Where to start? 3040 parts upgrade

[daxliniere]

Hi everyone!

I have been given a 3040 CNC machine and wanted to get it up and running with some upgrades. I do welding, woodworking, electronics+electrics, am pretty good with CAD, but I have NO IDEA where to start with choosing parts for this thing. I'd love some expert input from this fine community.

The steppers seem fine (at least for starters), but I will need a new CNC controller and spindle (+motor controller). It has about 50mm of Z travel, which seems fine my purposes.
I'd like to use the machine for cutting sheet and block aluminium, making PCBs and sometimes wood/nylon.

My questions:
1) If the hardest material I'm planning on cutting is standard grade 10mm aluminium, what power spindle do I need? I don't care about super-quick job completion, I'm happy to do multiple passes. The router has a ?55mm spindle mount already if that helps.
1a) Does it need to be water-cooled or can I get away with air cooled? (I'd like to keep it simple if possible.)

2) I like the idea of having a standalone CNC controller so I don't need to have a computer set up in my workshop. I've seen there are a few Arduino/etc devices that will take an SD card/USB stick.
Will these produce good quality results or is a computer (Mach4?) the best option?
2b) If standalone is fine, which board should I be looking at? (Quartz? RepRap? RAMPS? GRBL? What are these things?!)
2c) Seems like the TMC2209 motor drivers are the best. Low noise, high precision, about £12 each. Any objections?

3) It came with a 24v 6A PSU for 3-axes of steppers and spindle. Do I need a bigger supply?
3a) Should I be running the steppers at a higher voltage? What's the advantage?

4) Do I need to install limit switches if I'm careful with setup and programming?

5) Is it possible to swap heads and make this thing a 3D printer? If it will compromise the CNC router functionality, I'll happily forget about 3D printing for this machine.
5a) If it is viable, does this affect which CNC controller I get? (see question 2b).


Thank you so much for reading this far and an even bigger thanks if you have some knowledge to share with this CNC newbie.


All the best,
Dax.

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[daxliniere]

Here are a few photos. It definitely needs a good clean and regrease!

[routalot]

That is a long way from being the worst machine ever to appear on this forum.Before changing anything I would suggest you try making a thing or two so that any deficiencies you find can be dealt with,rather than trying to visualise problems and dealing with them.I looked briefly at Arduino based controls for my home built machine and decided not to use them.Among other things because I value the chance to stop a program if it appears to be heading for a problem and I couldn't see how to do this with an Arduino.In my limited exploration of them it seemed that once the code had been sent to the machine it executed all of it.It may well be that you can use a Raspberry Pi and a touchscreen to jog the machine or to pause the program,but I can't say.It would also mean you have a basic computer running in the workshop.

I found myself going with LinuxCNC because on top of being free,I have some experience of Linux and it is absolutely reliable.The workshop computer and monitor was picked up on ebay and cost me less than a Raspberry Pi4.The setup was really easy once I understood that the test movement didn't mean what I thought it meant and I have yet to install and calibrate home or limit switches.The machine returns to it's designated home position, but not beyond it ,if I use the arrow keys on the keyboard.

Would you consider cutting a few parts from balsa or foam to get some CNC experience?It would get you further along the path and get you thinking about machining strategies and workholding.it also wouldn't be too taxing for the rather modest spindle currently in place.To make the leap to a more industrial spindle and the associated VFD setup is an additional challenge and you would have to find a home for another box somewhere.

[joeavaerage]

Hi,
I think the issue will be rigidity, or rather the lack of it. You will be able to engrave aluminum with that machine but its just not rigid enough
to 'mill' aluminum.

My suggestion is that before you spend a cent on new parts, try out what you have first. Even if you get better steppers or power supplies or what have you,
if the machine flexes over much then all the new parts will do you no good.

The pictures suggest that it will cut wood and plastics well and aluminum, at best, modestly.

If you want your steppers to run fast and who doesn't, then you need high voltage drivers and power supply, I would not be satisfied with anything under 60VDC,
and would prefer 80VDC. All steppers lose torque the faster they go and the classic method of minimizing the torque degradation is the highest possible voltage
drivers and supply.

I use Mach4 and have done so for five plus years....and like it. Downside is that Mach4Hobby is not free, and you will require a Mach4 ready external motion controller,
and there are no credible cheap Chinese controllers for Mach4. You might get away with a UC100 or PMDX-412 at around $120, but you should look at a 57CNC, UC 300
or an Ethernet SmoothStepper (my preference at $180), and each will require one or more breakout boards ranging from as low as $30 up to $180 depending on the
sophistication of the breakout board. If you are thinking about Mach4 you should budget for around $500-$600 for the license and some good hardware.

All development on Mach3 ceased six years ago and for that reason I consider it obsolete, however there are many thousands who still use it, so don't be
put off by my opinion. There is a range of hardware types that work with Mach3 including a no-cost parallel port option right up to a Hicon Integra or CSMIO
controllers at around $600. There are some cheap Chinese controllers but if you read posts in this forum or the Mach forum you'll find lots of people
can't get them to work properly.....my suggestion is to avoid cheap Chinese controllers like the plague.

If that expense is beyond what you want to spend then LinuxCNC has a lot to recommend it, being free and open source among them. You will probably
want a Mesa board, but can be had for around $200-$300 depending on the model.

Another Windows OS solution is UCCNC. You would require one of the UCxxx series controllers, breakout board/boards and a UCCNC license. The UCCNC license is
only $60 so is fair value. Note that you can only use it on one machine whereas a Mach4Hobby license can be used on up to five machines with just one license purchase,
so if you have multiple machines Mach4Hobby comes back into contention on cost basis.

The three solutions I have mentioned, well four if you count Mach3, (Mach4Hobby, LinuxCNC and UCCNC) are all good and (broadly) pretty similar to one another
and you could make a perfectly good hobby machine with any of them. They are a quantum leap up on GRBL and similar systems.

Craig

[cyclestart]

If you can decide on how to control the machine the rest of the pieces of the puzzle will begin to fit together. If the budget is limited I'd go Linuxcnc. Well actually I'd go Linuxcnc regardless but that's based on my own prejudices and lack of experience with the other options Options are many, even Centroid has a hobby market offering these days.

I like the idea of having a standalone CNC controller so I don't need to have a computer set up in my workshop

A Google search for "offline cnc control(ler}" will turn up some interesting things. Reliable documentation for these type of controls seems to be a bit hard to find and help from other users will be even harder to find. Interesting but probably not the best choice for getting your feet wet.

The spindles normally available to fit that mount are bit high on the rpm and low on torque for metals but people make it work.

btw: I run Grbl occasionally. It has limitations but I don't find it truly horrible. My implementation has stop/pause/resume and jog using a pc sender.

[NIC 77]

Check out this thread:

https://www.cnczone.com/forums/stepp...ml#post2385534

Look at the Bigtreetech 32 bit boards and TMC 2160 drivers and a touch screen interface. Probably the most economical choice.

Or the Duet 3 board. The drawback of the Duet, is the voltage is limited to 32V but 24V is recommended.

Those are both geared towards 3D printers and will allow you to use the machine without having an external computer connected. You also don't have to pay extra for the software to run them.

Although you will still need to have an external computer to do your CAD/CAM work.

2c) Seems like the TMC2209 motor drivers are the best. Low noise, high precision, about £12 each. Any objections?

I object. Those are good for 2Amps. IMO, those are really for Nema 17's. Go with higher amp drivers so you can upgrade your motors. I think you are better off upgrading your motors than you are buying a higher voltage PSU, it depends on the specific motors you are using. Again, see the link to the above thread. But you probably just want to get the thing running before doing that.

As others have mentioned, you won't get good results trying to cut aluminum with this machine. If that is something you really want to do, then you are better off to not spend alot of money on this. Get it working, inexpensively, have fun with it, then save your money to buy a small used CNC mill (an actual mill, so many companies use that word "mill" when actually describing a light duty engraver).

Did this come with an electronics box of any kind? Is it damaged?

No, you shouldn't need to add limit switches right away to use the machine, but you should have some kind of emergency stop for when you mess up your code.

Do some searches on YouTube for "Running Marlin on a Mill" or "CNC Router Running Marlin" or "Duet CNC Router". I wouldn't bother with GRBL.

Another option is to get yourself a simple break out board (hardware) to run either Mach 3, Mach 4, UCCNC, LinuxCNC, (all software) you could still use the Bigtreetech 2160 drivers with it, but you would need to be connected to a PC. If you wanted to use this for 3d printing, not sure how you would get that to work, although some people have done it. I'm specifically referring to things like heated bet and thermister / thermocouple input, fan control. Controlling the stepper motors isn't a problem.

A PC interface with a mouse and keyboard is nice to use. The Duet Wifi boards allow for a PC interface via wifi, or stand alone use via a touchscreen. But they are expensive, and I don't think it's worth spending that money on this router.

Most of the answers you will get on this forum are geared towards larger CNC routers.

[routalot]

I admit that when building my original system,one of my concerns was that my lack of experience with control systems would lead to lots of smoke and some dead components.In consequence I bought some of the lowest cost parts on the market.No regrets about that decision and I didn't start a fire either.I also went with free software and so I bought a windows 7 box on ebay and converted it to dual boot so I could run LinuxCNC-no regrets about that either.The only really painful part was getting the ultra basic breakout board to send the correct instructions to the steppers and even that wasn't too hard in the end.These can be found online for very little and while not the best,they should get a machine running steppers from a parallel port running. https://www.amazon.com/db25-breakout...breakout+board

There are better ways of getting a machine to run but given the nature of the machine in question you won't be likely to need massive torque or really fast movement.Leave the ultimate performance for the next machine and just become comfortable with the process for now.

[cyclestart]

Given your interest in expanding that machine into 3D printing and associated hardware, there's another website worth checking out.
Link -->http://https://www.v1engineering.com/
And the kind of discussions found there.
Link-->https://forum.v1engineering.com/t/gr...r-milling/6624
That group takes a different approach than normally found on cnczone.