I like your shop, very well organized. I am following many video tutorials to build my first Voron printer and I find your videos very interesting, nice work keep it up.
Parts look great, congrats on the new workspace and Haas. My first thoughts abut these parts involve changing to flat designed parts and round standoffs. These parts just are not designed for machining - though I am sure you know that better than anyone at this point. Cool work and will be watching. Voron project is ripe for commercialization!!
THESE ARE ABSOLUTELY FREAKIN' GORGEOUS! THE LITTLE VORON LOGO!!! OMGZ! (I don't own a 2.4, so I don't know whether that's in the STLs, but even so.) VERY NICE ATTENTION TO DETAIL. THESE PARTS ARE GOOD ENOUGH TO EAT! (It's okay if you've had a little guilty nibble or two - pretty sure we'd be the last ones to judge.)
Great video and interesting project. It would be awesome to see some update footage and how the progress has come along. I would definately be down to give them a try on my voron 2.4 rev2 kit.
I think you made the right choice to first build a solid working piece before trying to get into custom options. 1. Soft jaws are great for final op. When you get into production runs or want better clamping force on thin parts my suggestions would be to design a fixture plate that can hold multiple pieces. Use the drilled out holes from OP1 to secure to fixture plate for OP2. 2. Don't throw out the roughed out material old material. If it still has enough stock for a finished part it could be re-used for #1 or you can rough it out/ cut it up for other parts you plan on making or prototyping. 3. A dry/wet tumbler will give you a good polished finish and help with deburring and reducing visual appearance of tool paths. If you want mirror finish then the parts will have to buffed last. FYI the high polish will fade over time so unless someone plans on pulling the parts from the printer or getting polishing debris and fibers inside the printer IMHO it's pointless. If you plan on coating or anodizing the aluminum parts your vendor will likely have their own process for prepping the material for coating.
I believe you can get about 35 cents a pound for aluminum so if you are making a lot of chips take them to a metal recycle company and reclaim a few bucks.
Great Vid. As talented as you are I would love to see more content. I know your personal life comes first, but I think you would find you could get a good viewer base with what you are doing. Keep up the good work.
If you're planning on doing something similar to your first batches again, it's best to make a jig with a solid slab of material, a pocket that supports the part and then bolt the part down to it through the motor mounts etc. to reduce vibration. It was good enough for stainless rocket parts, so should work good for something like that
I made myself an electric foundry to melt aluminium to recycle all the scrap pieces and chips. It doesn't cost a lot of money for a DIY approach and is quite simple to make.
@@floriansolles445 I've heard chips don't melt very well, I guess because of their large surface area to volume ratio. Do you find that to be true and do you do anything to mitigate the issue? (Like, maybe if you melt 'em before the oxidized layer has much time to form or something.)
Sometimes you need to cut a tight fitting insert to drop into a pocket in a part before clamping in soft jaws to keep it from deforming. If you have the Renishaw probe (Or even an edge finder), use a machined feature to set your offset for the second and third op,. Since this is done after clamping and you are probing the part instead of the vice jaws, it will be more accurate. Nice work!
If you setup a contract with your metals company you can get credit for the weight of returned chips but it needs to be clean and sorted for a setup like yours it's rather easy to keep stuff cleaned up. I have a similar setup with a vf-2ss and an sl-20 in my shop.
Those are some good looking parts! It seems like you're making the transition from 3D printing to machining swiftly! I'm trying to go the other direction, myself - I've ordered the parts for a Railcore. I know there's no shortage of machining content on RU-vid but I figured I'd suggest checking out the *JohnSL* RU-vid channel - he also went from a TAIG, which he modified so much he was calling it a "TAIGmach", to a Haas; he got an Office Mill, IIRC. (Searching for "taigmach" would probably be enough to find him.)
Perhaps a video on the thought process of how you transitioned from your tiny CNC in your apartment to getting a Haas and bringing it in to your parents garage??? Is this a case of a hobbyist with too much money or do you have a business idea? And you keep saying "we" but we are only seeing you. Do you have a partner, or is your dad in on it too? Did he buy the Haas with intention of making his own products and allow you to use it? What is the day job?
Hey John, I have another business that uses this machine for inhouse projects and rapid prototyping. I don't need the machine to be profitable in the sense I make a product that sells due to this. Regarding the we - I suppose it is a habit I have from running my other company. It is just me at the moment, no partners and my father is just lending me the space.
I never threw out potentially usable stock. You never know when it will come in handy. Keep it as long as you have space. Take the chips to a recycler and get enough $ for a Starbucks! Love the garage setup! I have serious garage envy!! What is meaning behind 517?
Your setup is sick! Although I raise the following philosophical question: at what point does a "garage" become a "workshop?" I feel like you're teetering on the precipice of that distinction, lol!
Hey! Just discovered your channel. The voron parts look great! I was just wondering if you had a chance to get these parts on a voron to see if all aluminum parts are viable on a voron. Thanks!
Try adding some ribbing for the skeletonized version, just adding some ribs to make the part more rigid will help with flexing while clamping. You can also look into making fixture plates instead of softjaws, that way you can run several parts at once and have better holding geometry
Have you tried a tumble polisher with walnut shell? look into clear coating afterwards, polished aluminum will dull quickly, especially after being handled. My suggestion is find a machine finish or pattern that you like to save time on post processing. I imagine you are going to have some high demand upon release, so reducing turn around will help alleviate some future stress.
With those scrape pieces just use then to make other smaller parts, like the belt clamps you showed off. Should be able to salvage alot of that material before scraping it out
Depending on how fast you need to make them? Look at a honey comb design drops weight but it's solid. But time consuming in exchange. Good drills full depth then smaller end mill to clean up the corners
to get rid of the misalignment, buy the material .1 or so oversized. Machine side one completely. For side two simply face off the excess material. The misalignments will be limited to just the chamfers and logos. This saves tons of time and scrap.
I'm pretty sure most of the alignment issues in the first part could have been avoided if the final contouring would have been part of the side that had the protruding _major_ features in it. Doing the Counterbores for the Holes, Belt Grooves, and Chamfers in the second pass alone after touch probing from the then finished and thus clearly defined overall contours would most likely have been _The Way™_
What process do you use in finishing your parts. They looks super shiny in the video and I have been having a hard time getting them that shiny with my vibritory tumbler
They come off the machine pretty shiny - however I did tumble these in a cheap harbor freight tumbler with walnut shells. Not that happy with the finish from that though.
@@517industries2 the process I have been using is about 70 hours in the green harbor freight triangles and 100 hours in the harbor freight corurse walnut and they come out shiny but still a little bit of texture on them. Really want the mirror finish i get off the mill but without the tool marks. Maybe ill try some corn cob.
@@517industries2 corn cob will work better than walnut shells i reload and cob really shines my brass i also put iosso case polish in with the corn cob, you can use just about any cheap car paint detail polish, i have also used flitz with the cob,,, if u want a nice big tumbler look at dillon reloading they have 2 sizes i use the large one been using it now for 10 years works great
Looking in to building my first voron, very interested in doing it in as much aluminum as possible…. (I mean they designed it to be be over engineered in the first place why not take it to next level?? Not mention I’m hard on my printers in the first place…I mean I’m so hard on my printers I don’t think I got a original part on any of my original prusas )
if you really want to do the skeletonized parts, the same method applies. For side two, you will have to make an insert that presses in before you clamp the part. Do not make the insert 100% of the pocket, just make the center part with plenty of clearance to pick it out with your fingers. Make two, so you can load while its machining the next part.
Dude I'm building a small CNC milling machine and then later I want to build a Voron 2.4 as I make some money with it. Hopefully you are releasing the files for these and the soft jaws? I'd hope so since the Voron is GPL licensed lol.
Here are a few tips that may help you with future fixturing and soft jaw creation. I think some of these tips were detailed by someone else, but I will reiterate them. When machining soft jaws, try and keep the back portion of the jaw as thick as you can, something like 3-4 mm or .100-.200 in. This additional material helps keep your locating surfaces of the jaws in line as you clamp the vise down. Having the back edge of the jaws be as thin as the ones you had in the video can result in inconsistences and shifting, because you are forcing the material of the jaw with the part away from its theoretical datum/origin point. Another tip with soft jaws is instead of placing your machined origin point on the backside of the jaw that contacts the portion of the fixed jaw (upper left hand corner when looking down at the jaws from the top), place that machined corner on the front face of the jaw where the part goes (lower left hand corner of the jaw when looking down from the top). In practice it shouldn't matter where your machined origin lies if you machine your part cavity at the same time, but I find it to be more intuitive especially if I am working with jaws that are different thicknesses. Moving that machined corner to the front of the jaw face also allows you to skim the entire front side of the jaw with an endmill to create a parallel datum with the tram of your vise. This gives you an easy location to place an indicator to tram in the jaws when you set them back into your vise. Of course, I am typically working with soft jaws that are cut out of raw material and not pre-machined. Also, sometimes placing a bored hole about .25" in diameter in the center of your jaw works better with locating your X and Y as opposed to a machined corner, especially if you have a probe. When you switch to the carve smart soft jaws, you can easily incorporate a whole host of upgrades and tweaks to make a better jaw set. The repeatability of the Carve Smart jaws is quite impressive given its locating on a single pin and the dovetail. Even though you may only be making prototypes of these parts for research purposes, something like a Pierson Mini Pallet system or even a custom machined modular fixture can work very well for thinner walled components such as your skeleton/grid piece you were trying to work on. I just stumbled upon your channel, but your "come to machining" sounds very similar to a lot of other RU-vid or Instagram machinists, so keep up the great work.
There are CNC aluminium parts available in China on line shops, Maybe you can find them from bangood. They offer them with AN option of black dying to match Voron colour code
Have you thought about using the holes in the parts to bolt it down? You could add holes into your jaws and tap them. I have been using this method for various cnc jobs and it seems to work decent. Not sure if it will work for this but thought I'd give you an idea. Look forward to seeing the parts on the voron!
I was thinking the same thing. Lots of options to hold down those parts. I work in the CNC industry and it's amazing the way guys get creative with holding down odd shaped parts.
You may have a clamping problem, but nothing that cant be fixed. try some fixture with either using bolts to clamp or your rotating clamps etc. I have some ideas in my head^.. and also you could try a different approach to skelletonize the parts... Nice garage update tho! huge update to the mess from before :D
Thinking outside of the box for the moment - and I don't know whether this would ultimately be helpful or not, just putting it out there. I also haven't watched the video through its entirety yet, so I don't know whether you've mentioned this in the video itself. There are currently some aluminium anodised parts available on AliExpress for the 2.4 already - obviously yours look *amazing*, and so if there was ever a question as to where one's support should go, it should obviously be you (this isn't why I'm mentioning this, however) - would it help if you were to order a set of these parts and try to reverse engineer/deconstruct them, at least in terms of milling operations? Or how they did certain features? Just a thought. I LOVE YOUR WORK! :D
you can likely sell the scrap aluminimum to someone who can use it to make castings. Like many of us pointed last time about the skeletonizing, its basicly useless. If you do it at least dont overdo it. You seen how it makes clamping the part difficult and adds nothing but some visuals. If you change the logo position or remove it you can make a hole on both sides or the big hole.
Any interest in doing some collab work on this? I had the plan to do exactly this and it'd be nice to only have to tackle a portion of the parts rather than all of them. I have a Haas Mini Mill 2 and we don't keep it busy 100% of the time.
Polishing aluminum sucks. Best way to polish it is to not polish it! Your parts look good go right to anodize! In the medical industry parts are polished by robot. Pain the the rear to write program for. Polishing in the CNC is not recommended - the abrasives get everywhere and will wear the machine. If you are dead set on polishing the aluminum you could use some old 3d printer or build a cheap machine to do it without trashing the Mill.
You are wasting time with soft jaws. You should use a fixture plate and alignment dowels. You can gang multiple ops on the same fixture. not only will you get much better parts, it will take you less time.
