Category: CNC-en

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IndyMill CNC machine

Since Corona was still around (May, 2021) , I had some time available to spend on other things than just work.

I already had an upgraded 3018 CNC-machine with a 0.5 kW spindle motor,

and a simple GRBL 3- axis board that works very well.  But- it would be nice to make a CNC machine that can really work with aluminium and possibly also with copper and brass.  I have already done some research in the past about what sort of CNC machine would be right for my goals. And the IndyMill CNC macine was already on my mind for over half a year.  So-last week I ordered the manual and the steel plates

for the build and ordered some other parts from Ali.  I also have quite a lot of parts on stock, from my 3d printer supplies.  The Nema23- motors and the extrusion, motherboard, drivers, power supply, switches and probes are already available.

2021-5-09; First parts delivery for the Indymill: 3 ball bearing leadscrews with kit of end bearings and screw block holders, the frequency regulator 1 phase in, 3 phase out and the 1.5 KW 3 phase spindle of 3.6 kilograms

The required printed parts are being printed right now (early May-2021). I am printing all the upgraded STL’s, latest version as these are freely available  on Thingiverse (just search for IndyMill) .  And then you see the power of sharing: the design was already great, and with the upgrades it got even better.  The upgraded versions of the mounts for the linear bearings are really a lot sturdier than the original design and the new endstop holders are very handy to have.

I roughly calculated the costs for building this machine and it was a lot cheaper than buying a similar CNC machine of this size.  If you purchase wisely, the costs for all materials can be just under Euro 1000, if you follow the original BOM and including the 1.5 KW air-cooled spindle motor with regulator…

If you want to install another board than the standard Arduino UNO with the standard Arduino CNC shield,  this can set you back an additional amount of 120 to 500 Euro’s.  I use a FLY_CDY_V2 with Mellow’s original TMC2209 stepper drivers. DO NOT FORGET to set the switches on the underside of these steppers to ON if you want to use sensorless homing!

My add-ons  to the original build:

  1. Currently I use a 10 Amps detachable 24V PSU, will become a 30 Amps one.
  2. Sesorless homing with the use of a FLY-CDY-V2 motherboard and TMC2209 stepper drivers.  This works awesome but I moved on to add endstops and make a more stable and exchangeable setup.
  3. Original  mounts and usage of the ball bearing screw nut’s holder, and of the BK12 nd BF12 original bearing holders to keep the ball bearing screw from moving the wrong way.
  4. Altered Z axis setup with a better nut holder, and a better top bearing
  5. .
  6. Closed loop NEMA23 stepper motors drivers MKS Servo57A V1.0 will be fitted to the rear of the steppers, still to be mounted but will conflict with sensorless homing

    Nema 23 stepper with the Closed loop kit
  7. 10 mm GT2 200mm belt between the Z motor and the Z-leadscrew with GT2 10mm wide 16-teethed wheels
  8. Add a ‘CNC pendant’ manual control device.
    • On the Duet support website a project is available to convert such a device to a serial interface, with a programmed Arduino (pro) mircro or -nano built-in the device:
  9. Solid connection plate between the rear side of the upper and lower linear rails of the X-axis. Still to come.
  10. Piezo-probes on all axes’s start- en end positions, instead I first setup the FLY CDY V2 reprap board with TMC2209 and sensorless homing, and later with mechanical endstops.
  11. Coolant mist installation and fluid gathering-, pump, reservoir et cetera is ordered. Stll to be installed, and the pumps were not supplying sufficient pressure for the flood mist, have to look for another solution.
  12. Independantly driven (and independantly finetuned homing) Y-motors to prevent any possible problems between left and right. This works flawless with the FLY_CDU_V2 reprap setup but it took me quite some hours of finetuning to work with the 3.5 kilogram heavy spindle motor…
  13. 2080 profiles all around (also front and rear) with 4 extra-wide corner brackets underneath.  I chose to implement this differently with 3 additional bottom connections and corner brackets, since I need the front of the frame to be low and give way to the spindle vacuum hose.

    Amd – the frame as it is ready, but with the spindle holder of the 500 Watt motor. I will not use this motor after all for this build–
  14. Smart enclosure with Scheppach vacuum cleaner connection like this example from https://www.shophacks.com/cncenclosure.html#/  THIS IS REALLY NEEDED! Advantages of using an enclosure for your CNC router - SHOP HACKS

    My solution for an enclosure ia a 84x78x45 cm flightcase
  15. Protecting guards for all leadscrews and linear rails (ordered in China)
  16. Later if possible: Wheels on the rear or on 1 side and a handle on the front (or other side) to stow and store the machine easier
  17. Easily detachable control unit(s) with solid connectors

I started with a FLY_CDY-V2 reprap board to experiment with reprap CNC and the webinterface that has been developed for this setup.

This is achieved with  smart dual homing of the dual Y axes, and gives me a lot more control on the machine. It is also already possible to just send GRBL-based Gcode to the USB port of the machine and use the reprap FLY board simply as gcode-interpreter to steer the machine.  But for now I use the webinterface to upload and run any gcode.nc CNC file, which works perfect!

Picture of the CNC-adapted and already available webinterface for reprap, especially tailored for CNC (by Sindarius, work ongoing):

Pictures are already published about this build!

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K40 lasercutter

My Chinese lasercutter which I bought back in 2014 has been upgraded over the years.  As many others do, I got the cooling system for the laser tube inside the casing, added some LED lights inside and also added an air pump for the laser head.

All in all the machine works fine now but the relatively small working area remains the bottleneck for using this machine for real interesting projects.

Mid-2020 I used the laser cutter for a couple of projects where I needed series of cut acrylic.  The machine handled this flawlessly, but I did put it outside to prevent any smoke from entering our home.

I do have some ideas about upgrading the machine with a larger workspace and put the electronics and water cooling system in a seperate housing.  No materials are needed for this, except 3 linear rails and some aluminium profiles.  But- (status May-2021)  I will start this project only if there is some work to be done with the machine since it is already working fine as it is, although the workspace is limited.

I use Inkscape (freeware) for making designs in SVG and import these .SVG files in K40whisperer (also freeware) which then  can send the required Gcode to the K40 lasercutter. This all works very well and fast, you don’t need a fast computer for this.  I use a 10 year old dedicated HP laptop for this.

In future use I want to make this lasercutter use the same board as I am using with my big LED laser cutter, so I can use GRBL on both.

As you probably know, a K40 or any other CO2 lasercutter can cut a specific kind of materials while a common LED lasercutter can cut other kind of materials better, due to the used kind of light on both which differ in wavelenghts.

The CO2 cutter can cut acrylic easily and the LED laser cutter can’t.

The LED cutter requires some sort of substance in the to be cut material to work properly.

Be aware that the security goggles you need also are specific for either macine.

The original driver board of the K40 CO2 lasercutter
First cut on a piece of tripledeck 4mm multiplex for my clock pieces
The clock’s interior and stand pieces, wood and acrylic. Both cut on the K40
The inside of the K40’s work space with the debree on the bottom. The air hose is green silicon. Also added an emergency cutoff switch for the laser tube. open the hood and the power stops.
The electronics and water cooling on the Right hand side of the K40’s housing. The air cooled radiators are just out of sight to the most right hand side of the housing, 3 pieces of 40x40mm
The acrylic cut for the clock, done in 1 time. This is 3 mm thick.
The thermostatic control of the coolant pump, taken out of its case to set the working temperatures
My solution for the cutting bed was to use an old footboard maze and I welded 4 nuts in it with long bolts that act as feet. This makes it possible to adjust the height 1x for optimum focussing the laser in the center of the to be cut material.