Remeber your first

[mountaindew]

If only people understood the POWER of 2.5D. I don't make anything that requires anything but 2.5D, and I'm doing alright...



Happy Thanksgiving. http://www.cnczone.com/forums/profil...ignore&u=80000

This is ok "no more sales ads for a product he has no experience with" maybe

I would never tell anyone NOT to do this or Your Wasting your time!
People have different skills! If 2d drawing and 2d cam software or whatever works for you USE it.
If 3d cad and 3d cam works for you use it!

I enjoy using my tools not telling others they are wasting there time or a 5 year old can do it!

Brad or anyone can ignore me, that's how people with that mind set work!
Years of high level education, degrees and learning working in a professional environment for 30 years has helped ME keep open an mind and want to expand my skills, art and profession.

Some simple thoughts from a simple man making his way in universe.
Hope this inspires others to not only read, understand and learn from people "not censor" also to strive to be the best at what they do.
In my case money has never been a problem and comes easy when your the best at what you do.
md

Simple thing to keep in mind!
"knowledge is compounding"
Warren Buffet,
one of the 5 wealthiest men on the planet!

[popspipes]

"knowledge is compounding"
Warren Buffet,

I tend to listen to this fellow as he is one who can "talk the talk and walk the walk" I tend to make judgments by what a fellow says and can produce as well.

I use 3d software as well, most of the stuff I do is 2 or 2 1/2d but I had one hole that was 3d, so I made it a priority to learn 3d.

Sprut is not an easy program to deal with, but its in my price range for hobby type projects.



MD, I enjoy your posts as there is always something to be learned from them!

[flatsix66]

I'm a complete newbie to CNC but I got my PCNC up and running about a week ago. I'm using Fusion360 for CAD and CAM so far, using their tutorials I'm starting to get the hang of things. This is the first part I have made: Tapping was a fail, the M6 .7 tap broke off in one of the holes, I screwed up the feed rate calculation. So far I'm having a ball, the success so far has far exceeded my expectation!

[kirk_wallace]

There should be ways to check your tapping routine before cutting parts. I haven't tried it yet but one suggestion is to clamp a stiff wire in your vice and bend it so the tip points to the side of an "air cut" hole. Tap your air cut hole and look to see that the wire tip is in sync with the tap threads. The tap threads will look like a blur if not synced and steady when synced.

[mountaindew]

Was cleaning out old pictures and found this one. Nothing special, I liked the lighting and the freeze frame action so I decided to share it.



md

[mountaindew]

A couple more pictures with high contrast light I found while cleaning up directories of junk pictures.






Fun stuff.
Now that machine is back together I can get back to making more shiny things.

dew

[mountaindew]

Couple pictures of my trolley crane in action.





For no more then this cost it has been pretty handy for a one man shop. I used it to lift and set chip pans and also hold them in place while bolting down.



Works great for all kinds of heavy or awkward tools or materials. Used it the other day to lift and set lawn mower on saw horses for servicing and blade sharpening.
Major back saver

[CadRhino]

I have a similar setup. Really worth every penny.
You made me feel guilty when I saw how clean your machine is.

Couple pictures of my trolley crane in action.





For no more then this cost it has been pretty handy for a one man shop. I used it to lift and set chip pans and also hold them in place while bolting down.



Works great for all kinds of heavy or awkward tools or materials. Used it the other day to lift and set lawn mower on saw horses for servicing and blade sharpening.
Major back saver

[mountaindew]

Ditto on trolley, hf winch is a little rough sounding but it gets the job done.

I wish I could say its easy to keep clean or take apart and clean. Easy to spend about a half hour or more cleaning up my mess after using the mill. The way lube mess is nothing short of a pain to deal with, if there was one thing I could change in the design that would be it. A sealed system would be so nice and no coolant contamination.

[Steve Seebold]

The trolly would be a back saver, but I put the Tormach enclosure on my machine about 3 months ago, and there's no way to get it to the table now,

[Steve Seebold]

The way lube mess is nothing short of a pain to deal with, if there was one thing I could change in the design that would be it. A sealed system would be so nice and no coolant contamination.

If ANYONE can devise a way to keep the way lube out of the coolant, PLEASE let the group know.

Right now, once a week I'll pump all the coolant (as much as I can anyway) into a bucket on Friday or Saturday when I'm done for the day, then let it sit over night with the skimmer running. The skimmer doesn't get all the tramp oil, but it gets 80 to 90% of it. Makes for much cleaner run the following week.

I have learned though, when you pour your coolant back into the machine, don't try to dump 5 gallons in all at one time. I did that and ended up with 2 gallons on the floor because the return hose back to the coolant tank can't move that much that quickly. What a mess that was.. The coolant ran out on the garage floor then onto the brand new pavers I had just put in where the concrete driveway used to be.

[CNC-Dude]

A couple more pictures with high contrast light I found while cleaning up directories of junk pictures.






Fun stuff.
Now that machine is back together I can get back to making more shiny things.

dew

MD, these look awesome! Were these CAM'd in Sprutcam? What operations did you employ? Waterline, Plane? Thanks for sharing!

[mountaindew]

MD, these look awesome! Were these CAM'd in Sprutcam? What operations did you employ? Waterline, Plane? Thanks for sharing!

Thanks!
Outside of sprut I do very little. Mostly prepare stock to fixture and run sprut programs on

Screen clips of sprut turners cube


Caged ball, Depending on how this one is setup it generates well over 30,000 lines of g-code for all 6 sides in one program.
btw this took maybe 5 minutes to draw takes couple hours to mill out



Good test for a verity of operations and how well your controller executes large files.
The caged ball, I have used or tried about every operation I could waterline, plane and drive and all the combination operations for finishing.
Good way to gain understanding of tool paths, scallops and how to change parameters and how that effects results.

Some variants of this shown below in wood and plastic. I even did one with 1/2" mpt thread milled into 4 sides of ball with flanges.
Give a bunch of these away to friends and family.




md

[pickled]

Those are beauties! Nicely done MD!

[mountaindew]

Hand you a broken part of your machine "this is not that easy!"

I have no problem and I don't mind learning. Its not about a 5 year old doing this. Its more about having powerful tools and knowing how to use them.
Fusion, autocad, solid works sprutcam, tormach..........whatever are just tools to me! and I learn and use the tools best I can.
Its not weather this is better or that is easy. I know better already, they are all complex if not then they are LIMITED! I don't want limits and I plan on extending all my cad and cam experience right into other machines and leverage the skills I have proven so far. We had a conversation a while back about 2d and 3d and I see now you have also moved into the 3d world. Not that long ago I watched videos of you struggling to import some simple 2d model lines. Now your up to full blown solid works and fusion. how things change.
md

I think what he's saying is, things that are hard in some CAMs (and I get the impression Sprut is harder to learn than most - that was certainly my experience with it) are easy in HXMWorks/HSMXpress/Fusion. That has certainly been my experience. I found HSMXpress had a very short, easy learning curve, and I can now do things very quickly - much quicker than with ANY other CAM I've ever used. I generated my first useful part program in HSMXpress within the first hour, and I was new to Solidworks at the same time, so that hour included learning on BOTH programs. Other CAMs I tried, I worked with them for hours, and couldn't generate a single useful program. I struggled with VisualMill for almost two weeks, and never generated a single usable program! HSMWorks made CAM quick, easy, and painless, and I now no longer dread running a new program for the first time. If it runs right in HSMWorks, it will run right on the machine.

Regards,
Ray L.

Exactly Ray, perfect post.

I moved to 3D because I had to opportunity to be sponsored, wasn't going to turn that down. However IF HSMWorks wasn't the best there is in almost every respect (even being sponsored), I would still be using Rhino for everything and be perfectly happy and make all the same parts I do now. Took me months to understand RhinoCAM (after knowing Rhino), and a matter of hours to understand HSMWorks (and being NEW to Solidworks)

That is saying something, and in the end does equal - work smarter, not harder.

I didn't mean for this to be about HSMWorks, but that Fusion deal is FAR too good of a deal to pass up at $300yr for awesome 3D CAD/CAM software.

Yeah, I'm signing up for Fusion just because it's too cheap to pass up. I prefer Solidworks for CAD, but getting full HSMWorks for $300/year for life is well worth it, for the day when I NEED 3D CAM (which I really don't right now).

Regards,
Ray L.

Wow just 3 short years ago you went from learning how to draw in solid works and your first cam program that ever worked for you and provided good code. After all those years of experience. I on other hand had at this time I had NO CNC experience but over 20 years of 3D CAD experience the reason I got into this HOBBY! And was getting 3D CNC results in a matter of hours. Your were having problem getting 2d results in hours lol Your cam experience is 2d because you only need 2d my cad experience 20 years of it is mostly 3d and Sprutcam was easy for me because I have 25 years of computer software experience and understand how programs are designed, not one day repeated for 20 years.

The reason I challenged your post in another thread. But hey your the expert on cad because you can draw lines and cam up parts because if its just 2 cheap to pass up and the program is easy to use its better then others. I understand its not a phone app and take the time to understand and learn how the tool works !

AND I WILL REPEAT IT FOR the cheap seats they ARE ALL tools to me and I take the time to learn how to use them.

[mountaindew]

Reading back ,This was a fun thread for a while. I can still say I enjoy drawing and making what I can draw in 5 minutes is still very cool.
Thanks to all the people that developed these tools over the years for me to use

[006]

My first trolley crane!

Getting ready to setup 4th axis and wanted to solve the issue of moving the tool on and off mill. lifting 100 lbs or more is not good for my hands yet alone the tool or the precision surfaces it mounts on. Also at same time provide a system I can build on in my shop for rigging and moving heavy materials, parts or tools in general.
First part is standard electrical steel strut available from big box hardware for about 25$ per 10ft painted. This can be placed and mounted in logical manor to provide lifting and moving to most locations in my shop. These can be used single run, in parallel as a bridge trolley just depends where and how they are mounted and how you rig to them.
Attachment 257168

Next part is the trolley hardware. I purchased made pre engineered units with a weight rating of aprox. 600 lbs per trolley plate from McMaster! "these could be made"

Attachment 257170

Hardware ready for mock up

Attachment 257172


Trolley set about where it will be mounted to ceiling joists with lag screws at 1ft on center.


Attachment 257174

Close up of trolley in strut.

Attachment 257176

Next picture group will show it mounted along one ceiling truss on a painted 2x4 mounting base with lag screws.

Attachment 257216


Attachment 257218
md

Please can you let me know where you got the bearing from as I need to use this unistrut with the bearing .
Many thanks

Matthew

[mountaindew]

Please can you let me know where you got the bearing from as I need to use this unistrut with the bearing .
Many thanks

Matthew

McMaster car for the ones shown. otherwise search amazon for Unistrut trolley bearings …… I added another winch and struts in 2nd garage bay using trolley bearings from amazon.