Monthly Archives: January 2022

Meet My New CNC Router Mill, Limit Switch and Lighting Upgrade

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Many moons ago I had a shapeoko 2 cnc router/mill, and loved it. The tool chain was horrible, but it was my first CNC device. I created all sorts of things with it until I got my 3D printer. My attention was diverted due to printing’s ease of use and versatility. Eventually I forgot all the feeds and speeds and tricks for using my shapeoko. The learning curve was steep and I never got around to it. It got sold when I found out we were having a kid. Fast forward 2 years later and I stumbled into where CAM and mill control was in the modern era. Things have improved a lot in the 8 years since I first picked up a mill.

This is a 3018. Stock the way I got it. There are many versions out there, and this one is the prover from sainsmart. It was a good deal around christmas, so I broke down and got one. Out of the box it does a decent job, but there are a few issues. There are limit switches you can install, but they reduce the travel by an inch in either direction. Pretty bad when the thing moves less than 7×11″ in the first place. It could use lighting, and their touch probe is way too thick. I’ll fix it.

Y Limit Switch

I’ll start with the Y limit switch. Y is front to back if you are looking at the device. Underneath, there were tapped spots for you to put the limit switch. It hits up against the bearing blocks to trigger the machine to stop. With those installed you get a lot less travel.

Stop with switch installed
More travel without switch

Instead I found some tapped holes that are off to the side but unused. I printed a bracket to hold the switches out of the way of the bearing blocks.

With that installed I printed a stop block that would activate the switch. The base plate is 30×30 aluminum extrusion, so an appropriate T-nut let me fix the block in place. I have it set to stop the stage right before the bearing blocks hit. I could have milled the switch mount and stop block, but am much faster with 3D printing right now.

Switch installed
Switch activated by stop block

X Limit Switch

The Y limit was pretty easy, the X limit is going to be more invasive. Again, the position they want reduces left and right travel. I printed a tight spacer to keep the contacts off the aluminum side wall. I want the switch at the same height, but moved towards the back of the machine. I’ll drill and tap the side walls to mount my switches. I have to do it from the outside because I can’t get tools in around the extrusion and lead screws. Here is a switch temporarily installed with one screw on the outside.

I drilled and tapped the first hole, installed the switch, used a center transfer punch to mark the second hole’s location, then drilled and tapped that.

First hole done, second marked
Switch installed

To make a stop block I drilled and tapped the back of the X carriage and installed another 3D printed block. The Z stops came pre-installed, and I didn’t see any way to modify them that would get me more travel. They let the stage use almost all of its small travel. My last mill never had limit switches. Now I can automatically home the machine each time and drive around without fear of impacting an end.

Hand tapping X carriage
X limit block in white

Lighting

All good devices need a bit of disco lighting. Or at least something to tell you when the power is on. Power and USB are different, so you can be chatting with the USB, but having nothing move because the power is off. To remedy this, I soldered some leads onto the 24V input power switch. A buck converter dropped that to 12V to run my LED strips. The wiring is getting mess, but I just bonded the buck down to the outside of the electronics cover. It got its own little 3D printed cover (not shown).

Back of main driver board
Buck converter
Buck installed on main board cover

I used 20×20 twist in t-nuts to mount the c-clips that came with my LED strip housings.

Here is the tool with the lights off and on. It kind of blows out the camera, but the extra lighting is really helpful to work with in person.

New Touch Plate

Last but not least, I made a new touch plate. The one it came with is pretty darn tall and you have to clip the positive lead to the router bit. Mine is 1/8″ brass, and I soldered the other side of the lead onto the motor housing. I don’t have the Z-travel to use their touch plate in most situations, while mine always slides in.

Original (left) touch plate vs my new one (right)

To keep it close and handy I milled a little holder out of some PVC material I had. I could have printed this, but it was a good mill exercise to get used to fusion 360. I have a long ways to go, and spend a lot more time on the CAM to cut this shape than I would on the slicer settings to print it. Now I can accurately find the Z distance between my bit and work piece. This is a big helper that my last mill never had.

Touch plate holder
Installed on the right shield

Electric Flamingo

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Do Floridians Dream Of Electric Flamingos?

I had this idea for a piece of wall art (using that term loosely) pop into my head. Truth be told it was the legs that first occurred to me. The neon glow didn’t come until later. Here is where we are going. A day and night shot are needed to show its various aspects.

Day Time
Night Time

I started by projecting a rough flamingo shape onto a piece of plywood, then tracing it out as I have done in other projects. I used a dremel and a light touch to carve in the lines for other details like the eyes and feather line. I had some hot pink left over from repairing the finish on my lawn flamingos, so I used that as a base coat.

Around this time I saw a video on tested’s website where Norm was using this LED strip that was setup to look like neon sign tubing. It was really gorgeous and I wanted to try it out myself. I found a pink variety that runs on 12v. I free handed an offset from the outside edge of the flamingo and tried to follow it with a 1/4″ router bit. That gave me a good groove to seat the LED strip in. You have to cut at specific locations and solder together the ends to make it a continuous strip.

The project started when I had this vision of making flamingo legs using rebar and epoxy putty. Not sure why that came to me, but it did. Sure enough, bending rebar after a bit of torch work and then using epoxy putty to make knees and feet is a good way to make flamingo legs. I am no sculptor, but they came out good enough from a distance. I used a bone color as a base, then did a splotchy overspray of pink to add texture.

To add the rest of the feather color I used my air brush. I was going to try to airbrush a feather texture, but it didn’t really turn out like I wanted. In trying to wipe some of it off, I made a thumb smudge. It looked pretty good. I started from the back and worked my way forward doing air brush areas with finger smudges to make it look like feathers. The lighter area around the beak was airbrushed, but the beak and eyes were done with a normal brush.

I found an outdoor rated power supply to run the LED strips and soldered it to an extension cord to minimize the space and wiring needed for this. There is a hard wired power cord for my flamingo now. I used metal pipe strap to attach the legs. Overall, it took a few twists and turns, but looks awesome on my porch. I need to do a little better job hiding the power cord against that hurricane track, but otherwise it is great.