Nekochan Net

Hello there!



I knew it!!!, heheh!!!
Thanks to god you said it, because one of my customers is selling these shit stuff here in my country to jewellers for medal engraving! So, I'm free of charges! I've not launched the stone!



1) Sure! Anyway, better Aluminum and not MDF! Believe me, there are lots of commerical CNC routers here in Argentina being built over MDF frames!
2) Pretty sure too, yes... but you need to accept that in terms of assembly practicality the bolted construction is easier than weldments. To do it welded you need a good exoskeleton frame, already made with very tight tolerances, to help to hold the joins together in order to be sure that you'll not end with a useless structure once welded. Also, check out the very reduced workable area/volume. But I would go definitively for a casting structure, yes.
3) Do you really want to go all that far? Can be built some frame/structure with hydrodynamic ways for such a reduced workable volume? I mean... again, check out the travels! Look: "Travels: X-200mm * Y-150mm * Z-60mm" ...how would you manage to fit hydrodynamic ways into some desktop frame like this? Is it already possible at all with such a reduced target footprint? (It is not a retoric question, I'm honestly asking.)
4) Here I can not less than agree completely!
5) Ditto!, same as with the previous point (4), something like the Bosch GGS 27 L would be way better than that!

...and we should add...

6) The nuts and screws from the Sable machine are the same ones that you would use to assembly a very basic DIY machine, I mean, they seem to use common nuts and threaded rods from hardware-store! I mean, nothing with recirculating balls or at least some good Acme trapezoidal thread!



Sure!
Let's try with the next best thing for some extra dollars. What about something else from your country? Look:

Bodor CNC Router




Give them a slap on the wrist!



About U$D715.- at eBay U.S.A. for the whole thing, including everything, ready to hook up to your PC box... or if you prefer, you can buy the same thing in Argentina for U$D2599.- but that will buy you a parallel port cable and a cup of coffee too! Oh, well... ehrrr...



You're right, the picture is terrible! ...but I understand the idea!
So, any chance to see a picture from the kind of routers that you make reference? I'm genuinely interested, even if I know that the chances to get them here to my country are pretty narrow, specially if one refuses to sell a kidney to pay to the customhouses... but I'm still interested.



Never better said, and with your knowledge you should go... but I fear that with your (more polished and thorough) requirements, the overall cost would be from the very begin probably a lot higher than those U$D715.- from Sable... what do you think? Is it possible to put along something along the above mentioned lines for less than U$D999.- or something like that?

EDIT: Lots of typos...

_________________
Oh!, let me write that!


Octane / Dual Head

http://twitter.com/GeekTronixShop

Control, this is Qiqihaer 20. Can you give me a ground speed check, please ?


Have to go home, it's getting late here but General ... do you have any foundries available ? Can you run a table saw ? If not, a steel weldment is second-best ... you can make your own and beat the CNC-Sable price and quality.

Well, not that workhorse, but still!
Is it your factory, Hamei? It looks extremely nice!

Anyway... what has these giant thing to do with our conversation about quality/reliability for low footprint milling machines?

Now, talking seriously, what would be cool is some deskside-size milling machine with heavy duty capabilities... that's why I insist to look towards old milling machines instead of DIY routers... but since there is no real rush, I'm open to any good alternative/idea.

Around the '60's / '70's there was some generation of argentinean milling machines, fully manual and with 3D capabilities, enough dependable to be in almost every single workshop toolmaker and enough good to be still now operating with no more problems than an occasional change of ball bearings.

What is wrong with such approach?

The problem is, the little models are sold faster, and I don't want something like a Cincinnati No. 28-120 or anything like that!



Yes, I own both things and I can use them, what is your idea?



Yes, I own an arc welder and a spot welder (this one is manual) and I can use them, sure!

_________________
Oh!, let me write that!


Octane / Dual Head

http://twitter.com/GeekTronixShop

It's kind of two different requirements .... small parts need a high-speed spindle and fast, accurate table movements. Bridgeport work is more general-purpose, heavier cuts, not as accurate ... just different .....


Yes, this is one of the places that makes the routers that little sign shops use. They also make little laser engravers. They are not pretty like the CNC-Sable but the design is correct and the prices are reasonable. Too bad about your import problem ....


Nothing, except that it's kind of hard to put on top of your desk


If you can't beat City Hall, then play their game Make it in Argentina. There's nothing so special about those little machines that you can't build nice ones. And the competition sucks. So .... we don't all have to be "knowledge workers" toiling in the fields so that Google can know every single thing about our previously-private lives.

PM, general

Hello there!



Sure, I know, I thought that was clear. I mean, the problem is, I could apply for both requirements... which is first achieved is a matter of priorities.

Let's say: I frequently use plain parts with complex 2D shapes; that would be fine even for a 2.5D CNC router. Then I also need many kinds of fixation pieces with slightly more complexity into the 3D domain, different metals relatively more mass; that would be nice for a slightly more heavy duty CNC milling machine.

So, I think eventually I'll need both. That's because I'm sure a CNC router will begin to wear very fast as soon as I start to put the heavy stuff there, loosing exactness for more precision demmanding 2D work.

But you're right. I don't think a vertical column mill will do any good for PCB.



They had an importer a year ago, then the stock flown (seems it sold well) and never heared from them again. By those days I was almost ready to buy one from them, and then aborted the mission because they used a proprietary controller that required MS Windows to work... that was bummer, because I don't wanted to remove their nice controller to stuck inside a DIY thing just to be able to run EMC2/LinuxCNC, consumming more money, resources, time... loosing some nice status report features, etc...

But the frame seemed to me between the best things around the country; anyway it is not locally available anymore.



Touché!
Yes, the Barbero unit from above posts is a pretty big machine; but they used to build some kind of variation within the size of a minibar refrigerator, or a deskside Onyx if you prefer!



Well, you know (maybe better than anyone else here) that I was never good "Guitar Hero" player, and I always loved to compose my own music-sheet to play my own song!



Yes, I know there are very nice things that can be built into this field. I know. It is just I wanted to avoid me some time building my own tooling because because I was already there and I know the time it takes.



That sounds so clever, 老師i!

_________________
Oh!, let me write that!


Octane / Dual Head

http://twitter.com/GeekTronixShop

Is there even good 2D-CAD software for Linux nowdays? Last time I used Linux there was only Dia and not much else.

I mainly use RISC OS now, and use ProCad+ and Artworks 2 for drawing. Most things are much easier to draw in CAD software and then drop into vector drawing software for colouring and finishing.

I have no real need for 3D myself, as when in paper you only get 2D anyway.

Hello there!



Yes, there are actually many of them. But I was always more interested in 3D, and I'm very accustomed to it, so, I could not tell you if the 2D offer is bad or good for Linux. CADuntu/LibreCAD and QCAD both seems pretty good, but I'm not a user for any of them.

To be really honest, after I installed and tried FreeCAD, never touched anything else... Art O fIllusion feels like a joke compared to it, and BlenderCAD feels like the kind of a frankensoftware very cool for games or movies but with nothing to offer (at least by now) into an industrial CAD/CAM sense. Love it or hate it, but FreeCAD is the only thing capable enough to compete with a commerical CAD/CAM solution... and every day it gets better and better.

Just add the "Devel" repo to some linux box, and try every night some bleading edge features. Seriously, to my humble oppinion, it is the only F.O.S.S. thing capable for 2D/3D parametric design with a modern GUI today.



Sure, and I already praised many times the excellent quality for the RISC OS apps! I'm mostly sure the RISC OS apps designers are working with strongly task-oriented paradigms, pretty much like lots of IRIX apps that many people here knows very well.

The thing is, I don't own a RISC OS box, and sometimes you need something more portable. If you need to go extreme, there are things for iPad around (eDrawings For iPad) and I'm sure you could not go too wrong with it if you need a good viewer. But I don't think you can create anything using it.

So, I'm actually trying to train up my mind into the use of FreeCAD because it seems the kind of app that would be pretty soon avalilable into the repos of all kind of Android and/or Ubuntu tablets pretty soon. And anyway it never demanded from me any extra learning over the general knowledge that one commonly has for the use of all the previous CAD/CAM apps. And it's free!

_________________
Oh!, let me write that!


Octane / Dual Head

http://twitter.com/GeekTronixShop

I may have to check that FreeCAD when I get some Linux box running at some point.


I have never done proper 3D-CAD work, but used to do some 3D-modelling when I was younger. (Well, loaded Solidworks 1 times at school when was studying, but compared to some 3D-modellers the actual modelling tools felt poor.) I had sports injury some years ago and after that more precision work with mouse produced stress on the arm very quickly, so gave up on the 3D-modelling. Most 2D programs have very good drawing aids like snaps and configurable grids, so precision is achieved with very little extra work with mouse.

Drawing isometric pictures with 2D is not that different to working with 3D really. If you know the angle then its is just the matter of drawing some helper lines for the depth and then removing the hidden lines manually. If intention is to give object some colour and shading to make it look like solid, then it goes little differently.

Seems that 3D is the word of the day though, and even traditional 2D work, where linetype and width give most the information needed are switching to 3D and you can rotate the 2D view to get a view in 3D.

Mouse ? All the programs I have used take dimensions entered from the keyboard. I would hate to be limited to snapping or grids.

You might try to find a copy of Cadkey for DOS. Version 7 is the nicest, version 6 is decent. Maybe on fleabay or something ? It sounds like the way you work would fit that program well. It should run in a virtual machine ?


Yes and no ... a 3d model will (obviously) be 3d. To get any other view all you have to do is rotate the model. In 2d you have to make a new drawing for every view. 3d is a little more work upfront but at the end of the day it's a big timesaver.

Th real difference is between wireframe and solid modelling.


It has been for thirty years that I know of Autocad 2.52 was 3d ... the big switch was when everyone went to solids. Are there any wireframe cad programs still sold ?

Dimensions can be entered from keyboard, but for example if I wanted to copy some line or other object and align it perfectly with something. In ProCAD+ I could just use F4 to set snap point for the object, and then with correct snap settings could just drag it with right mouse button to get it copied and snap points correctly aligned.



I studied building services and the things I had to draw were things like pipes, drains, ducts, etc. Pretty simple stuff and remember using software like CADS where everything was 2D only with possibility to generate simple isometric view with correct settings. Later there were some programs that looked like you were drawing in 2D, but could rotate the viewpoint to get 3D-view.

That sounds pretty clumsy. In Bobcad, for example, if you want to copy a line or set of features, you'd select them then chose "copy" then "parallel" and it would ask you how far. Enter the number then click the mouse on whichever side you want to copy it. All magically lined up perfectly. Then if you want to move you'd use "translate" again with a discrete number. I am not a big fan of snapping .... I could do your drawing above in about thirty seconds, honestly. And I'm no longer in practice.

Bobcad does not have a Big League reputation but for things like that, boy is it fast. Whoever Bob is, he did a heck of a job of getting exactly what you need into the program instead of a bunch of junk you have to sort through to get what you want. (Also it is a DOS program. When these programs went Windows they went Shit. The Windows interface is not convenient or speedy for that kind of work.)


Hmm. I've never cared for Autocad but it's been 3d for decades. I understood that it was popular with architects and builders because of a lot of built-in features specifically for the building trades (doors, windows, walls, ducting, landscaping, that kind of thing.)

I know Pro/E has an entire package of piping tools but that seems like it would be way overkill for a builder.

That can be done with ProCAD+ also, but I find mouse+keyboard combination more natural than having to visualize everything in my mind. Also with isometric grid and angular constraints to isometric angles it is very easy just to draw some lines directly at right places. I am more of a mouse generation myself than a oldskool hardcore user.

I remember testing older AutoCAD R13, or something and it had that awful rectangle around the cursor where you could define the snap area and it would only snap to things inside that area. No need to say it always snapped to wrong places and was very tedious to constantly change the settings for the thing. At the place I studied there was AutoCAD 2000 and it was so much better in every way possible.

You won't get any argument from me about how awful Autocad is. I hate that thing

That's a sprocket, by the way. And the teeth need a totally different shape if you plan to run roller chain on them

Always good to learn new english words. (Most of my english comes from the movies and computer magazines.)

There actually is an example drawing that came with the program and was drawn by someone who makes those in real life, so I knew mine was not very accurate. But as always I went where the fence was the lowest and skipped the filleting, as it was only meant to give an illusion of something that could work instead of working in reality.

Is this one any better?

Have you had a look at rpcemu? Performance does depend on your graphics card, but any recent laptop will provide ample CPU power, RAM, HD space and transfer rates. The emulator itself is free (there are others, including a commercial "VirtualRiscPC"), and a ROM image can be had for free (version 5.xx, with "issues") or GBP5.00 (version 4.02, from http://www.e-junkie.com/43789/product/5 ... Version%29 - there is a more expensive download with most versions from 0.30 to 3.71, but you need a different emulator for anything earlier than 3.50).

_________________
Fuel; Indigo2; RiscPC Kinetic-StrongARM RISCOS4.39; EspressoPC ViaC3/900 Debian-testing; RPi B RISCOS5.19 or Raspbian