I just wanted to highlight the CNC Subforum and the help that exists over there. Last spring I bought a CNC machine because the price was one that I could not turn up. I do not have any formal CAD background and certainly ZERO CNC experience. Over the summer I did some maintenance on the machine and figured out the mechanical aspects of it. I also needed to order things like collets for the router and timing belts that were worn. Once I had everything up and running I could stall no longer so asked around in the CNC subforum and purchased the appropriate software. That was the easy part! With the great and generous help from these forum members I am plodding along! THANKS GUYS!!!
To shorten things up I just wanted to show some progress. Tonight I just completed the first radius dish on this machine!
I have been proud of my radius dishes but this machine will just make them that much better. Here are some pics:
Here is the machine I have. It is a Canadian made Precix, built in 1999. It has a 49" x 49" cut area.
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overview.jpg
Here is a 25' dish in the process of being milled
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inprocress.jpg
This is a picture of the controller where you can see the work being done graphically
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Control.jpg
And last is the finished dish. This took about an hour of run time to complete
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done.jpg
Although I could rout them in about a half hour by hand before, it was WAY messier and I was also unable to do anything else. With the machine I can prepare other things while it cuts these dishes.
So, back to the value of the CNC subforum, for those who do not visit there often. There are great discussions on CAD for those that like to be able to draw out their parts, we talk about vacuum fixtures and where to get these parts, we talk about cutters and feed rates and other stuff like that. Also, a few guys are building their own CNC's either from kits or by pieces. So pop by and check it out, you may find some useful things to assist in your non-CNC processes.
Shane