My first thought as I’m sure many have considered before, there isn’t much difference between a 3D printer and a small CNC machine.

I switched from Estlcam to Inventables Easel as its free and extremely easy to use, much simpler than anything else I've used so far.

I used Estlcam to generate the toolpaths as it can generate Marlin compatible gcode and again, its free and easy to use.

I can say the spindle does not need to be changed, this things pretty good for a small machine. Banggood do more powerful ones as well if you need it.

3D printer

Lets look at the spindle first. It comes well packaged and 2 has 2 short wires with bare ends as well as a nice aluminium mounting block.

So thanks very much all for reading and please check out the video if you want to see some of the disasters and fun I had. If you have any questions please shoot!

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I measured up a bit of walnut, cut to size and drilled holes to fit the existing x carriage and holes for the aluminium mounting block.

I thought some limewood would be ideal for the first cuts since its fairly soft and I made sure it was extra secure on the bed this time.

So I learned loads making this thing, for light cuts and engraving its actually a useful machine but you can see from the wobble its not really suitable as a serious CNC.

I ditched the RAMPs board and the Arduino and switched to a dedicated CNC board that runs the latest builds of GRBL, runs 3 axis and is of course available from Banggood (sorry if this reads like a giant ad, I just buy a lot of my stuff from them!)

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You can just I just pick what material you're, using, tell it how big it is, add a pattern or something that you want to cut, tell it the depth and can generate the tool paths.

I knew immediately the cables would not be long enough so I soldered on some additional length and then set about testing the spindle to make sure it worked well.

3D printers do additive manufacturing using a plastic extruder usually and CNC machines a rotary cutting tool to do subtractive manufacturing by carving away the unwanted material.

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And for the first cut I inserted a 3mm end mill piece also from banggood. I’ve not used any of their tool bits before but have found them to be great value if you don’t mind waiting a little longer for them to arrive.

CNCmachine

I then tried a stamp. I used rubber material at first designed for laser cutting but this was too soft and didn't work well so I switched to something a little harder; linoleum.

In this case an old RAMPS board with an Arduino mega controls the various motor directions as well as telling the extruder motor how much plastic to squirt out and when.

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I tried acrylic with a little cut of Olaf from Frozen. It was a bit too melty as I was using cheap dremel bits but still was a good recognisable cut.

As there is no longer an extruder or hot bed as well as all the temperature probes that come with that, I removed any references to them in the code.

I got rid of it and replaced it with a piece of plywood so its cheap enough to cope with a few holes and be replaced if necessary as well as being fairly dimensionally stable.

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I made a video sponsored by Banggood who have given me a $100 CNC spindle and some tooling to try and make my old Prusa i3 3D printer into a CNC.

The flex in my tape mounted spindle was pretty bad during that though so I should probably make a more serious mounting bracket.

They typically both have small stepper motors that drive a tool end of some kind along several axis to reproduce a digital file.

The current firmware on this board was on old version of Marlin since as awesome as Marlin is, it was designed for 3D printers not CNC mills.

I also switched to something that’s designed to run a CNC, the openbuilds control software. Again this is free and easy to use.

CNC printingservices

I found it cut but bit of a weird step feature which I knew was not missing steps or a sliped belt as the artifact was not repeated. After some comments from my subscribers I think this was down to the flex of the bed.

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Cnc printingkit

I used some firmware that already been written called GrblforRAMPS by Per Ivar Nerseth but had limited sucess and messed around with the latest Marlin build with some tweaks.

I just move my spindle to a reference point, say the bottom left corner on top of what I want to cut, set this as my home position and then start.

I really wanted to make this work with the printers existing electronics and it kinda’ does. It’s not easy to reconfigure however and the software I’ve got loaded is nearly five years out of date.

Well a lot it turns out. My steps per inch was off and I had a major crash of the spindle into the bed causing lots of smoke :(

CNC printingwood

It was a good printer for its time and as I built it myself I’m very familiar with the design so it’ll lend itself perfectly to this project.

I did have some trouble with the connections, partly because the PSU labels were in Chinese but this was nothing a quick google couldn’t fix. I'll post a picture showing what wires go where.

I've considered adding some powerful motors, changing the plastic parts out for something more rigid, change the belts to lead screws and maybe redesign the structure to add to its rigidity.

You also get a power supply and variable speed controller allowing the spindle to be ran at anywhere between 1-3000 RPM.

The banggood spindle comes with a nice mounting bracket that means I just need to drill a few holes in the existing mounting plate.

It made sense to use a shape I’m familiar with so I used the makerspace logo again, but scaled it up a bit so you can see the detail with a 3mm bit. I didn’t have anything smaller at this time.

Cnc printingmachine

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I used Repetier to drive the machine as that what I used on this printer before and I know it works. Its free and fairly easy to use.

3DprintingvsCNCcost

The glass print bed is great for holding down your 3D prints but the idea of a rotating carbide endmill crashing down on it scared me a little so I knew this had to go.

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The extruder also had to be removed as well as all the associated wiring like the heater cables and temperate probes which made things a bit easier to deal with.

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The 3D printer I’ve a few years now just sitting in the shedas I have my nice Lulzbot Taz 3 so its about time I gave it a new lease of life.

For now I’m going to run the spindle in isolation at a set speed using the provided power supply and speed controller rather than doing anything clever like letting the electronics handle the speed.