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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.

Heading back to Makers Central in Birmingham!

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Makers Central is happening again at the NEC in Birmingham on May 11 and 12 this year. Here’s some more details in their flyer.

I’m very excited to be heading back to the UK for this event. I’ll be making pucks for kids in booth F6, and I’ll be giving a talk about how to build your own CNC machine as well (time and place to be determined).

Kids watching their pucks being carved in the small CNC puck mill.
(From a recent event in Canada)

It will be nice to catch up with Jimmy Diresta, Laura Kampf, and the rest of the YouTube crowd. They were a really great group to meet last year.

I’ll be there with @silver_hand, an accomplished jeweller, watch maker, and pen maker. Be sure to check out his podcast at: http://offhours.show/

Makers Central 2018 in Birmingham

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We were lucky enough to head over to England for the first Makers Central show in Birmingham in May 2018. @sliver_hand and I flew over on Thursday, to be ready in time for the Saturday and Sunday show. Amazingly, we packed an entire CNC machine in two suitcases, as checked luggage, and managed to man-handle it through the London Tube, as well as onto a train to Birmingham! It was exhausting!

The Makers Central show was excellent – an amazing accomplishment for a first-year event. Nick Zammeti did an amazing job organizing the event. We had HUGE 10×20 foot booth – about 4 times bigger then we needed – but we got set up quickly on Friday, and managed to create some test hockey pucks. Yup, we were two Canadian lads, in England, carving people’s names into hockey pucks! Special thanks to @Vectric, makers of the V-Carve Pro software we used to make the pucks – who managed to snag 200 hockey pucks for us at the show!

The event was great, with really good crowds – and just tons and tons of YouTube stars, like Laura Kampf and Jimmy Diresta, and about a hundred more! It was excellent hanging out in the hotel bar after the show, with all the folks from the show.

When the show finished, we headed down to London, touring the London Science Museum, a special tour of the Goldsmith’s Company, and the Victoria and Albert Museum, as well as dinners with some London friends.

@silver_hand and I talk about the trip in Episode 17 of the Off Hours Podcast.