My STEP signature project was learning CNC machining after being inspired by the youtuber Wintergatan and others using their machining talents to make custom parts for their own creations. In the industrial world, CNC machining is often used to create custom metal parts that are used in machinery. Being a college student that cannot afford either a fancy machine and the pure carbide bits, I wanted to learn the basics of machining with a basic router and wood.
One thing I learned beyond educating myself on machining, is that people are often more helpful than companies. The company I bought my CNC machine was very unhelpful after purchasing my product, while they would provide parts to fix the machine, they would do nothing on their part to help me fix or prevent future problems. The machine I had gotten did not work out of the box, and did not work as intended after that, without me modifying it from its original design. The company did nothing to answer my questions on fixing, I had to reach out to the community of CNC hobbyists that solved many of my problems in minutes. The company would not put any of my review or suggestions on their website and I do regret having been bond to buying from them, as I was locked into no refunding it after having used the machine. The company had my money and that was all they wanted, but the community was the one that wanted to help me to progress in my project as they had in theirs.
The other difficulty throughout my project was finding live classes to try and learn from. I reached out to multiple companies that did both hobbyist and industrial CNC machining, but the frequent response was that I was not a customer and could not take their classes. They wanted you to buy their $10,000+ machines before they would think about educating you on how or what you can do with them. Woodcraft was the one place that had in person classes that had instructors that were kind enough to allow me to take a class on engraving with a CNC machine. This project really changed my view on how companies try to earn, keep or lose your business. But individuals want to help you learn and grow in learning as they did. The lessons at Woodcraft with their instructors were helpful in learning the basics of the software and designing part of the project, but I still had to learn the machining part on my own from having a different machine, bits and material.
The main thing I learned during this project is that it takes a lot of fine tuning to get everything to run correctly. And this did take longer as since I bought a cheaper router from a very unhelpful company I had to research quite a bit to fix the machine into working condition. Cheaper does not always equal better, as many of the cuts in cost, I ended up having to fix. What you don’t pay for up front, you may end up paying for later, as I did with how many repairs or modifying I had to do to the machine. Because of COVID and shipping delays, I had to wait days to weeks for parts to come from here or China. I now at least have a stash of spare parts to keep the machine in running order. One simple issue I had, the company sent me bend pieces twice, machine Y-axis could not move, had to sand and shim. One set of wires to drive the motors was also bad on unboxing.
Another problem with the machine was after several hours of working, bearings started to come lose, the company had no other solution than to send me a new XZ axis (twice). A community member suggested loctitie, and the original parts have held since. One of the times the bearings failed caused the board to burn from the spindle motor dropping straight into the board. The bit in the picture was gold in color and is black from burning.
The control board also caught fire once because of a bad wire adapter the company sent me
I ended up making over 30 different parts using scrap wood, learning something different from each run. I used gears and simple shapes to learn from. Most of my learning came from making mistakes and learning how to correct for them. (Parts were made following the order of left to right, top to bottom) the first 6-8 runs were used to get the correct speeding for running each bit, as the company provided no information on what bit is for what. The next dozen runs focused on getting the correct shape and spacing. The final runs were perfecting more details and cleanness.
Picture should be rotated to the right
The goal with this project was to learn the process on how to make custom parts using CNC machining. I learned much of this project through making mistakes. Even at the end, the “final” gears are not perfect. I dropped the piece, broke the handle and replaced it with a nail. The gears are not perfectly flat on the bottom either because I used scrap wood and I do not have a planner to smooth both sides. Something I continued to learn with this project, nothing is ever perfect and ever will be. I worked to make this project the best I could in the time I had it, but every time I look at it, there is something I could have done better with it, some little thing I could have improved on. None of this went as planned either, from waiting for parts or the few fires I made on the machine. Life is unexpected and you just have to make the best out of it.
This is what the machine looks like when it has finished a single gear and has drilled the center hole for the next.