Besides some test puzzle pieces and measuring accuracy testing I haven’t really made anything with my Maslow… until today. I made a present for my wife and our 7th wedding aniversary. It is in two days and she hasn’t seen it yet so please keep it quiet
It took 3 rough passes and three finishing passes.
The sanding was a lot of work, but remember this is my first CNC project I ever made myself from design to end product. Next time I’ll use better settings for less sanding
It still needs some oil, once done I will add the last pictures, but I couldn’t wait to show you all.
Thanks Bar.
I forgot to mention that it was hardwood, the kind they use for window frames, so probably Meranti or Merbau. Comparable to Oak in hardness I think, but more red/brown in color. I will also continue the accuracy testing but for this project the precision was more important, the exact accuracy not really relevant, so I thought I could do this in between without even re-calibrating for this different work height… Anyway it was hard enough because I messed up with the turning the thing upside down and getting it in the right position and then I thought I could click stop in the interface, and I could…
It meant I had to turn it of and do the retract-extend-dance and then I lost my home position too. So in two ways I was of center. During the rough pass on the second side i paused it (not stop) and unhooked two belts so I could lift the machine and see if i was centered. It saved my cutter because if I hadn’t it would have gone right through one of the screws holding it down. I had to do this new dance, pause-unhook belts-lift machine-move workpiece-dance like six times in total. Once correctly centered, I noticed the screws were too close. So a final pause-dance and improvised something to screw it down further from the tool path.
The final inside was of by a couple of millimeters, and the thing was planned to be 5 mm thick so I had that room to err.
Any way, learned a lot about CNC, CAM, tools, the interface and had a lot of fun doing it!
Thanks again for a great machine.
That is a beautiful project! Can you tell us a little about the CAM software you used? I spent months learning Onshape for CAD design, but did not spend much time learning any CAM software, and that has been the biggest bottleneck for me so far. I got reasonably good at making designs in Onshape, but then when it comes time to figure out the CAM part to make efficient g-code I’ve been struggling to get Kiri:Moto to do what I want it to do.
Hi Bhambrew,
Thank you. I used the online Kiri:Moto you mentioned. It can be a bit tricky to, like you say, get it to do what you want. If it doesn’t there is usually an option somewhere I hadn’t checked or something not turned on. I made each individual pass from start so to say. The program lets you build several passes with different operation modes and tools, but I am not familiar what happens when something happens in between that was not supposed to… So I try to keep it simple, just one operation from the bottom tab (+) so far I have used Pocket, Outline and Contour. Each have their own settings. Don’t forget to put in the stock on the left side tabs. There you can also put in other important parameters. Then when you’ve set everything you can try it out by using the Start button on the left side tabs and then choose Slice, Preview and then Animate. It will show a preview of your tool path. Sometimes it won’t, usually I hadn’t put in all the needed info yet. For example with the pocketing option you have to select the surfaces you want to work on by hovering over the “pocket” tab on the bottom of the screen to get the pop-out with the options for that operation and then click on the [ + ] at the very bottom of the pop-out then you can click on the surfaces you want to work on. Then it will make an animation when you ask it too. There are more “hidden” things like that. I just started with it myself. I tried all the free options for CAM software I could find and this one seems to agree with me most. Though after trying it for the first time I did try to find others and only the second time I stumbled on it again it worked for me.
Keep trying and try to try all the different options (tabs and buttons and settings) There aren’t that many, I think it is a relatively simple CAM program with not that many options. Hope it works for you. Somewhere in the user guide website for Maslow it says they are gonna come out with a free and easy to use software which I am curiously looking forward too. I also used tricks because I am not familiar enough yet to do it the right way. Like making the rough pass and the fine pass with the same tools but putting in a slightly bigger tool size on the rough pass so it stays away from the work a bit further, for the finishing pass I put in the actual tool size. Like I said there are better ways to do this with settings, but what works works for now.
You’re welcome, next test will be to try out what the difference is when the anchor points are at the same height (or all slightly lower, but all the same amount lower) Will it be more or less accurate inside the green area or will it have other artifacts when going out of the green area.
Hi Bhambrew,
I was just working with Kiri again and it told me my version was out of date and press SHIFT and refresh page. I had this before but I didn’t use the SHIFT, I just used refresh and worked on.
Now I used the SHIFT and it changed the version of the software… Now all the buttons and tabs I was explaining are in different places. I do think they seem to be organized better now but I was just getting used to them and now it is all different.
Anyway I do not know which version you are or were using and if my comments before were therefor relevant or maybe even more confusing. I hope it helped despite the confusion.
This is great! I am impressed that your first cut is something you designed, obviously 3d, that you were successful, and that you also described your issues. I’m not glad that you had issues, I just mean that it’s great that you shared them because we can all learn from other’s experiences.
I think it looks awesome, and your wife should be pleased with you and your new toy!
