Over the past nearly six months, I’ve been building a CNC machine to be able to mill parts out of wood and aluminum. This is a part 2 of a previous blog post I wrote about the CNC machine I’ve been building.
If you remember from the last blog post, I was working on assembling the CNC machine following the CAD schematic that I had designed for this build.
Putting it all together…
Once I had the CAD drawing and all the parts necessary, it was fairly a fairly straightforward assembly. Simply bolting the steel custom-cut pieces to the aluminum extrusion, I was very easily able to assemble the entire thing. However, I was soon to realize how sloppy my work was.
Tolerances – Forcing accuracy
Tolerances – turns out when you’re building an incredibly-accurate cutting machine, these are quite important! (Who could’ve guessed?) I’m using MGN12H rails for this CNC machine, which have incredibly tight tolerances. This is good because it allows me to get smooth movement on both axes without any wobbling or backlash. This is bad because I need to be very precise with my measurements & my work. Overall, I was able to get the thing assembled, but it took significantly longer than I was expecting simply because of how precise I’d have to be.
You can see the MGN12H rails are visible in this CAD mockup of the CNC machine. Obviously, it’s still a work in progress, but this is the CAD model I’ve been following while building this.
Tapping 20/20 aluminum extrusion
One thing I did have to do in order to finish assembling this machine was tap holes at the ends of the 20/20 aluminum extrusion. This would allow me to screw these extrusions into the steel plates on the sides and front and back of the machine. However, I ran into a bit of an issue while tapping.
To be continued:
Yeah, and that’s about where I am with the CNC machine right now. I currently have a tap bit stuck in a piece of 20/20 aluminum extrusion. I’ve tried countless times to get it out, but I’m losing hope on whether it’s even possible to remove at this point. I’ll write an update blog post soon on what ended up happening and what steps I take next.
Apologies for missing last week’s blog post, I’ve been incredibly busy with school work and didn’t have time to write one up.
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[…] This post is a direct continuation of my Part 2 CNC machine build. […]