don't know yet). It was very loud and chattery on conventional cutting about 40 to 70 thousandths (Y axis moving away from me) but most of the time pretty quiet on climb cutting (coming towards me).

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Ms Wolffie
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Re: Unboxing of desktop CNC from MIB instruments China

Post by Ms Wolffie »

That vice looks like the one I have for my drill press.
Why not just clamp the workpiece straight to the table or use a spoil board if you are cutting through the workpiece?
Then you can have a larger workpiece :D
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Wolffie
Cheers
Wolffie

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aironeous
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Re: Unboxing of desktop CNC from MIB instruments China

Post by aironeous »

So a spoil board is basically you just clamp a large flat piece of wood to the table and drill holes in it to clamp it into the tslots? But then how do you reliably clamp your piece to that throw away board?
Are you supposed to tap holes into the board?

Shouldn't you take a large end mill (what's that on this dinky machine a 1/4"?) and just face the whole thing before you do anything with it so it is flat to the Z on your machine?

I'm not working with much Z room here so a spoil board I guess should be the thinnest I can get away with. I have to buy new single sided end mills to match these collets.
There is only 2 clamps that came with the machine. Everything I buy has to be small to go on this machine.

My radiator on my car just blew out and I'm begging a couple of coworkers to give me a ride home (I'm taking the train there) until it is fixed so I'm kind of locked into spending all my money on fixing my car at this point plus I'm going to get laid off in June so my budget is limited. I'm trying to do lots of overtime to jack my wages up as high as possible so when I get unemployed my average wage for this quarter is high enough that with my unemployment payments (they base it on your highest quarter over the last year) I'll be able to cover basics plus continue on with this machine and hobby.

Depending on what the mechanic tells me in the morning will determine if I have money to spend on more tools for right now.

I'm done for tonight. I just tried to load a gcode file from cut2d and it cut me off at the trial software limit of 500 lines it seems. I don't have the money to buy the full mach3 version yet. Unless I get lucky and the mechanic tells me it's going to be less than 600 to fix my car then I won't be able to buy the full mach3 version until maybe end of may.

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Ms Wolffie
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Re: Unboxing of desktop CNC from MIB instruments China

Post by Ms Wolffie »

You only need a spoilboard if you are going to cut through the workpiece. Since yours is mainly an engraving machine, you shouldn't need it.
Also, with such a small machine, you probably only need 2 clamps there is not going to be much pressure on the workpiece.
Without the vice you will get more height as well.
http://stores.ebay.com/Supermario-Blade ... 7675.l2563
These bits will fit your machine and the price is reasonable.
Cheers
Wolffie
Cheers
Wolffie

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aironeous
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Re: Unboxing of desktop CNC from MIB instruments China

Post by aironeous »

Hi everyone. It's been 2 years of trials and tribulations but I'm finally back. I finally got a stable job and just got a raise. I'll be able to buy/upgrade to vcarve pro from cut2d next paycheck on the 5th, then I will get back out in the garage and see how this little CNC performs. I'll make a new thread then.

aironeous
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Re: Unboxing of desktop CNC from MIB instruments China

Post by aironeous »

So now that I'm making $15 an hour and also being the soda vending machine at work (I'll explain later) I decided to buy the vice and other basic tools I need to pick back up my CNC plans. I ordered a vice, edge finder. calipers, parallel plates and a few other things. I broke out the CNC MIB I had sitting in my closet and put it back in the garage. I vacuumed up and layed everything out and tried to put my newly bought decent vice on the table. The vice cost me $150 the original vice that MIB sent me that I paid extra for was crooked and unusable. Also the holes didn't line up with the tracks on the table.

Here is the result when I put the vice on the table. The table is in metric and the vice is in standard to begin with and also you can see there is no room at all on the Z and there is absolutely no solution to get this vice on to this table. This is a standard milling vice. They built this machine for a drill press vice. This CNC is practically useless. The mill press vice they sent me is crooked and WHO MAKES A MILL DESIGNED FOR A DRILL PRESS VICE? A standard mill vice is too tall for it. The vice alone already will hit the limit switch. Trying to think of a solution there is no solution in any axis.

If I take the table off and put a piece of wood instead that is 1/2 as thick or even 1/4 that gives me at most 1/2 inch and if I add a piece of wood or something to both sides of the Z struts to make them taller the cables are wound tight and wont let me do that. This thing is made for a drill press vice. Who does that?! Who does that?!
I was really gullible to buy this thing. The only way I can use this is with a drill press vice or clamps or maybe a vacuum table set up which I have never done before. So now I have to look all over the place to try to find a non crooked drill press vice.
Attachments
IMAG2414.jpg
IMAG2416.jpg
IMAG2417.jpg
IMAG2420.jpg

aironeous
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Re: Unboxing of desktop CNC from MIB instruments China

Post by aironeous »

After sleeping on it for a while, I thought of 1 possible solution. Mount the vice to the work table and remove the center tracks of the cnc table so that I am basically sitting a CNC on top of the vice instead of the other way around. I have to go out in the garage and look to see if that will work. Also it dawned on me when I woke up that I can just mill the jaws on that drill press vice straight.

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Re: Unboxing of desktop CNC from MIB instruments China

Post by Leo »

Nice to see you are able to come back to the CNC machine.
Imagine the Possibilities of a Creative mind, combined with the functionality of CNC

aironeous
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Re: Unboxing of desktop CNC from MIB instruments China

Post by aironeous »

My previous post was stupid because there is a ball screw running down the center underneath the mill table, there is no way I can just simply lay it over the mill vise. That was really a stupid idea and I guess since I was up in my room and not in front of the mill I got an incorrect mental picture.

Here is my new attempt to get a mill press vise on to this table.
I ordered a wilton mill press vise from Amazon for about $80. It doesn't have that large divet in the back like I see on all the other mill press vises
on Amazon so I will be able to put parallel plates in it.

I also order this
http://www.amazon.com/iGAGING-DIGITAL-M ... NESS+GAUGE
and this
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00004 ... ge_o03_s00
which by the way a .7 mech pencil will not fit into any of those holes. You need a scribe or .5mm I'm guessing

Saturday I went to Home depot and lowes and purchased a cheap B&D drill, some drill bits, some screw driver bits for the drill and a 7-1/4" cut off tool. I planned on replacing the whole mill table so I got a piece of poplar about 23" X 11 (the table is 9.4 X about 18). Well my cut off tool wasn't big enough so I asked the cabinet maker across the street to cut it for me based on my scribe lines, but it was night time and when he handed it back to me it was too short. So that didn't work but I got some scrap wood to practice with/break in this thing.

Also I did not take into account that maybe I should have added a 1/2" on the length so that when I drill the wholes there is enough wood for support since wood is not metal and when you drill holes too close to the edge they tend to not do well.

Sunday I decided I was going to flip the left most track on the table upside down, get some 1 inch M5 machine screws and get thinner bolts to bolt down the vise and some washers and try to get my new Wilton drill press vise bolted to the table that way. Well it worked kind of, here is the result.
But I only have around 1 inch in the z to play with which totally sucks.
Attachments
IMAG2443[2].jpg

aironeous
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Re: Unboxing of desktop CNC from MIB instruments China

Post by aironeous »

Well I was all set to make another post complaining about how Mach 3 would not obey the emergency reset and would not move at all or let me do anything.
First picture I was going to post, "see not limit switch triggered."
IMAG2444[1].jpg
2nd picture I was going to post, "see I have the yellow light."
IMAG2445[1].jpg
3rd picture was going to be, "see it won't let me do anything, emergency estop triggered and I can't reset it."
IMAG2446[1].jpg
Until I remembered a little detail that mib said I had to follow which I did last time just to amuse them so I was fully following the directions but I ignored it this time so I thought, "well... last resort," so I did it and the problem resolved.
They want you to run a usb cord from the computer (in this picture it is the blue one)
IMAG2448[1].jpg
to the back of the control box
IMAG2447[1].jpg
Now the estop is off and I can proceed.

On the 5th I purchased the full version of Vcarve desktop. I upgraded from cut2d 1.5.

aironeous
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Re: Unboxing of desktop CNC from MIB instruments China

Post by aironeous »

Now I am running into the problem that mach3 is contradicting itself.
I ran the ref all home in mach3 and reset the homing settings in the configs until I could see visually that it was correct. Everything seems correct now for machine home coordinates but when I switch to the g54 offsets and get them all zeroed I can even switch to them and click the "go to zero" and it will go to the center of my workpiece but when I go to display mode so I can see where mach3 thinks my workpiece it tells me it is on the far left.

Where it is in reality
IMAG2450[1].jpg
Where Mach3 tells me it is when I click on display mode
IMAG2451[1].jpg

aironeous
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Re: Unboxing of desktop CNC from MIB instruments China

Post by aironeous »

The gantry takes up the back 3.5 inches of the table and the spindle actually goes of the table in the front. This pic taken about 1 second before y limit switch triggered.
IMAG2449[1].jpg

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Re: Unboxing of desktop CNC from MIB instruments China

Post by martin54 »

Pity you have gone & bought a vice now, there is someone on this forum that makes low profile vices for cnc machines. Don't know much about them as I am in the UK but think I remember a post about them a while ago on the forum

Here is a link to the website

http://www.rockrivertools.com/index.htm

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