Avid CNC Ep1: The Machine, 4'x10' - 339

all right so i'm not gonna i'm not gonna get into all the the fine details of building this cnc it's all documented online as far as the uh assembly instructions but i didn't want to kind of document a little bit of it so basically i set up a time lapse camera for for the entire build and this was spread out let's see we had some sporadic time here and there to work on this it was three seven hour days when it was all said and done for the two of us now we weren't like you know crazy working hard or anything it was just a casual build and uh very not difficult i mean it's all documented with the instructions you're just basically following instructions now i did have to go back and forth on on the instructions uh because i'm kind of building a mix between two of their their common models so they have a four by eight which is very common and then a 5 by 10 which is very common i'm building the 4 by 10 or a 4 by 10 cnc so i went with a 4 foot width instead of 5 because there's literally nothing that i can think of for a five foot width other than say something completely random like maybe a five foot diameter circular clock which i'm never going to do i don't see myself ever doing and then the the other argument for a five foot width is for baltic birch baltic birch plywood typically comes in five foot by five foot sheets i have to this day i have never worked with baltic birch there's no place anywhere near me uh none within like a three hour drive that i know of uh that maybe a two and a half hour drive that can even get or order five foot by five foot baltic birch i just never use it never work with it don't really want to um plan on a large large uh project a large tool like this like a cnc machine for something that i'm never going to use so the five foot width all i use is four foot by eight foot plywood so beyond that all i can think of is you know tabletops uh long large slabs of lumber i think four foot should be well i mean it should be just fine for basically everything that i'm gonna do so that's why i went four feet for the width now for the length i have a couple different goals with the cnc machine as far as what i want to be able to cut so i did go for a 10 foot length because i want to number one be able to cut a full four foot by eight foot sheet number two i want to be able to plan for in the future the rotary attachment uh that's something that's very intriguing to me but i didn't go with it right off the bat because i want to get this whole system familiarized and and i know that these machines are so modular so adding the rotary down the road is should be seamless so there's no need to get it right this second and then but i do want to plan for the space and then also i do want to have uh one of the one of the biggest things that i want to be able to do is is have a vertical table to do joinery on both you know small stuff like say this stuff the size of like a table leg the end grain part of a table leg maybe a three foot by three foot square that's small stuff but also i'm thinking like big cabinet sides so like let's just say like a blanket chest a green and green blanket chest all of the the sides are box joints through box joints finger joints and being able to variable space that program all that on the computer and have the cnc machine cut it out that's fascinating to me and i think that's something that i really want to explore the only limitation with that is the distance from the floor to the uh the bit basically so if it's a really long piece then you obviously can't stand that on end but again we're talking about uh odd scenarios where that wouldn't be the case so anyway a vertical table four foot by eight foot panel and then also the rotary attachment that all of that added up is is about 10 feet in length right at this point the frame is complete it is square and it is positioned in the shop where i want it to be positioned so we can level the feet and this was a very very easy process i'm using a stabila uh this is a what is it dp uh no it's a tech 500 dp that's what it is the dp stands for digital protractor and it's basically a level on steroids this thing is so cool so the the way it works is you you set it in you take a reading in two different directions on the same spot to calibrate it for a zero measurement for a perfectly level and then you can set it in place wherever you want to level turn on a audio feedback button so it'll start beeping and the frequency of the beep changes the closer you get to zero so you can just set it in place let it start beeping and then adjust the feet as necessary without having to keep stopping and going back and looking at the level it'll let you know uh from audio feedback how close you get to zero until you do get to zero so i went around the entire uh whole frame here so so i leveled the left side leveled the right side got those perfectly level and then used the device on top of the gantry to get the left and right side level to one another now you don't really have to do this all you need is everything co-planar so it's all on a flat plane it doesn't necessarily have to be level but i'm already i'm already here so why not so in this case on the left side i had to lift the left side up uh by the same amount all three feet were lifted the same amount to get it close to the or level with the right side and this took like five minutes to get the entire machine not only flat and and planar all the way around coplanar all the way around but perfectly level so that was pretty cool next up is the rest of the gantry so we have to put the linear rails the rack and pinion or the the rack on top uh what else the z-axis gets installed now the z-axis comes pre-assembled for the most part which is really nice that helps out a lot the once that's installed the motors are installed the cable rack then all the cable attachments uh well the cables rather you run the cables hook up the sensors so this has sensors to stop it from running into the end stops in both in all three directions x y and z so you don't uh over travel and cause damage so those are all hooked up the motors are all hooked up the the electronics boxes are installed so there's one box for uh running the motors so the actual motion of the machine and that's powered by a 120 volt circuit so just a regular wall outlet here in the united states the north america and then the second box is for the spindle power so that's a 240 volt circuit so you need two different power sources for this setup there is a regular wall outlet next to the machine but i don't have any wires dangling or hanging on the floor on the front left or right side so my plan is to drop a pair of circuits from the ceiling on the back side and then run them right through the cable management so i'll have a 120 volt circuit as well as a 240 volt circuit drop down from above that'll put all of the wires contained on the machine so at the end of the day if we're running something that gets a little bit messy the dust collection doesn't get it i can just sweep up all the way around the machine and not have to worry about any wires whatsoever i've got the cnc machine running completely and i've already taken the time to tram the spindle so just clamping a board up here and running the spindle in a certain series of left and right and then forward and back to make sure uh to to get an example so i know if i need to adjust this in any way i've already done that everything's good to go next up is the spoil board and there's a couple options to attach the spoil board to this frame the first option is with these roll-in t-nuts that you can push into these slots and it's a t-nut so you have a spot for a bolt to go into so you can put them anywhere and then bolt anything to the aluminum extrusion and typically you'll see a piece of mdf laid down some holes cut for those bolts and and roll in t-nuts to go top down into the top of these aluminum extrusions however that's kind of a pain in the butt and every time that the spoil board needs to be changed that same amount of annoyance will have to be repeated over and over again if i go that route so instead i'm going to use the same method but we're going to attach sacrificial pieces to this vertical side or vertical front of each one of these webs basically a 2x4 is going to attach to the vertical face will surface the top of those so that they are all parallel or coplane or i should you should say i should say and then at that point we can lay the mdf on top of that and screw just regular countersunk screws right into the 2x4 that's going to be way easier long term to make any type of adjustments this is one of those roll-in t-nuts and it's it's got a threaded hole and a push push ball i forget what it's called uh but that ball has some flexible uh flexibility in the backside so that you can push it in and it's kind of spring-loaded that's what it is spring-loaded ball so basically your this system allows you to put a nut anywhere in the aluminum extrusion which is great and this is the particular length that we're given for the waste board so that means the this counter board hole has i guess i think it was about a quarter of an inch maybe about 5 16 of an inch of meat on the bottom of that hole so there's plenty enough to grab to as the uh as as the bolts tightened so this is this is a great setup because you can mount stuff anywhere but it's when you have like five or so that are in a line on a board uh well like like assembling uh or screwing a waste board down it's gonna be a little bit crazy to try and get everything to line up but anyway here's a test of just one to see how well one would hold and it holds really really strong i started to rotate it here really putting some force on it that's that's plenty strong enough to hold this to the frame especially considering a 49 inch long by four which is what we're using there's gonna be five of these holding each one of the two by fours in place so plenty strong enough to build up a sacrificial surface to mount stuff to in the future here you can see the 2x4 is mounted to the frame and we used a drill press with a fence on the drill press table to drill all the holes in line with one another and position those so that once they were installed once these boards were installed the top would be about about a quarter of an inch three eighths of an inch higher than what it needs to be and then i can use the cnc machine to mill all the tops of the two by fours coplanar and close to the top of the aluminum extrusion now for the bit i'm using a half inch compression bit compression really doesn't matter in this case um because the cut quality does not matter we're just trying to get a flat a reference face this threw chips everywhere so i really got to get dust collection going as a matter of fact during this cut it actually threw some of the chips right at the camera which was like 15 feet away a large chunk flew out so there's another you know another reason for dust collection to stop shrapnel from flying at you but the machine itself was used to mill everything nice and flat co-planar and very close to the top of the aluminum extrusion then the mdf sheet can be installed and the the benefit of doing this is like i said earlier once we need to change this mdf sheet in the future it's going to be way easier to do that by just removing some countersunk screws which is how we're attaching this rather than having to deal with all those those blind t-nuts once again so it's just for ease of convenience long-term and like i said we're just countersinking holes and drilling down or securing it rather with some just regular screws this is a good stopping point for this video the machine is completely built it is operational um don't have the spoil board surfaced just yet because i am waiting on dust collection so i still have to do that there's plenty enough room in the back for the rotary attachment when that comes there's plenty enough room in the front for the vertical table which will be sooner rather than later i'm really really excited about having a vertical table for this to do joinery and all kinds of fun stuff i'm really really looking forward to that uh what else do we have to do oh there's no hold down options inside the spoil board just yet so i'm going to figure that out um and i am going to continue this series on nothing but this particular series is going to be nothing but this machine so stuff about the setup of this machine the software side um not project specific just machine specific so that'll be a good way to categorize things and then you'll be able to reference a whole series rather than trying to find random titled videos uh that's it uh you guys take care have a great day be sure to subscribe if you're interested in the rest of the series so you don't miss that check out my website go to jacecustomcreations.com newsletter to sign up for my email newsletter so you don't miss anything and i'll catch you guys in the next video