The road to cutting Aluminum on my Desktop CNC! 

"Softer materials arent hard to cut" Yeah, that make sense

For a quick speed and feed reference that is an app I use FSWizard. I pay for the pro version. You enter your material, type and thickness, then your tool whether it is a drill, endmill, or burr. Then your machine power and rpm limits. It will give you your speed and feed as well as depth and width po er cut. I am a retired engineer that came up thru the machine shop ranks. I have 35 years of cnc programming and 40 years in a machine shop. I started using FSWizard snd found most of the information to be spot on, only the deep hole drilling and some cast iron castings to be off but those are more of a feel type deal. I prefer air blast over coolant also, rules use to be coolant for high speed tools. For carbide tools you must use flooding and higher pressure coolant jets, never a mist, carbide will micro fracture if not under constant coolant. Carbide likes heat, just under the materials melting point, it also likes pressure to cut and leave a nice finish. Keep up with the great shows, very good explaining of your problems and issues and most importantly your solutions to correct.

This is cool. I have some experience on larger cnc machines and this is tempting to get one for home. Also quick tip: 1/8” endmills will flex a lot on their own. If you put it as far as you can without putting the flutes into the collet it will help you a lot I think.

Thanks for your awesome content. Talking over your experiences with CNC routing has been very helpful as i am also trying to do the same. Greetings from down under.

I think you are already bumping into the limits of the design. Keep fine tuning it, experimenting with incremental changes, learn from it, use it to make useful parts, but resist the temptation to spend too much on it. When you have finally gone as far as it can take you, the experience you have gained, added to the sizable amount of hands-on experience you already have with printers, will put you in a good space for the next adventure. I like the progression Nikodem Bartnik is making with his Dremel CNC, and now his Indymill. Stepper motors etc. have been around for decades, but the ready availability of usable budget priced components over the last few years has resulted in a flood of creativity. Thanks for your videos.

Good job on getting it running better than before. One recommendation I might make is to do your finishing pass at full depth, that is if you've got enough active cutting length. Looking at the tool marks in the video it looks like it's doing a finishing pass on each step down. Also I recently made a CAM flub which was really beneficial. I made my depth of cut substantially deeper than I usually do, my radial engagement slightly smaller, and my feedrate faster. When I hit go and noticed my mistake I was about to hit cancel but then let it run for a bit. My material removal rate was greatly enhanced, and my surface finish and sound on the tool was way better. I guess my point is try and use more of the flute if you can, instead of cutting only with the end of the end mill. Also I've noticed over the years that I can plunge with a single flute and mill in a helix far faster than I used to do. Excited to see you what else you can come up with now that you've got it working better.

It would be interesting to see your actual milling settings when generating your Paths. I have a selfmade CNC myself and tried cutting aluminium myself a few weeks ago. Still learning what works best. As far as I can see you take a different aproach to Path generation than I have.

Congratulations on your great channel More CNC content, please! Thank you

I have the same router on my RS-CNC32 build! Works great so far, got the 1/8" collet from elaire for it and it seems to be even better build quality than the stock 1/4" collet that it comes with. Definitely worth it. Haven't cut aluminium on my machine yet but I've seen videos of people doing it quite well. Seems to be a very rigid setup, for the XZ axis alone you have 16 bearings making contact to the square tube rail! Hard as I tried I couldn't detect any slop at all. Of course the 3d printed parts are the weak link and hopefully will use it to route parts for an even more rigid machine ;) I have to thank you for your honest review on the MPCNC otherwise I might have made the mistake and went with that instead of the awesome RS-CNC32

Looking great! In a few days, I need to work with 6mm aluminium, Z Frame for I3 MK2. Drilling, and sawing...

Cool vid, have been thinking about building a cnc machine and this was really helpful

I'm doing the same thing with my OX, I'm using the cheap carbide 3.175mm double flute cutters, and they work quite well! something I have noticed is heat plays a BIG part in the process, my DeWalt router blows air down onto the part so I think that helps, but, you can reason that the faster you run the router the more energy there is for things to go "wrong" so I run the router at quite a low speed (2) as to not heat up the metal stock, at a feed-rate of around 550/570 mpm.

A tip for cleaning of the stuck aluminium from those end mills: drain cleaning powder with Sodium Bisulfate (Natriumhydrogensulfat) It dissolves all aluminium but keeps the carbide and coating perfectly intact.

Your intuition about raising the rpm on the makita is correct(I have a sienci as well - unmodified though). The makita behaves the best on the 30000 rpm setting in my opinion. My recipe for milling aluminium(adaptive) is: 2mm stepdown, 0.6 mm optimal load. 30k rpm, 0.0254 mm feed per tooth, 900mm lead in and leadout, 200mm plunge and ramp. I do a 4mm 2-flute cutter.

Honestly Thom, you should build a mill. Say no to MDF frames, leadscrews driving the axis, and trim routers being used as a spindle. I'm actually beginning my journey of building a CNC mill at the moment, accumulating tools and parts.

I just did a Cbeam Z on my openbuilds OX and it was worth it. I am now cutting aluminum way better then before. Right now I am all lead screw. If you could I would say get cbeam for all the rails.

"The folks making this open source machine were happy to see some mods" Oh man, shorts fired at you-know-who, hahaha!

That outro :D I was immediately thinking, "where is he gonna go?"

Bed needs a double rail. Nice upgrade so far. Some of the flat parts are good for water jet cutting.

I've heard nylon anti backlash nuts are amazing for such applications!

You're on the right path with thinking of replacing the leadscrews with ballscrews (probably half inch ones..), but you could also easily add some rigidity to the X axis by linking the two new bolts with a solid steel cylinder (maybe about 20mm dia) that's drilled and tapped on both ends to accept those new bolts. That would probably add a lot more frame rigidity across what seems to be the weakest dimension from your test cuts (the part of the video where you're talking about the spring in the anti-backlash nut being a weak point). Seems like a nice project! Hoping to build my own CNC within the next 2 years, may end up with small manual mini mill first..

Nice vid Tom!

Was shopping for an aluminum CNC yesterday, this video is so perfectly timed.

Oh, PLEASE make a name tag that shows to everyone that it is called Bob! Phenomenal! =D

I don't know if your Makita has the same end thread as my 850 watt £30 cheap Chinese trim router but I bought an ER11 adapter for my CNC3020 and discovered that the collet nut actually will fit directly to my trim router! Now it can have a proper ER11 3.18mm collet nut OR its normal 1/4" collet nut! If you have an ER11 adapter for a 6mm shaft you may want to try it!

I have a nextwave automation CNC 3d router that uses rods for the tracks, very sloppy results even with just wood. I added linear rails to the back and no more play. I also raised the sides up, it uses HDPE for the structure, and angled the cutter head back. After taking pictures of it and sending it to the makers of the machine, they now use my upgrades for their new machines. I purchased mine in 2009 and it cuts aluminum easily now. Nice thing about yours is you can make new sides to boost the height for the z movement, or maybe add some linear slide rails to the sides and make the z adjustable.

i started a cnc in 2016 which grew historically. it went trough wood, partially metal to full metal, it went from drawer slides over to 20mm precision linear rails, rebuilt the controller few times, new spindles from a laser to a even stronger laser to a dremel, then dc motor, to a highspeed chinese spindle and so on. it never worked properly and probably cost me 1500+ upwards. it grew bigger than what i have space for and never cut more than 3 letters in wood before something bad happened. drivers overheating, step skips, mechanical flex, fusion360 overlooked default settings breaking endmills, connection issues between software and grbl. its something you gonna pull your hairs out over time

Hi Thomas, very nice job again ! If you need any help, tell me ahah ! PS : For the backslash, I use some 3D printed T8 "counter" nut, pretty easy to print in 0.1mm and can add some friction to reduce backlash a lot

Now that it "mills" aluminum could you replace the 3D printed brackets with aluminum?

I would love to see you now use this machine to make an aluminium version with linear rails etc. thanks

good job Bob

Interesting design. At that size and feedrates mdf is fine though I think thicker stock would make a huge difference in stiffness. Useful for making plates your next better cnc. cnczone is the best resource for cncers old and new alike.

Thomas, there is a very good benchtop machine for cutting aluminum call Momus CNC Router. Maybe could be usefull if planning doing regular parts in aluminum (small parts)..

Be careful with that router. I had 3 of them catch on fire in my CNC. Luckily Makita replaced them all under warranty. I’m now using a water cooled spindle.

One thing I love about your channel is that you do hyperfocus on Chinese made items, what I can't figure out is this intentional or just coincidence. Goodluck.

It’s nice to see a larger maker channel build a machine that is actually accessible to regular people and doesn’t require a bank loan to get started

I see that you already use "Climb mill" technology on this CNC. I think that would also work with MPNC. I am still waiting for the continuation of the MPNC series :)

Thanks Tom!

Thank you for your video, we are fine and hope you are to. I was wondering if it would be possible to mill the brackets that are 3D printed out of aluminium but give them room for adjustment (attaching them to the housing) so you can square the rail! I am not sure if this is something that you have already considered. Please stay safe and keep us updated on your progress 👍😊

You can get some of those mounted rod linear rails and bearings from China pretty cheap. I replaced the angle aluminum and skate bearings on my garage CNC with them and they work great! Also got ball screws and acme screws for pretty cheap. My machine is 48" x 24" so the bearing rails were pretty long. I need to take a video of it one of these days. I cut a nice string stop for a guitar out of aluminum with it and have cut the head off of a few grade 5 bolts (whoops!)

you should use a dry coolant/lubricant like Fenella VD 201 N

you probably need 2 horizontal guides for the bed, instead of just one V shaped bar, in the closeups, the bed can be seen rocking from left to right and back when the tool moves around

There are adjustable anti-backslash nuts for lead screws made by OpenBuilds. They built "C-Beam Machine", a CNC intended for cutting aluminium plates, and it cuts really well with no wobbling. BTW, What about MPCNC Project? There was some license conflict, and you will never try it again? If so, maybe you would build and OpenBuilds CNC machine on a LiveStream? :)

As a trade cabinetmaker that specialises in cnc programming and machining with over 20 years experience I can give you a few tips. Forget the spiral cutters try tungsten carbide cutters. You can go from quarter inch down to 1.6 mm all with quarter inch shank so no need for collets. Also give your cutters a spray of a Teflon lubricant such as Inox it will help stop aluminium from sticking to your cutters.

Great video, actually I've learning a lot from you. I have a question, or an idea, I think that a rotary tool with the a flex shaft used for jewelry making would fit nice for a small CNC. What I mean exactly is something like Foredom rotary tool. Actually, I'm quite curious to know the result of having one in place of the common spindle or router. The main thing about it is that its spindle is extremely light weight. I know that Netwon's first law tells us that it won't make any difference in the XY plane but I still think the light weight would make a significant difference. What do you think?

must resist urge to ask Tom to mill some magnet holes in my Alu- bed/tooling plate

I always watch your ads fully:-)

What steel do you use to make Aluminum die casting mold? normally we use D12, H13 etc.

I'd consider cutting the brackets out of polystyrene foam (make them more than 6.5mm thick everywhere) and then cast them from aluminum using the lost foam method. You could also make your mdf frame much more rigid by coating with fiberglass.

you should have a look at CamBam as your cam software. I'm using it since a while on my gantry cnc router

11:24 Looks to me like the stock is moving around :O

Why not put more of these openbuild rollers to increase the rigidity?

Two ideas: 1. You could modify the router mount to add a bracket to hold the nozzle of a shop-vac. It will suck up most of the chips and provide some cooling airflow. I did that with my openbuilds machine a few years ago (don't ask me about the machine itself. it was bad and I regret buying it). 2. Modify the bed to add a second rail for much better stability and less twisting.

Hi Thomas! Is this one going to replace the MP CNC? Are you going to upgrade it? Would be a very interesting topic to follow for people interested in cnc but still confused about what is the “right” machine to build ..... thanks

Have you looked into the R-CNC? In my opinion, it is the most rigid 3d printed CNC design available.

Do you have a link for the chinese 1/8" 10 pack of bits?

Super glue can help with work holding in some cases. Just heat it up with a torch to release it. Could buy you back some space with that vice

I have cnc Router too,.. Nice video

Hello! I love your videos !! ... they are the best really ... I have had a desktop cnc machine like the one in this video and it is very good .... but I think I have spent a lot of time and money promoting improvements and over the years I think it's better to try to get something definitive now. I am thinking of examples, buying an Evo one cnc from makerdreams ... I like it because it is a Europe machine and it has very good characteristics ... I would very much like an introduction or review ... thanks

think any compressed air nozzle cooling or vacuum cleaner nozzle keep working area clean to "cutter" do better work?

Nice. Defibately reduce backlash in your lead screws and go a second X axis imo.

Did you try using some cooling fluid or air to improve the cut. Water and WD40 mixed makes a cheap cooling solution.

Hi Thomas, woudn´t it be better to use a steal linear rail for the y axis, the costs and accuracy are nearly the same (poor in some way, but works for many applications) in relation to the one you used. And maybe a quick hack would be, to just make four triangles from 20mm plywood (with a long as possible angle leg) and clue them in the top corners. Even here, steal is better, e.g. brackets from the hardware store.

I have a strange feeling when watching the milling of that alluminium . Feels like the plate is moving less then a millimiter..Coudl be that screwes are not holding the piece tight enough for the aluminium to hold down correctly? at 11:25 timestamp

I've been thinking for quite some time about a way to make cheap leadscrews kind of backlash free by using TWO nuts, one fixed and the other to be tightened in some way, maybe with a 3D printed block of some sort; it would do the same thing that these spring loaded nuts do but without the vibration since the nuts would be fixed in place about the backlash in the plane orthogonal to the leadscrew axis I don't think there's much to do honestly

How about doing your own linear rails with good strength? I did mine with car shocks rods (although used they were in good shape) and with linear bearings. Almost "for free". In my case they are 20mm diameter and about 300mm long (front shocks from New Fiesta). I'm sure you can find some in good conditions with less diameter. You have to see the standards for linear bearings before, of course, to choose what you want.

Hi Tom. I believe that extrusions aluminium is the better option to upgrade your CNC. MDF should not be used for it; if wood is your selection for the case, then plywood is a better option. Could you please share the feedrate and milling parameters you use to cut aluminium? Thanks in advance.

LOOKS MORE LIKE A TOY !

I’m looking at getting a hobby CNC so I can machine materials like brass, aluminum, carbon, acrylic sheets and MDF. This is for my hobby being slot cars to design chassis to race. I am on a budget too as I’m also looking at getting a 3D printer as well. What CNC machine do you think I’d be better getting whether I build one up or get already built? Thanks.

I wonder if a Duet is a good upgrade to these low cost CNC

this adds the question,... if you can machine aluminium, does that mean you could also make your own injection molding models? would PLA for instance be a usable material for doing the injection?

Just curious do you have any thoughts on the 3018 CNC machines?

This one is much better than mpcnc, some addons and it will be perfect!)

Really liked the video, Tom. I made my own CNC machine off information I found on OpenBuilds.com. Great site for making your own stuff like this. One thing I found works really well for work hold-downs is regular blue painters tape and super-glue. If your waste board is relatively smooth, mine is MDF. You lay down a layer of blue tape to your waste board with enough surface to cover your stock. Then tape the back side of your stock. You super-glue the tape-covered side of your stock, and spray a little bit of activator on the tape on your waste board, and then lay your stock down. The amount of force it takes to lift that off the waste-board can only be done with a putty knife, or something like that. It works great, and saves lots if z-axis room. I hope this helps. By the way, I learned a lot about my 3-d printer from your videos. Very informative. I also use the free license of Fusion-360. The CAM that comes from it works great.

Could use the router to upgrade itself like a 3d printer I guess? Could replace the 3d printed brackets with milled alu? I'd recommend adding one of those flexible plastic segmented pipes and at least blasting the work with air to evacuate chips, coolant (water with some oil) would be even better but would require sealing the bottom of the frame and adding a pump and filter for chips etc etc. This old tony made a CNC router a while ago and I think it's a good reference point for useful features like accordion/sliding parts to shield the rails from chips/coolant. Btw you misspelled aluminium in the title ;)

Thomas, AFAIK spindle RPM should strongly correlate X-Y-Z movement speed. Assuming same speed and: 1. Too high RPM - you'll get "licking" and melting/burning of material (and/or tool) 2. Too low RPM - you'll get too big forces on milling tool and it can break

Could you add a second rail to the Y axis to widen the base, that would add a lot to the rigidity.

9:14 Tom: I figured out if you get your feeds and your speeds.... Me: TWICE THE SPEED, HALF THE FEED!!!!!

Well i don't know if it's actually a good idea but Igus have these self lubricating lead screw nuts. I suppose they would be way better than those "springy" lead screws and if you dont run your machine like 24/7 they should last long enough before they wear out.

Given that the wheels only run on the edge of the axis angle , there's room for stiffener onthe back side. Would especially benefit the y axis

Can you provide a link to the cheaper Chinese enemies you're using?

What happened to the 3D printed RC Plane?? (great video btw =D)

Why not use Marlin then? I use it on my laser, and it works great. I use it with ESTLcam because well it is only 2D and it works pretty good for 2D.

Do you think it's possible to cut aluminium with MPCNC?

Makita Router is little louder or very loud than 500w spindle?

what happened to then design of a new mpcnc

Hey, Thomas, My name is Adriel, watching your videos has made me buy a 3d printer and I ended up getting an Ender 3. I'm a total novice and so I don't really know how to find the answer to one of my questions. I bought both the glass bed and the magnetic base for the ender 3 and I noticed that the magnetic base was a two-part system of which one you have to glue on to the base plate of the bed. my question is: if I 3M glue the magnetic base to the metal, can I still use the glass bed when I want to? I hope my question makes sense. thank you so much for all your videos!

Friends do you think it is safe to buy prusa i3 MK3S, will there be a new update soon?

Bob, as the self replicating von neumann probe? If not it's a funny coincidence. I can only recommend the Bobiverse books - especially to makers which are also science fiction fans. Greetings from Wilhelmshaven

Great video, thanks. what were the feeds and speeds that worked for you with the single flute end mill ?

with aluminum and hihg rpm the 2 most important factors are chip evacuation and chip load. Add a 70L acquarium pump with the cheap NOGA nozzle you can find on ALI, Ebay, Amazon...ecc... to remove the chips and don;t go above 2 flutes cutter with such higher rpm or you increase too much rubbing and aluminum will melt on the cutter.

hey thomas, could you link the adapter sleeve? I am using the same router and was desperately looking for a way to use smaller endmills

With the COVID lockdown and paying to have the Fab Lab print parts... I'm thinking I mise well take the parts I've been saving from old printers and make a 3D printer. However, seems like I'm better to make a CNC with steel and acme threaded rods. Maybe still using more of the stainless steel rods from the printers and some parts if heavy duty enough. Though thinking more along the line of square tubing material I have so can do plasma cutting work on also. Basically, I'm thinking I'm going to make a CNC plasma cutter that I can also consider using for 3D printing, maybe lower power laser work and more likely maybe CNC milling work. Considering what I'd actually make other than small 3D printer parts... seems I'm better to plan to make a larger 4x4' or potentially smaller 4x2' CNC and just feed in the sections for the longer sheets cuts. I do have some floppy and CD/DVD/BluRay drives and am thinking maybe for a first build project make a smaller 3D printer out of one of those also for practice in controls...or just better using the old printer parts? However, for the larger size maybe 3D printed parts... I'm thinking I'd more likely hot wire foam cut larger items and not so much 3D print so am still thinking just make the larger 4'x2' unit and the smallest 3D printer. I do have some 80/20 and can hit up the scrapyard to see if I can find anymore straight available and I have a bunch of 1/4" wall 2" square tube now that I got the $20 farmall front end loader for my garden tractor loader and backhoe material. Thinking can bring the long level with to check also. Then for small metal parts... I'm thinking outside of plasma cutting... just upgrading the 7x12 mini-lathe with the vertical slide into a mini-CNC lathe/mill. Any suggestions? Thinking I'll go with a RAMP module kit. Kicking myself for not picking a free copier when I saw a few this summer. Some look like a treasure trove of stepper motors and parts.

Tom, could you share your CAM parameters? Feeds, speeds and DOC?

Als er sagte sponsored by... dachte ich na mal sehen welche Werbung diesmal kommt. PCB Hersteller, Filament, Online Games... ne mal was richtig Originelles. gefällt mir :-)

You can use 2 rails to give more estability to te Bed.

I had a feeling that tweet was about the "Sciencey"

at 11:07 Tom you said Fusion 360 was free for hobbyit . Are you sure .? it only appears to be free if your a student. Please correct me and tell me where i can get it if i am wrong. Thanks

The design doesn't lend itself to rigidity, does it?

Grbl advanced claims to support both backlash compensation and sensorless homing