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2016 Is the Year of Buying CNC Tools Instead of Building Them (hackaday.com)
szczys writes: We have reached a turning point in personal CNC Tools like mills and laser cutters. Up until now, your options were to drop some serious cash (businesses) or spend time to build them yourself (individuals) at moderate expense. But over the last year the number of companies making CNC tools and the software available for them has matured. Anyone looking for an entry level machine in the coming year will find that purchasing equipment has a better time/price value than building yourself. The best part is, these entry level tools have the precision you need if you still want to build your own high-end or extreme-spec machines.
Where have you been for the past 40 years or so?
OK, let me actually read the article, and see WTF they are talking about vs. the almost certainly misleading post title... I suppose they mean, like "personal CNC"...
Oh, I see. We're talking about "desktop CNC printers" and "hobbyist CNC Mills".
Is it really that hard to come up with a title that expresses that, or at least include it in the body of the post? No? Too much to ask?
The reason I ask is that you've been able to buy CNC tools easily for the past 30-40 years or so, if my memory isn't failing yet. Because I remotely remember writing Z-80 code for the first microprocessor-based CNC controller a long, long time ago! (They were all minicomputer-based before that, and mainframe going even further back. BTW, Allen-Bradley bought the company that I wrote that code for...)
So, yea, the only people buying CNC machines back then were GM, Ford, Chrysler, Boeing, their suppliers, etc. etc. etc.
The truth is, this could have happened in the 80s, if only there had been Harbor Freight! Z-80's were certainly affordable to hobbyists. What didn't exist - I don't think - was decent, affordable, small mills. No reason it couldn't have happened were there a demand.
So, the excitement over 3D printing is past, and now people are realizing that there are CNC mills too?
Did we have to wait for affordable, powerful processors? Funny, that 4mHz Z-80 could run a 5-axis mill, with the position loop(s) running in the Z-80 (not in the specialized hardware used today.)
I wrote the code for those position loops. And counted every machine cycle by hand!
So, yawn. Big breakthrough.
When milling wood or modelling board (plastic composite with the approximate density of wood), CNC machines do not require much power. Potential damage is greatly limited over industrial machines that can mill steel. Home builds are practical and people have been doing it since before 3D printers were popular. A typical use-case for a low powered machine is to mill moulds. These would be used for plastic moulding but you could go another step and cast metals as well. Quality wise, there is really no comparison to most 3D printers. Try browsing the Guerrilla guide to CNC machining, mold making, and resin casting to see what can be done. It is very impressive.
Milling metal, even something soft like aluminum, will still result in razor-sharp chips getting everywhere. Cleaning the machine and your work area is something that will require some care, and heavy gloves because those chips can cut your hands to ribbons if you're not careful.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
Wow, 3D printers get all the attention, but cheap CNC machines are probably a bigger deal.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
The actual number of home projects that the average "maker" will complete in a year makes the cost of buying your own machinery very expensive, when you amortise the cost of the equipment (and the learning failures) across the number of successes. However, since with many "makers" the actual hobby isn't having and using the end product, it's the joy and anticipation of buying new toys and the fun of playing with them - any actual working pieces are simply a side-effect, then more toys is the way to go!
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Prices of even new CNC mills and lathes has recently (last 10 years) come down massively. 20-30k can get a decent small working volume machine new these days. Even the extras, like end mills are way cheaper now. It is already at the point where it can be cheaper to get your own for small volume rather than outsource it to machine shops. Assuming you have the in house expertise.
My problem is space. My last mill and lathe was in the inlaws garage which is now full of junk.
If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?
I've been saying this for about 10 years now and have collected a few machines. Just last week I was looking at buying a g0704 due to its large user base. Manual machine is ~1.2k$ new and a conversion (diy) is probably another thousand.
Note that that's "most" but not "all". There are of course laser sintering systems, but prints from them are usually very expensive because they're very expensive. Also laser spraying / thermal spraying systems, but they're new and rare at this point. Another technique sometimes used is printing out a model comprised of metal grains inside a plastic matrix, heating up to sintering temperatures leaving a porous version of the object made of the desired metal, and filling in the pores with a lower melting point metal. Quality usually isn't as good with this technique, but it's cheap. That said, lost wax casting does appear to be the most common that they use. And the results are basically just like any other cast object.
Shiny New Australia.
I suck at welding too, although I think my 1960s MIG welder is partly to blame. Or at least that's my excuse ;) And I have to admit that I too have some amateur rocket concepts myself that I'm really itching to try, though I need to retire a few existing projects first. I've got one rocket concept that I'm working on simulating in OpenFOAM involving a caseless LOX/aluminum/paraffin/polyurethane rocket that burns itself up in its entirity. First the channels of open-cell polyurethane foam saturated with LOX burn, then paraffin surrounding them (while their honeycomb aluminum substrate provides compression), then melting and atomizing the aluminum into the exhaust stream (where it provides extra heat to the exhaust), with the exhaust expanding via a virtual expansion nozzle (the point of the cfd simulations is to figure out what geometry yields optimal expansion while not complicating manufacture). It'd be really neat to know if it works out in the real world. But I need to finish the artsy gate for my land that I've been working on first at the very least, and probably a few other projects too, I can't keep accumulating them whenever something else jumps into my head ;)
Don't get me wrong, I love coding. But you're absolutely right that there's something particularly special about making something that you can touch and interact with :) And (with the exception of welding well) I usually find that things are easier than they sounded at the outset. For example the other day I was restoring a late 1800s pressure gauge and almost didn't even try to get the dents out of a brass ring because I "don't know how to do bodywork". Turns out that it's no harder than just finding any flat-tipped metal tool, a hard surface, and making a bunch of little taps on the tool with a hammer as you move the tip around - after polish you'd never know it had once been banged up.
Shiny New Australia.