Thought I would share my first MDF cabinet door. It is built for the cabinet that hosts my XCarve.
I am very happy with the results. I used Aspire and UGS.
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Those look great! Could you please post the run time and cutters you used for this?
Thanks,
SMK
Thanks Scott, I used a 1/4 inch mill for the roughing pass and a 1/8 ballnose for the finishing pass. I am not sure what you mean by run time but if you let me know I am happy to share.
How long the machine took to cut the part. I’m also interested in the speeds and feeds you used.
This is really cool.
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There was three cuts:
- Roughing Cut - 1/4 End Mill - 30 in/min 30 plunge rate - about 6 hours
2)Finishing Cut - 1/8 Round Nose - 30 in/min 40 plunge rate - about 3 hours - Profile Cut - 1/8 Round Nose - 40 in/min 30 plunge rate - about 20 minutes
In our tests I think you can probably go 100-120in/min in MDF if you’re going 0.020" depth per pass with the 300 DC Spindle.
Thanks Zach, my first spindle died so I was worried I was pushing it too hard. I will try it as you suggest.
Did you send it back for analysis?
It’s possible that pushing it too hard killed the spindle but I haven’t been able to kill one myself yet.
We’ve had 7 customers report that their spindles died so far. That is an unacceptable number in my opinion. However, the spindle company is quite responsive and has come to our office. I think they will be able to help us figure out the issues some people are experiencing. I met the owner and they understand the technology and want to build a long term business relationship with us.
No I wasn’t asked to send it back. Your staff were super helpful and expedited me a new one with little questions asked. I really appreciated the service and am happy to send it back if you like. It will be on it’s way tomorrow.
Yea the manufacturer of the spindle has asked that we send all of them back unopened. They have a lab at the manufacturing facility where they do tear downs. With a spindle like that you only get one chance to learn the root cause of the failure.
@Zach_Kaplan I would be super interested to see what the inside of the new spindle looks like, and what they determined the failure mode to be.
Keith,
I don’t have my machine yet but this is something I was thinking about doing. Did you create 3 different cut files so you could change the bit?
Thanks
Hi @BrandonFountaine, yes I created 3 separate files. Universal GCode sender returns the spindle to home after each file so it works well. Here are a couple more I made:
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Keith, doors look great, I assume you have had previous cnc experience or are you just that good?
Thank you @JamesMitchell, I am completely new to CNC. My advantage if anything is in software. I worked as a developer for years and spent the time figuring out Aspire / UGS while waiting for the XCarve to arrive.
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Well you did good, I also am trying to figure out vcarve photo and ugs, not having the greatest success as of now, but I have time on my side and I will eventually figure it out or try something else.
They look really nice. 2 years per door sounds like one of my kind of projects.
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