week ten Header Img

Week 10: Make the Poor-Mans-Mill smoooothie



Ok, so after the problems with the CNC in Kamp-Lintfort last week i found a way to export my sketches to the CNC:

  • In Solidworks make a 2D sketch out of your 3D part
  • Export this 2D sketch as PDF
  • Import the PDF into Rhino
  • Lay the parts in the right layers (inline, outline, pocket, etc)
  • Join the polylines in Rhino
  • Export it as DXF
  • Mill!!!


  • After found this workflow it was very easy to mill the parts for my mill.
    Used about 1.5m^2 of 15mm multiplex:

    CNC Parts Img

    CNC Parts Img

    CNC Parts Img

    The joints works just fine, so the first assemble of the y-axis worked very good:

    y-axis Img

    Finaly the trapeziodal-screws and the 10mm rods arrived, but my colleague who is a pro on the lathe was in holiday.

    uh...

    Ok, lets get fit on the lathe again. I learnd this 10 years ago, so it was not such a big problem:

    drehbank Img

    The last mechanical thing to do was to find a way to mount the endswitches for min and max to the axis.
    I get a bunch of these:

    endswitch Img

    For the mount i desigend some angles in solidworks and printed them out on an ultimaker (Quick and dirty ;))

    endswitch Img

    endswitch Img


    With all parts ready i started the assembling. I forgot to make some fotos. but here is the complete finished mill:

    Assembled Img

    Assembled Img

    Mechanics: accomplished!

    I planed to use a smoothieboard for the electronics. Not much to say here, i just followed the very good documentation on the smoothie-website.
    I connected the motors to the board, using the output of extruder1 for the second X-Axis-Motor.
    The endswitches are connected like explained in the docu. The max-endswitches arenĀ“t connected at this time...
    What i need to buy are some cable-chains. Till now the cables are just secured by some zip tie...

    Cables Img

    smoothie Img


    The setup for the smoothieboard was a kind out-of-the-box, just made some fine-justage. For a first test i zipped a pencil on the z-axis:

    First test Img

    Finaly, all works very good. The only negative point is, that the 10mm rods are not stiff enough, so the z-axis goes about 3mm.
    In the molding and casting week i used the mill to mill some foam (see Week 12).

    Next task for the mill will be the composites-week, stay tuned :)

    Till then, have fun!