Cheap CNC mills for cutting plastic

there are some pretty cheap (sub 300 dollar) laser cutters and 3d printers on aliexpress that you could easily modify to fit a dremel or a router to cut plastic.

>>1237336
No
3d printers and laser cutters arent built with lateral forces in mind, they simply wont be stiff enough to chew through material without flexing and walking making your cut inaccurate.

>>1237294
The axis movements in all of these small machines are pretty accurate nowadays, cheap little controller boards with proper steppers.

It looks stiff enough to cut through some plastic if you have a stout enough spindle

I've been looking into this from the perspective of being as cheap as possible to play around with. This guy has some interesting cnc machines he's built from basic materials. Probably not what OP is looking for, but interesting for /diy/ tinkering.

http://www.homofaciens.de/technics-machines-cnc-v2_en.htm

>>1237544
If you have a cheap 3d printer laying around, look up the Mostly Printed CNC or the LowRider cnc

A few people in the 3d printing general have built them

Order SBR12 supported rails and 12mm ballscrews cut to length from Aliexpress, nema23 steppers, spindle, spindle mount and controller also from Aliexpress. Arduino Uno with CNC shield and DRV8825 is enough to drive smaller nema23s. Buy 3030 alu extrusions locally for the frame. You can get pretty much all other frame-related parts and T-nuts and whatnot from aliexpress as well. Should cost around $500 for about 500x500 area.

>>1237644
The openbuilds mill is like $400

>>1237826
Yeah, but you only get 195x120mm area.

Pretty tiny, desu.

>>1237872
I'm looking for something I can just put on a table or bench. 500x500 is huge and probably bigger when counting for the entire chassis

>>1238110
Then make it smaller, the 500x500 was just a random number that I could easily approximate since my own CNC is near that. You can make a 200x200 area CNC with the same components, it's just not going to be much cheaper.

>>1237294
Im making my own 1000mm x 700mm and the cost is under 400€

what do you guys plan on milling with these

File: download.jpg (126KB, 1000x1000px) Image search: [Google]

126KB, 1000x1000px

>>1237294
http://www.pocketnc.com/
This thing gets my dick hard... idk what I would even do with it.... make a turbocharger for my scooter/

>>1240881

people who get sexually aroused by technology really weird me out.

>>1240881
Looks obscenely expensive for what you get. Pretty sure you need professional, commercial cad software to even generate tool paths for all those axes

>>1240925
You can't find any other 5 axis for that price. Even if you bought a used 3 axis mini-mill and retrofit it with a trunnion table it would cost more. Also

>Autodesk has committed to offering the software for free (including 3+2 machining capability!) for hobbyists, educators, and businesses making less than $100,000 per year.

>>1237348
>they simply wont be stiff enough to chew through material
This is false. It really depends on your printer though. For soft metals they can work. You arent going to be cutting steel but OP didnt ask to.

>>1240881
doubt its solid enough for anything serious.
brass/ali turbo maybe lol.
>>1240925
fusion 360 (autodesk (autocad)) is free, pretty sure they were in cahoots weren't they? pocket sent a couple of machines to autodesk around the time they were moving pricing models to make sure it worked with it or something? maybe thats why its free? i might be making this up? but fusion is fucking cloud based or some shit but you know fuckers can't be choosey

>>1240942
You obviously havent looked at the budget 3d printer and laser pointers in the $300 price range he is talking about.
NONE of them are stiff enough for even soft metal, and the fact that he talks about using a dremel for a spindle should tell you something.

They would sag and have issues carrying a real spindle by itself

>>1240962
>https://youtu.be/MDz1A1XDOt8
You are very out of touch with reality. A spindle is not needed for his application. dremels are more capable than you think. ABS is a soft for plastic.

>>1237639
>Mostly Printed CNC
This is pretty smart.

>>1240939
>>1240944
So can that pocketnc actually mill metals or is it a meme machine that only works the first few times and then loses rigidity and can't do it anymore

>>1240982
bump, anyone actually have this thing? Looks amazing if it can really machine metal

Go for it, OP. It's a really neat design. The openbuilds POM nuts have little to no backlash, which would be great for a mill like that.

>>1240963
>You are very out of touch with reality

The only person who is out of touch with reality is the one equating a stoutly built $1500 3d printer to
>"(sub 300 dollar) laser cutters and 3d printers"

I have bought and built one of the cheap printer kits from aliexpress. Ive seen the play in all of the materials, I have actually drug my hotend along my bed from poor leveling and seen how much flex (which would be chatter) on them.

Have you actually cut plastic with a dremel?
Actually cutting plastic is not easy as it melts when it gets hot, and dremels have to be fast to cut. The have almost no power at low speeds, and their puny 3/16 shaft tooling is trash anyways.

Im baffled at how you are still trying to pretend this is a good or viable idea.

>>1240982
>>1242288

It can. But, of course, the caveat is that the work volume is absolutely tiny. 80in^3 if you just take the XYZ travel, but, of course, the tool itself is going to eat some of that, and you'll lose even more if you want to use either of the rotary axes (which is kind of the point of a 5-axis mill).

In other words, for $5,000, you'd still struggle to make something the size of your fist. And yet it still sells, somehow. Which tells you a lot about the obscene prices that "real" 5-axis machines command.

>>1242327
>their puny 3/16 shaft tooling is trash anyways.

Dremels use 1/8" shaft tools.

>>1240963
>>1240942

Strictly speaking, you can cut stuff with a dremel on a 3D printer. What you don't seem to understand is that it isn't about being physically stout enough to handle the cutting forces, but it needs to be rigid enough to handle the cutting forces *while moving as little as possible*. You can only compensate so much by using smaller endmills, because the smaller mills are more prone to breakage due to lack of rigidity in the machine, even if they require less force to cut.

You _can_ do an extremely limited amount of cutting on a printer. Mostly thin plywood/MDF or aluminum sheet so thin it's more akin to foil. There are plenty of videos of people doing just that. But it's invariably more of a "hey look at this neat trick" thing that they do once and never again, because it's such a limited process.

About the only useful cutting a 3D printer can do is isolation routing of PCBs. And the cheap ones often can't even do that.

>>1242327
>cheap printer kits from aliexpress
This is the most retarded thing Ive read in a while. Why would you do this. You clearly don't know how to get into 3d printing. You probably bought some acrylic trash printer instead of one with a metal frame.
And I cut plastic all the time. I used my dremel as a router before I built a cnc. Cutting 3d printed parts was the main purpose.

>>1242352
>but it needs to be rigid enough to handle the cutting forces *while moving as little as possible*.

With the cheap linear bearings and smooth rods, the inherent design of the X carriage in these cheap printers leaves a decent amount of pitch movement. And the Y carriage has a decent amount of yaw rotation too.

The second an endmill touches something its cutting its going to chatter which is why I agree its just a neat trick and not a real solution.

>>1242419
>You probably bought some acrylic trash printer instead of one with a metal frame.

Not that it really matters at all, but my first printer was an i3 in late 2014 before acrylic the kits even existed and it had the mandated 3mm laser cut aluminum frame.

Dont be a faggot, if youve touched any I3 variant acrylic or not you know that the bed on the Y carriage twists with your hand and you know that the X carriage tilts, pull the hotend lightly forward and the whole carriage tilts up.

It doesnt matter with 3dprinting which is why the design is ok, you arent touching anything just laying plastic. It second you try to cut with it, it matters.