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Ask HN: Getting started with CNC machinery...

7 points by aarongough ↗ HN
Hello fellow HNers! I just bought myself a CNC milling machine, something I have been wanting to own for many years, and I am looking forward to extending my programming directly into the physical world.

I have done my research over the last few years and regularly lurk over at CNCZone etc... But that being said I have still never actually used or programmed a CNC machine!

My question to everyone here that has (hopefully) messed about with CNC machinery is: how did you get started? Are there any online/ofline guides you would recommend?

9 comments

[ 4.6 ms ] story [ 52.3 ms ] thread
jacquesm
Hey There.

First of all, congratulations, now get yourself a pair of safety glasses and wear them, all the time. I'm seriously not kidding about this, it is one of the most important things that you could overlook and when you are just starting out with this the chances of an 'incident' are very large, bordering on certainty.

Then, to give you some pointers I need to know a bit more about your machine, what size machine do you have, what is the working volume, stroke, power of the spindle motor and the kind of drive you've got (servos ? steppers ?).

Is it a production machine or a rebuild ?

What kind of materials do you intend to work ?

What kind of workpieces do you intend to make ?

Are you going to program the machine directly or are you going to set up a whole chain ? (cad package, translator, machine controller)

-- do you know cnczone.com ? --

Strike that, missed you mentioning cnczone in your comment.

I think cnczone is by far the better forum for these kinds of questions, the people there have spent collectively multiple 100's of lifetimes programming, building and debugging cnc gear, this is a very interesting field to play around in.

--

In the few leftover hours that I've got I'm converting this rig:

http://pics.ww.com/d/93690-2/dscf1225.jpg

To a modern simultaneous 4 axis controller. It's been lots of fun so far but rather a whole lot more work than anticipated.

aarongough
That mill looks pretty damn serious Jacques! A four axis machine would be awesome... I used to work for a company that had 2 6 axis machines that were more than 20 feet long! They used them to machine parts for acoustic guitars...

I sent you an email with the rest of the info you were after! -A

bootload
"... My question to everyone here that has (hopefully) messed about with CNC machinery is: how did you get started? Are there any online/ofline guides you would recommend? ..."

The best resource is probably to contact your local hackerspace ~ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hackerspace Where do you find them ? ~ http://hackerspaces.org/wiki/List_of_Hacker_Spaces Playing with CNC machinery requires a bit of up-front knowledge and semi expensive kit so a hackerspace good place to ask questions.

To give you an example of what you can do with CNC mills check out what vrogy builds with his own CNC mill ~ http://www.flickr.com/photos/vrogy/sets/72157602307522809/ You can get a good idea of what he's using for looking through his flick set ~ http://www.flickr.com/photos/vrogy/sets/

aarongough
Good reply! I hadn't thought of visiting a hackerspace as a way of getting info on this. There is a hackerspace relatively close to where I live so that would definitely be worth a look!

Once I get the machine up and running I will be using it for small batch manufacturing of custom knives as well as prototyping all of my crazy ideas :-p

bootload
"... Once I get the machine up and running I will be using it for small batch manufacturing of custom knives as well as prototyping all of my crazy ideas :-p ..."

be sure to check out vrogy because thats similar to what he's doing

aarongough
Looks good! Some of the loast-foam casting stuff he's done looks very cool. At some point I'll be looking to do the same...
frankus
I went back to school in a much more applied program (post-bacc at the Vehicle Research Institute at Western Washington University) than my undergrad (Engineering at Harvey Mudd). One of the classes we had to take was a basic CNC programming class. We started with hand-writing a program to carve our initials into a block of aluminum, all the way up to designing a much more complex part in a CAM system.

Of course I haven't touched a CNC machine since. Depending on your project you may or may not be hand-writing G&M codes, but my understanding is that most professional work on anything but simple parts is done with a CAD/CAM package.

aarongough
Yeah, I think I'll likely stay away from hand-coding the GCode. The parts I am making will generally have fairly complex curves and I can imagine would be a total pain to program by hand...