Genmitsu CNC 3018-PRO - becoming useful

RE: Genmitsu CNC 3018-PRO - becoming useful

genebren — Fri, 09 Aug 2019 15:42:47 GMT

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

RE: Genmitsu CNC 3018-PRO - becoming useful

Fred27 — Fri, 09 Aug 2019 13:20:39 GMT

I originally got a CNC mill (well, converted a mill myself) in order to mill PCBs. I ended up moving to etching as milling anything smaller than SOIC starts to get impractical.

https://0xfred.wordpress.com/2012/02/12/proxxon-mf70-cnc-mill-conversion/

CNC milling is great. It complements 3D printing really well. I still do it, just not for PCBs.

RE: Genmitsu CNC 3018-PRO - becoming useful

dubbie — Fri, 09 Aug 2019 13:11:45 GMT

I would be interested in finding out more about CNC milling and similar as I know virtually nothing. One of my goals for it would be to surface mill PCB layouts rather than etch. We did have one at work that could do this but it was slow so not useful for larger class batches of PCBs, but now, slow would be fine for just me. It feels a bit like when I started with 3D printing, as they had one at work (just for the mechanical engineers) that printed in wax and cost nearly £100,000 - not much use to me for my electronics stuff. Eventually they became much cheaper, printed in plastic and I understood what was going on (mostly). Now I would like to do something similar with CNC. My wife has already said no to the £30,000 CNC lathe, so I'm looking for something much cheaper.

Dubbie

RE: Genmitsu CNC 3018-PRO - becoming useful

balearicdynamics — Fri, 09 Aug 2019 07:03:26 GMT

Welcome on the CNC world [View:/resized-image/__size/16x16/__key/commentfiles/f7d226abd59f475c9d224a79e3f0ec07-e8b8719b-e7ba-4f23-b8c7-49c321f063bc/contentimage_5F00_1.png:16:16] Do you plan to use it for PCB only or also something else? What kind of model? Some photos? If you need help, just ask.

BTW... Maybe it is worth to open a group on CNC milling techniques, eventually finalized to the electronic design and prototyping support?

Enrico

RE: Genmitsu CNC 3018-PRO - becoming useful

Fred27 — Fri, 09 Aug 2019 06:01:45 GMT

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!