V-Block Adaptors for the Flex CNC 

I hope this isn't taken poorly. Although I appreciate all the work and effort it takes to make these vids for us. I really do miss the home shop projects. Not just because of the location. Just the style of content. It was machining. Almost like a couple friends working on a project, or more like one friend teaching another how to do things. If that makes sense? These type of vids are more like Infomercials, for lack of a better term. I can appreciate them, but have a hard time getting "into" them, or getting excited about them. I dunno, it's hard to explain. Anyway, I thank you Adam for your time and effort. As well as for reading this, if you happen to. But if you do, PLEASE don't take it negativity!!! It's just my opinion, which means nothing in the grand scheme of things. Y'all be safe out there!!

I'm not a machinist but I love your videos. I've done some coding in my time and really struggled with updates and new processes. I have a lot of admiration for your attitude towards learning and sharing new things.

Another things is that you shouldn’t be worried about cycle time because you’re not running big production, be more conservative with the feed and speed and tool life. 💪🏼 love your channel.

I really enjoy watching your CNC content as much as your manual machining content. It's really cool to see you learn, make really natural mistakes and share how easy it is to get things wrong even as someone with years of experience. Lot's of respect to you Adam. It will be great to see what you accomplish in the years to come.

Your desire to want to learn more advanced machining technologies is admirable. Thank you for your content. I love your channel!

Hi Adam thank you for sharing your work , I know nothing of cnc - looks complicated . I’m amazed at how many of the viewers are complaining about the videos it’s incredible . You know if they don’t like it just don’t watch it , no need to be rude . Hey I just started watching your channel and as a self taught hillbilly at machining appreciate what you teach . You are very talented and precise . Thanks for sharing whatever you do . All the best from New Zealand

I'm glad you have a new shop full of of fancy new machines. Unfortunately I'm old school and I would prefer watching paint dry.

Thank you for showing us this Adam. Appreciate seeing your journey.

Be sure to give the people that are coming in for the demo a link to this video (and links to all your FlexCNC videos.) From all that they should get a pretty good understanding of much of what is involved in getting one of these machines and how it will be delivered and setup. Great video Adam, as always.

Keep it up Adam, watching you grow is a huge inspiration ❤

remember when this channel used to show machining... now we're watching 1 video a month about some random shop tour, or in this case, 10 min's into a video before any machining happens...

I understand why Adam embarked on the journey with the new shop. He’s a content creator and not really a working machinist anymore. So he probably felt it would be very entertaining to watch his development using more automated machines. Thing is I much prefer watching him showing off his expertise in manual machining vs stumbling through learning how to use all this automated equipment that collects dust most of the time. I hope he can inject some more interesting content into the channel. 20+ episodes to finish machining a bench top vise vs CEE rebuilding a crane in their series not much of a comparison.

"The machine turned itself off..." But that doesn't explain the crash.

Great video Adam!!! I started watching you old home shop videos likes 6 years ago, amazing knowledge aquired all this time! You can work first on the top side flattening all the piece, then do all the machining on the backside, and finally the machining on the top again. It's an extra step, but you can ensure both flat and shiny surfaces.

I freely admit that I probably have no clue what I am talking about but if the CNC mill comes to a halt and crashes because someone got in the way of the laser safety detectors then why on earth doesn't the programme default to (say) withdraw the tool by 100 thou from the workpiece and then go all stop?

There are two types of CNC professionals, those that have crashed their CNC system, and liars. Welcome to becoming a Professional.

Make one channel for manual maching and one for cnc. Manual is what i am always trying to inprove on.

Great job, Adam! Just keep doing what you're doing and everything will turn out nicely over the long run.

Chào bạn. Tôi đến từ Việt Nam. Tôi đã xem bạn rất lâu. Từ lúc bạn chưa mở cửa hàng mới. Giờ bạn đã có nhiều máy cnc mới. Nhưng tôi vẫn thích bạn làm việc với những chiếc máy lúc trước. Thật tuyệt vời.

Thanks Adam.

it may be worth attaching a gopro mount to the wall behind the CNC looking down the bed. it would probably make some nice B role.

Adam, you're meant to be the guy with BIG CUTS. That end mill should be running at double that feed.

That was very interesting, thank you Adam

❤ When you are reaming a part for die making the dowel pins are a tight fit and you use a hammer to put them in the hole. You never want a pin to just push into the hole by hand. The die will fail in a very short time if any section has the slightest bit of movement when a 50 ton press hits.

I didn't pay real close attention to the Art teacher in school, but you Sir are an artist (sans the goofy beard and silly name!) Thanks for reminding me to learn something each episode in the shop. And thanks for the video!

You live, and you learn.

Adam, suggestion for FlexCNC; before the machine does anything when tripped; only retract the spindle fully; then continue the emergency stop.

"The plate was bent" I'm guessing FL finally got hot enough that it stress relieved the steel. 😂

Just a suggestion, if you ever want to learn this stuff, make an arrangement with another cnc shop: they run their parts on your machines & you follow along as an apprentice for a year or 2? Someone would be wetting themself to get on the capability of that flex machine

Thanks for that cool demo on the Big'un!

I find the cnc interesting but I do miss the handwork

I get that the safety scanner shut the machine off, but why did it crash and not just e-stop?

I always chamfer before tapping and reaming.

I love the way you organize your videos, well thought out in step by step order. I just saw the crash when the machine stopped when motion in that area was triggered. That was not your fault. As an engineer, I think the machine stop Event (Red Light) should have added a Z movement up so the cutter stops clear of workpiece, BEFORE shutting down the cutter. I'm sure this could be a program change. Shame on Flex CNC!

I'm pretty sure that the jumpiness that you are talking about at 22:30 can be improved by using the smoothing function in Fusion 360. The problem is, that the adaptive toolpath without smoothing uses too much small lines of code for the CNC machine's controller to process in time. NYC CNC has a video on this, where John Saunders goes way more into detail and does a way better job explaining it. It is Fusion Friday 128 (FF128) on YT. Keep up the good work and don't get frustrated by the guys hating everything that is "new" and which they don't understand.

Failures do happen. But the real failure is if you dont learn and adjust from it 😊👍 Making fails is a part of this job. There is so many factors to pay attention to. Especially when using new tools and machines 😊👍

Thanks, Adam! 👍

there is an old saying, attributed to many different people, " He who does not make mistakes, usually does not make much of anything"

Great job. Thank you 😊

Should do op1 in the vice and op2 bolted in place on the table. This will remove variance in vice hold and give you a better shot at parallelism.

Cool video, fascinating stuff. I like the new camera placement as well.

Speaking as a guy with lots of schooling, you must have a really flexible, greedy mind to learn so much, so quickly. That's impressive, and it must be fun for you.

The good old days of chewed up face mills lol

If any of my cnc machines stops mid operation I have the option to either start from the point it stopped or return to start of program. They will never start ahead of the point they stopped unless I was to advance the restart point. I can only assume this was an operator error and nothing to do with the safety stop system.

Adam, if all you did was ‘ruin’ a cutter, you aren’t doing too bad! Where I worked one of the guys put an incorrect rapid offset, + instead of - or vice versa, practically totalled a week old Bridgeport CNC lathe, tore the tailstock off, busted the tool carousel and the cross slide, it was so bad that it had to go back to Bridgeport for reworking, it was beyond on site repair! There are basically two groups of CNC operators, those that have crashed a tool and those that are going to crash a tool! Don’t beat yourself up over this!

You don’t know what you don’t know. Now you know.

Adam, Those laser systems like on the gantry protecting the front of the machine are programmable and generally have aux outputs for both the warning and the e-stop. You might ask if there is a way you could add an audible alarm (like a vehicle backup alarm) to for the orange warning area. I would ask your contacts if this can be added or which terminals in the control box are for these aux outputs. It would give a warning if your leg or something else entered the warning area for some reason and when you got out of the warning area, the audible alarm would silence. I have worked at 6 different manufacturers and all had these exact laser setups on everything from Amada turret presses to moving robotic tuggers traveling through production areas. If someone randomly steps in front of, or something blocks the path of the equipment being protected, the orange zone will sound an alarm and/or stop (the robotic tuggers) for a short period of time. If the person or object comes into the red zone at any time during operation, it will e-stop the equipment until maintenance or the equipment operator can reset the machine and/or properly restart it on the tool path.

you can put a 3/8 tapped hole lined up with t-slot to use as jack screw to get plates off without prying up.

Sure you could shim the V blocks to align them, but I think a better way would be to skim the faces of the v with a 45° cutter once they are fully assembled.

CNC is old testament computing, lots of rules and NO mercy. scrapped a coffee can size lump of bronze over 1 missed detail in post, 1 lead vs 2 lead acme. Okuma is a great machine, but holy hell is it trying to crash on you. For the drills check out Dormer ADX series drills they are remarkable for a hss drill, no pecking, crazy feed and they last. we are currently running a 1" deep #7 (5.1 or 5.2mm) for a 1/4-20 hole in 1018, no issues at all. we run other sizes too, never need to bother with a spot drill even on an 11/16, things just eat.

There is no circumstance where tripping a safety interlock (the Sick laser) should cause a machine crash. That is utterly insane and Flex needs to fix that. I'm guessing they just shut power to all the servos and unlock them, so the momentum from the face mill still spinning pulled it across the work like that. A proper shutdown has the machine very rapidly halt before cutting power to the servos for this very reason. EDITED TO ADD: On an IG video, Adam notes the machine simply stopped. It was (as others noted below) a bad program restart line selection that actually caused the damage.

but why does breaking the beam crash the machine? shouldn't it just stop?

Hey @Abom79 I wonder if you could set up the flexible air blower over the lense of your GoPro when in the machine? Would keep the coolant off the lense. Great video!

Interesting.

You can get the insert seat welded and remachined. Your tool rep should be able to make that happen. I'm assuming that's 1018 crs(nvm see the flame edge. Thats HRS)? I personally shoot for .0002-.0007 for press fits. I used to indicate all reamers in at the cutting edge at the lead in. I'd tap the reamer in with brass at the collet junction. A true running reamer will still blow a hole out if it catches a chip. Use a .4375 or .375 4 flute emill. Relieve the cutting edge back will a surface grinder and 5c. Leave about .1 cutting edge, then helix bore. If you do ream, i never run a reamer fastet than 1500rpm(won't blow top of hole out). Use a diamond pin in place of 1 dowel if using 2. It'll aid in removal in the future. If you don't have diamond pins, put a couple of knock out holes in the sub plate. If you want a good finish with a shoulder/face mill, remove every other insert, or just leave one. The "scallops" are the miss match of insert height. If thats an AlTiN coated emill, ditch that M8. Last thing, that shoulder mill is to large of diameter for that spindle taper. Use the same milling technique to rough as you did to finish. That sfm is for HEM but you Ae is to large to engage RCT successfully. That's a bummer that controll did that "non sense" after essentialy tripping the e stop. Keep up the content. Appreciate ya

Very nice work sir

Yet another incredible video Adam, these are so good!

Just to be clear, the following statements are observations and not meant as criticism. I respect that you're still learning CNC and that these parts are demo pieces, so I mean no offense when I say that this demonstration wouldn't give me confidence in buying a Flex. The safety features alone would make me cautious, knowing that simply standing in the wrong spot for too long could cause a crash, assuming that's what happened. Without knowing the exact events that led up to the crash after the emergency stop, we can only guess the cause. From what I see, the machine isn't handling high-speed machining well, which might be causing the stuttering. I've seen similar issues with Haas machines when high-speed machining isn't enabled, so it seems like the controller can't keep up with the adaptive strategies. Another possible cause could be that the lead-in, lead-out, or plunge feed rates are too low in Fusion. The Flex seems designed for very specific applications and might be overkill for these parts. These and similar parts would probably be best made on your Milltronics mill if you're focused on optimization, while the Flex might be better for larger parts that take advantage of its size. Those tool change times alone can undermine any programming optimizations. Regarding what happened at the 19:34 mark, I'm not entirely sure, but it looks like your part was shifted too far to the left from where the WCS was originally set, considering how deep the cut was on that end and how light it was on the opposing end. For parallelism, you could bolt the plates to the rails and then face them to ensure they're parallel with your spindle and both parts are of equal height. Anyway, keep at it! We all started somewhere!

Great show Adam, wouldn’t mind some Monarch or Pacemaker every now and then, still I find it quite interesting with the progression with the CNC machining. Looking forward to see some challenging projects coming up. All the best

When the machine shuts off like that it should stop the spindle and retract it to the up possession.

Hey i have a little improvement for you to make: i would shrink fit the carbide drill because as you can see in the vid a lot of coolant that should go through the drill doesnt and because of that the drill has a higher risk of breaking. I would immeadiately change that because having a carbide drill not shrik fitter is a no go

It seems like it’s the lead in and lead out that you need to adjust in Fusion360.

focus on safety heights rather than optimizing .. you can't run high-speed milling on that machine .. no matter what the person who sold the machine says, It's good for long pipes and holes and small milling. it's not a Mazak,,Heller,, okuma machine..

a strap clamp at the handle end of those vices might make things more rigid. also ive never seen so much crying in the comments, i just dont get it. this is just learning that everone goes through.

Some nice big rads on the corners would be nice. I would prefer to add 4 keys in slots instead of milling all that material away. That would help with the inevitable twisting. The vee blocks are really tall, do they really need to come to a corner for large diameter shafts.

Maybe see if you can timeshare the flex CNC with the people coming in wanting to buy one local. Maybe a good additional source of income for you

😊

Yeah you only do the restart crash once....then you realize it's not worth it lol....I only ever restart from a tool change.....makes it easy to find a restart point as well, and you know exactly what's going to happen....even if it wastes a little time cutting air....

Flex(ible) for real!

Hi Adam, Why didn't you start by grinding the underside? This might have resulted in a better finish for the second piece. Xris

Another great video!

Wondering why you have such large CNC machines - typically used for production or large CNC milling jobs? Are you leasing out time on the equipment when you aren't using them? Just seems like an enormous and advanced machine to learn on.

I always tell new machinists that it is a matter of when not if you crash, everyone crashes at some stage

Good to see you showing your “Flexibility”.

I would suggest to install t slot table on one side of the cnc so you can mill bigger plates instead of this style of fixture of the machine

Bro use the ‘simulate’ feature in fusion. Check the box that says stop on collision. Unless your post processor is producing some junky code, IDK. Fusion lets you prevent crashes pretty easily. Don’t play with Z heights when you don’t have to. Use the tools fusion gives you. Touch your tools off and get your Z and the rest is feeds and speeds mainly. Good luck no more crashes 🤞🏼

Wow first time first

Red, Orange and Green? For me, I might not be able to tell the difference, as I'm color blind.

Wow 1200sfm on that facemill in steel seems a little high, surprised they recommended that high. And the "jumpiness" you see is because there's too many lines of code and the controller can't read it fast enough, try turning up the smoothing and increasing the tolerance to help with that. Also seems very dangerous to have all the retracts set so low when you aren't facing off the highest part of the stock, raising that could avoid any future accidents

22:38 : It seems aggressive when the facemill engage with the material, I’m a programmer i use Mastercam and i can control that engagement but i’m not aware if fusion allowed you to do that.

G'day Adam. Always liked your flex CNC. One you get a few more jobs to do, it should work well with you. When you do the full demo to the New Buyer, can you do a Complete Video, will go down great, + Abby will have tons of Fun Filming everything 😊😅

So there are local guys coming in to look at this machine because they are looking at buying one, looks like you've missed the opportunity to do the work that is obviously in demand in your area, You need to employ someone to run these machines doing real work every day, this is the best way for you to learn how to use them, on the other hand these are probably just demo machines supplied by the manufacturers,

I always buy plate at least .063 up to .125 thicker than I need just for the problem you had. You never know what defects ended up in it at the foundry or what deformations happened in storage. Looks like yours may very well have been the bottom plate in a stack that sat for a long time.

I’m yet to see how CNC is better! At least for you.

I'm sure I'm missing something. Shouldn't the blanks be machined to dimension, square, flat and parallel before running the programme? Then you can make as many items as you want consistently.

great video. When your mill was stopping it almost looked like there was G4 command inserted there. or do you think it was the feed rate that was slowed to insanely slow?

Salty folks round here

good

I've always loved you working in the new shop. Kinda like I was standing there with you. The new shop feels abit strange. maybe pushing buttons is not as relaxing as watching you center a work piece in a chuck and spin it up. Just me penny.

I agree with @kawazukisoddbits2717. Very strange indeed. I do large size 3d printing, and to eliminate cooling of the filament onto the product we reverse the last Z-instruction during an EPO. This if the last Z-feed was down 0.18mm, then during an EPO, we move back up 0.18mm and shut down. No X or Y movement. Maybe something to consider adding to this machine.

i think you were a little slow at 19:50 in feed rate

The tool change is ridiculously long on this machine. Wow.

Lots of harmonics in with that end mill while profiling. Try more Rpm.

No idea why you didn't mill in slots to be able to insert blocks to self align with the keyways on the machine... Would make it the easiest setup ever and it would have taken like 5 minutes to draw, program and cut.

Just sounds all around not rigid enough. Should be able to have that endmill sound better and be 3x faster. obviously if it works it works! Couldn't hurt to throw on another toe clamp or two inbetween the vices to clamp them to the rails a little more. I'm not understanding the whole rail thing either, pretty minimal contact with the vice seems ass backwards to me. Jaws are also questionable. A set of standard hard jaws would probably work best

Is that Cat50 spindle?? Weirdest thing ever, flimsy sheet metal but most badass spindle taper

Some CRC 400 between the plate and the V block would be good..

No pre-ream endmill? I'm surprised...

How did the "safety feature" cause a crash?

What I'm seeing is the lack of a three-year-old granddaughter to work out the bugs.