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  • Author Author: ralphjy
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Genmitsu CNC 3018-PRO - becoming useful

ralphjy

I had a minor victory on my road to figuring out how to use my new CNC router.

 

I received the 0.5mm carbide end mills that I bought on Amazon and used one to successfully shorten a proto PCB that I need for my LoRaXes project.  The mill has about 4 mm of cutting depth.  The PCBs that I'm cutting are nominally around 1.6 mm thick.  Not a very impressive looking cutter but it worked.  I increased the spindle speed to 3000 RPM and reduced the feedrate to 80 mm/min and set the cutting depth to 0.15 mm per pass.

 

image

 

Here is the shortened PCB next to one that is uncut:

image

 

The cut edges are very smooth but you can see that they are not quite straight.  Not sure if I can improve that with tweaking or if that's the inherent limitation of an inexpensive router and cheap end mills.  Only time and experience will tell.  Anyway, I'm pretty satisfied with the outcome.  The tool did what I needed it to do. 

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  • Welcome to the world of CNC. It's fun, isn't it? You may know this already, but PCBs are particularly may to cut. They will blunt your endmills and the dusty is abrasive and nasty.

     

    For that particular job I'd have used a beefier endmill - maybe 2mm or more. You'll get less flex and you're less likely to snap it. Actually, for that job I probably wouldn't have used a CNC mill, but I'm guessing you really want to find your way round your new toy!

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  • Welcome to the world of CNC. It's fun, isn't it? You may know this already, but PCBs are particularly may to cut. They will blunt your endmills and the dusty is abrasive and nasty.

     

    For that particular job I'd have used a beefier endmill - maybe 2mm or more. You'll get less flex and you're less likely to snap it. Actually, for that job I probably wouldn't have used a CNC mill, but I'm guessing you really want to find your way round your new toy!

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  • in reply to Fred27

    Hi David,

     

    You're right that this probably isn't the best tool to cut a PCB, but in my case I don't really have much else at home.  My Dremel has nice cutting wheels but I'd need to fixture it.  I'd love to get some more specialized tools but I don't do enough PCB work to justify it.  It was nice when I had access to a shear and bandsaw.

     

    In any case, I do need to get more experience.  I agree that I should have used a bigger endmill since I wasn't planning to use the other pieces of the PCB.  I just received a set of various sizes to try out.  I guess I was thinking that I didn't want to chew up the copper pads on the scrap pieces, but I need to get used to the mess a router makes (you can tell I don't do much machining or woodworking image).

     

    Do you have some favorite vendors for CNC accessories?

     

    Ralph