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Building a Chinese 3018 CNC Engraving machine

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It can be hard to find the plans for this machine online. Here’s some help!
Chinese8013CNCEngraver
You’ll assemble most of it by just looking at the photos.

The manual I got with the latest one I ordered was pretty good.

The details page has a link to this dropbox:

Which has drivers, the manual, etc.
For the GRBL sender I have had good success with GRBL Panel which didn’t have as many features as others, but WORKED. https://github.com/gerritv/Grbl-Panel
One option I added for the little CNC was a proper collet:
This makes it easy to use better tools. I was using a standard 1/4” v-carving router bit, for instance. I found that the hole in the adapter that is supposed to slide over the 5mm motor shaft was just a bit small. I reamed it out with a 5mm ream, and that worked great. For the first one, I had to shove it onto the motor shaft with a vise – which worked, but I’ll never get it off!
Finally, one change I made was to use better nuts and bolts. The screws that come with the thing are soft – like aluminum, and have Phillips heads, which I hate. Proper metric cap screws are much better. Sorry for .ca links.

I’m giving a talk at Maker Space North on February 26, 2019

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Rich Loen has built many CNC machines including routers, mills, and cutters. He’ll share the knowledge he’s gained both building machines from scratch, and converting metal-working mills to CNC.

Tickets are limited so don’t miss out and snag yours now before they’re all gone!

More details from the event description: Rich Loen (https://Loen.Design) has built many CNC machines including routers, mills, and cutters. He’ll share the knowledge he’s gained both building CNC machines from scratch, and converting metal-working mills to CNC. Rich will cover:

  • Hardware options – machine frame, linear bearings, ball-screws, belt drives
  • Electronics – stepper motors, servos, drivers, power supplies, control interfaces like smooth steppers, G540, Planet CNC hardware.
  • Spindle options – routers, air/Water cooled spindles, high-speed spindles
  • Control Software – Mach3, Linux CNC, PlanetCNC, etc.
  • Design Software – Fusion 360, Vectric V-Carve Pro, Other options
  • Suppliers of hardware and software

 

Rich will be joined by Chris Manning (@silver_hand), a local watch maker and silver smith with years of CNC lathe and mill experience. Rich will also bring a small CNC mill he made for carving names into hockey pucks – and if you’re lucky, you can get your name carved into a puck during the event!

Success! We had a great time giving our talk “How to build a CNC machine” at Makerspace North

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@Silver_hand and I gave a talk about building your own CNC machine. The talk seemed very well received, and we had a lot of great questions from the audience at the end. Thanks to everyone who attended – you made the talk great!

Here’s the presentation in PPT, and PDF format.

And thanks to Sheri at MakerspaceNorth for hosting us tonight.

I’m giving a talk at Makerspace North!

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Here’s the promo stuff from MakerspaceNorth…

We are very lucky to have Rich Loen on board to delve into the makings of your own CNC machine! 

Rich Loen has built many CNC machines including routers, mills, and cutters. He’ll share the knowledge he’s gained both building machines from scratch, and converting metal-working mills to CNC.

Tickets are limited so don’t miss out and snag yours now before they’re all gone!

 

More details from the event description:

Rich Loen (https://Loen.Design) has built many CNC machines including routers, mills, and cutters. He’ll share the knowledge he’s gained both building CNC machines from scratch, and converting metal-working mills to CNC.

Rich will cover:

  • Hardware options – machine frame, linear bearings, ball-screws, belt drives
  • Electronics – stepper motors, servos, drivers, power supplies, control interfaces like smooth steppers, G540, Planet CNC hardware.
  • Spindle options – routers, air/Water cooled spindles, high-speed spindles
  • Control Software – Mach3, Linux CNC, PlanetCNC, etc.
  • Design Software – Fusion 360, Vectric V-Carve Pro, Other options
  • Suppliers of hardware and software

Rich will be joined by Chris Manning (@silver_hand), a local watch maker and silver smith with years of CNC lathe and mill experience.

Rich will also bring a small CNC mill he made for carving names into hockey pucks – and if you’re lucky, you can get your name carved into a puck during the event!

A Walnut Slab table – with 20 legs!

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My company has a cool tradition where every employee gets a pair of red Converse All-Stars when they start. We also give a pair to every customer!

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And, we needed a coffee table for a small meeting room at our office.

This was the result!

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I made two videos about the construction of this table. The first shows the whole process of building the table. The second shows how I used Vectric Aspire to make 20 soles to hold the shoes on the legs of the table.

The walnut slab started out like this – roughly finished at the KJP Select Hardwoods shop. I had to sand it to a nice smooth 320 grit finish, and remove all the debris and loose bits from the unfinished edges of the slab.

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I used Vectric Aspire to drill the holes for the legs. The dowels were all slightly different in size, so I had to make 5 different hole sizes to accommodate the differences.

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I finished the top with Rubio Monocoat, which is a two-part oil finish. It’s very easy to use – you mix the two parts, then apply the finish, and wipe it off after 5 minutes. There is no point in doing more coats, or letting the finish sit longer. The finish drys in 24 hours, and is completely sealed after a week. The finish is designed for use on floors as well, so it holds up well on a table.

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Here are some more views of the process and the finished table.

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