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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. 

  • Ralph,

     

    Finding the right tool (bit) and the correct settings really make the magic happen.  A few years back, I took a mill and lathe class from some well seasoned veterans of tool and die techniques.  We focused on mostly manual skills (with some digital readouts), but everything came down to well maintained equipment, proper setup (level and square), proper speed (tool and feed) and sharp and correctly machined tool bits.  It was a lot of fun and very informative, unfortunately I have lost far more of the material than I maintained (one needs to continue to use the skills, or else they loose the skills).

     

    Good luck in learning more about your new tool/toy!

     

    Gene

  • in reply to ralphjy

    Hello Ralph,

     

    thank you for the link I will read it in detail. I have a reasonable experience with a bit bigger CNC machine, the RS2030 and 2040 with which I have done many things and PCB too. As it weight 70 Kg and I have already fixed it in my lab in Spain together with a hand-made water cooling system for the spindle, a vacuum plane for some kind of milling and a vacuum plant to keep clean the working plate I had to leave it at home in Spain. Now here I have a couple of laser cutter and engraver including the z-axis I have assembled and modified with tome upgrades I plan to use one to make a PCB only mill machine. The Aluminium structure has a usable surface of about an A3 size and uses a three-axis controller based on Arduino. I think it is sufficient to replace the laser with a small shaft. What do you think of this idea?

     

    Enrico

  • in reply to balearicdynamics

    Hi Enrico,

     

    I did a blog post earlier when I first assembled this printer: Genmitsu CNC 3018-PRO

     

    I got the CNC mill to help with my electronic projects, so I'm hoping to also use it for things like small panels or face plates made out of plastic, acrylic, wood, or aluminum.  Hopefully will improve the quality and appearance of my builds.  There is also a low power (5.5W) laser module available that could be used for engraving (not sure if that is enough power to cleanly cut wood or acrylic).

     

    SainSmart is supposed to have a very active support community for their CNC products, but it's on Facebook and I really dislike Facebook.

     

    I'd support a group on Element14 if others would also like to start one.

     

    Ralph

  • 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

  • in reply to Fred27

    I'm not planning to do anything smaller than SOIC so maybe CNC PCB milling might work for me. Definitely something to think about and Christmas is coming soon (well, maybe not soon - but eventually).

     

    Dubbie