First post. Thinking of trying my luck at CNC for machining aluminum. Looking at the Openbuilds C-Beam Platemaker. Thought this would be a good place to start to introduce myself to the world of CNC. With some of the modifications I have seen, looks like this could be turned into a nice little machine. Super Sized C-Beam Plate Maker Would like to make/modify molds for pouring jig heads for fishing. Molds halves would be ~ 4” x 10” x ¾”. Once I have mastered the C-Beam, will use the knowledge I learned to make plates and add electronics to convert my mini-lathe and mini-mill to CNC. Plan to buy the entire kit with all options. Thinking this would be the most trouble free path. Any thoughts, recommendations or other considerations would be appreciated. Dan
Welcome! We've got quite a few fishermen on the forum like @MStillman1966 who is going to be making lures according to this POST Look forward to following your journey!
I plan to make jig heads with mine too, but I just haven't got around to it yet. I have made several mounting plates for rod holders out of aluminum. I also made a custom "fish squish" board for pressing coho salmon fillets when making lox. Not the best picture, but it works.
Cool... I am assuming you have the Plate Maker. I already pour my own jig heads, but want to modify current molds and have ideas for new ones. This is example of my final product. Just need to place order.. doing a lot of reading right now before I pull plug. Will probably order everything Monday. -dan
Cool. Looks like a steelhead jig. My cnc is my own design similar to the Ox but I used large leadscrews rather than belts. It works great on aluminum.
Kit ordered. Everything except controller. Found a CNC Shield kit for $20 including Uno board. Thought I would play with that for a while. Excited...
Kit arrived last Friday. Haven't had a chance to open box. No place to work. Plan to clean out a space in garage then purchase work table. Will inventory all parts first. Received a Chinese and a real Uno. Also go a CNC Shield and speed board. Anyway, looking forward to getting started.
Finally have a few (4) days off and plan to start putting recently purchased C-Beam Plate Maker together. Box has been sitting in living room floor since it arrived almost a month ago. Going to make a little room in garage and open box to start inventorying parts. Question: If I want to document my build, do I just "Submit a Build" and go from there?
Ok... So I got everything unpacked this morning and checked ends of extrusions for square. I would say most of the pieces are cut with a slight angle in one direction. Suspect angle of chop saw is off. I added pic to show angle I'm talking about. (Don't think you can see the error in pic.) Do I proceed and see how build turns out or should I find solution for "squareness"? Dan
I would first check with a fixed square, instead of an adjustable square. (Many adjustables are not accurate enough.) And yes, I would correct for squareness and equal length before building.
OK, this project went on hold almost a year ago due to other things. Finally found some time to work on it again. All of the rails sent to a machine shop to be squared since ends were cut at an angle. Machine went together with no known issues following assembly video. Loaded GRBL 0.8 onto Arduino board and installed CNC Shield 3.0 board and drivers. Wired stepper motors. Using GRBL Panel, I was able to move all axis. Video went into discussing verifying GRBL settings. When I went to setting pages, rectangular settings area totally blank. No cells, no text, no numbers, nothing...totally blank. Selecting 'Get GRBL Settings' does nothing. Have tried two versions of GRBL Panel. Wrong GRBL Panel version for GRBL 0.8 maybe? Thoughts?
That is plan. Only concern is pin swap between Reloaded to latest version of GRBL and GRBL Panel. GRBL settings now showing up. I know that there is some changes to pin assignment for limit switches I will have to deal with later due to using older CNC Shield V3.0 board. Then again, plan to move to different controller and drivers in the future. Tried to set current limit on drivers, but Vref voltage did not seem to change. Voltage on all set to around 0.6v for 1.5 amp to motors which is where I wanted to start out. Will go to better drivers at a later date. Ran the Hello Word file for foam cutout. Had ticking noise in x-axis and X and Y moving in wrong direction. Added pre-load to x-axis by tightening collar and then set $3 to 5 to get axis moving in right direction. Adding a second set screw to collars is on to-do list. Ran file with and without marker pin. Motors sounded great to me. Happy where machine is at. Feel like I have made a milestone after a very long delay. Going to take a few weeks off to spend time with my wife and then see if I can actually cut some foam. Stay tuned.
Glad to see that seems to be sorted. Have a look at the Blackbox controller from Openbuilds - very good drivers and lots of protection features built in (eg for limit switches). Alex.
I second the Blackbox idea. However, if you are committed to the CNC shield, upgrade to the real one that was made for Grbl 1.1 for $20. It may save a lot of time and frustration. Arduino CNC Shield V3.51 - GRBL v1.1 compatible - Uses Pololu Drivers | eBay
Finally got a little time to play with this some more. First actual cut into MDF. Pleased with results. Going to check calibration next.
