Oh! Please don't keep the Heimer in the tool changer. It will be dirty by chips and coolant. Don't be lazy to keep it clean and insert it manually when needed
Well, the 3D-taster mode is IP67 rated, and I do take it out of the machine after hours to prevent condensation, but I've had it in the machine daily for four months now (this video is a mix of then and now) and there's no sign of problems with the Haimer. If there was a spindle release button on the X5, it would be very simple to pop it in when needed, but I have to load it into the toolchanger. That makes it a pain to do repeated probing. I need to get a proper wireless probe so I can do auto probing. That Haimer is a bit beaten up, not my best one, but I keep it carefully calibrated and it works.
@@MachiningandMicrowaves btw how do you calubrate it/make sure that its runs as true to the spindle as possible ( i already know it and done it a few 100 times but still like to hear how you do it )
Congratulations on your new CNC machine. Nothing wrong with the LNC controller, I've got one on my older X7 machine. Seimens is the way go as you can always get a technician to come around to sort issues out (not cheap though). Good work with the CAD CAM. Fusion has lot of little quirks, but you'll get there the more you use and dabble. Cheers Aaron. PS: I take it you bought from George in the UK? He is bloody top bloke and very supportive.
Yep, except he disappeared and went to Greece, so I've been managing with direct support from the factory. Not heard much about the new UK team, I was going to pop over to see them, as they had an office at Magna near Rotherham. I've been far to busy with TV-related projects to do much other than make hundreds of parts for a replica of a historic bit of tech from the 1920s, but there's lots of interesting stuff in the pipeline. I hacked up a Fanuc lathe postprocessor in Fusion to make the X5 behave as a lathe with a tool rack on the bed and stock chucked up in the spindle. Worked extremely well with brass, but terrible chip clearance issues with aluminium. The postprocessor is just a bit of noddy Javascript, but the lack of detailed documentation for the LNC was annoying. Guess I'm used to microcontroller-based SCADA stuff with really detailed APIs and proper documentation. I got some excellent finishes on ellipsoid and hyperboloid reflectors, just need to find the right speeds and feeds to break chips, or program in chip-breaking steps or something.
@@MachiningandMicrowaves you may also have to look into different tooling. i didn't think there was much difference between tooling until i saw it first hand with our lathe at work. the difference in performance from tools that sometimes appear near identical is astounding
Wonderful video! New toys are 😁 Be careful trying to hold 2 workpieces in one single-axis vice clamp! Just imagine if one piece is slightly thicker, the other piece wont get clamped at all... A good multi-part clamp should have some compensation rocker etc, so differences in thickness won't matter. Yes, you might expect your pieces to be the same thickness since you CNC made them, BUT it is always good practice to design a clamping system that does not rely on having perfect parts before it can clamp ok. 🤔
@@wizrom3046 the moving vice jaw has a little rock so it can compensate for minor differences. I'm only ever going to be using this for production runs where each pair is made at the same time in the same set up. If I ever find it a problem, I'll be adding a flexure to the moving jaw to take up any differences.
@@MachiningandMicrowaves You might get differences from heating due to machining one part and not the other. Alternating operations between parts can minimize that. It might never end up being a problem, but if it does it'll definitely be on the final operations of a fancy part in expensive material!
I'm making the assumption that because these are small aluminium parts and there is flood coolant that any temperature differences are absolutely minimal. I suppose I could try using an infrared camera to see if there are any transient heating effects, but for this specific instance the only machining that's happening with the parts in horizontally is some engraving, drilling five holes, trochoidal milling one of them and thread milling the other four, so the operation time and amount of tool engagement and heat is minimal. This was my first attempt and since then I've made fixtures taking 50 or more parts and taking into account the possibility of differential expansion. I don't think I would do it this way again, but as the workpieces are cheap aluminium and the machining steps I'm doing are very light, I think the benefit of having two parts machined at once is probably worth the extra risk. A far better approach would have been to use two or more small modular vices with hardened jaw teeth or possibly dovetails. I rather lust after having a set of 50mm self-centering vices with an indexed mounting system, but that's a huge extra investment. Might make sense for production, but If I want to do large quantities, I'll be farming it out to a CNC shop that can do it a great deal more effectively and efficiently than I can.
@@erikev Probably a lot older than that, I have things made in the 1940s that I'm replicating. I hope to get permission to repeat the original 60 GHz radio experiments by JC Bose in the 1890s, and play with ammonia masers and make a quadrupole mass analyser and..... yeah. Only one lifetime to do it all
Nice to see Amy out of jail. This is fascinating to watch and hear you describe. I love how you spend as long making the parts to hold the parts you want to make. Anyway, all good practice/more machine time/skills learned. What have you got lined up next?
I've been up in the Kingdom of Fife for a few days, meeting up with all of the GM microwavers at Burntisland. My brain is fizzing with ideas as a result. I have about 60 hours of video in the can now, so I'm spoilt for choice!
@@MachiningandMicrowaves excellent. I did contemplate going to the round table, but a diary clash killed that idea. They're a funny lot, Fifers. Glad they let you in, and back out again. 😁
Congratulations on your new part machine and the new direction of your channel. Does Aimie have an rtfm procedure for other things in life or just the new part maker?
Awesome job. I will try to save you some money on engraver bits and tell you that you can use a center drill at shallow depth and it will last for some time in steel and nickel based materials. It doesn't even notice aluminum. For reference, I usually use a #3 or #2 at .005" depth. They work a treat. I only bother with engravers when a customer wants .08" height or smaller.
@@leroyjenkins3580 I have an Alexander D-bit grinder so I can grind asymmetric engraver bits, but I found some cheap DLC carbide engraving bits that work well in some types of aluminium. Not as cheap as a centre drill though!
Hi, this is my first of more to come (I hope). Do you mind if I ask you a few questions. B4 you settled on this CNC mill , What made you settle for this 1. I ask because I haven't seen any used in a 1 man setup. Thanks
1) Syil were cool enough to send a machine to Naomi Wu 2) it was the biggest machine that I could fit under the oak beam at the door of the barn 3) ongoing costs were not silly 4) the epoxy granite frame seemed like a good idea 5) I have absolutely no impulse control
Hello Neil.. I wish you could have made it to the MUD last month, would have loved to have met you.. You were putting out fantastic things before but now !! The new CNC is fantastic.. Sure makes my machining projects look sad, ha ha.. Good job.. Skip, VE6BGT
@@VE6BGT Hi Skip yeah it would've been great to have made it but I learned my lesson about cheap airline booking agencies and dodgy airlines. I drove up to Scotland for the Scottish microwave round table this weekend and had a brilliant time meeting up with the folks from north of the border. Burntisland on the Firth of Forth is *almost* as exotic as Vancouver for me. Almost. Breaking bread with a distinguished mob of microwavers is always stimulating, wherever it takes place. I'm now fizzing with ideas even more than usual!
Well Neil I think Scotland would be a lot nicer to visit than Vancouver!! Yes getting good together with different folks Is a lot of fun but then it's almost overwhelming.. Still lots of fun.. Looking forward to more of your CNC adventures.. Skip
I'd have approached this differently. I'd have fixed the main jaw using the 2 normal screws, with their holes counterbored so their heads clear the cavities. The second jaw seems redundant - they are called "soft" in terms of machinability rather than their tendency to damage the part - but you could always use a piece of paper, plastic or card to cushion the part. Then, with both jaws fastened in the vise, clamp a spacer piece between them to create a defined gap. Then machine the cavities from above with the jaw in situ, rather than from the "side" as you did. You don't need to ensure the soft jaw is replaced repeatably, as you will need to reset your part origin each time anyway. Being clamped in its final position during machining will help to ensure the faces are orthogonal. There's no right or wrong way to do this but I like to minimise the number and complexity of the operations. Bloody impressive effort for a first job - and your machine is jealousy-inducing!
@@murrayedington the problem with the Girardi is that the holes are on the other face of the jaw when you're using these pulldown jaws. I made a set of bolted onto that side but all of the other operations are using the pulldown jaws so this is a bit of a Bodge job really. The reason for the second job is only that if I use the steel jaw, I get a small reaction between the jaw surface and the aluminium which discolours the workpiece so the plain jaw is more of a protector. I could certainly use a piece of shim instead. The actual machining steps start with one of the blocks held in the device and I do an intermediate stage cutting the pocket and mounting holes and the sides of the flange then I flip it over and machine the back of the flange and the body and rear face and then I put it into the fixture just to do the engraving and the four holes which are blind tapped and the stepped central hole. Then I turn it on its side to do the finishing on the flange face and cut the o-ring groove. i've filmed the process already so I'll probably publish that as a video but then includes some of the improvements that have been suggested. I wish that I bought several of the self centring modular devices that are about 2 in.² along with an indexing system so that I could, move parts between the CNC the manual mill and lays without taking them out of the vice. However, that was a hell investment when I hadn't got any experience of what I needed to do. I have other jaws forthis Gerardi, but the step jaw has a 5 x 5 mm step which is much too great for most of the tiny parts that I'm making. Now I'm using parallel and thin parallels I can get much less waste and also drill and thread holes much closer to the vice jaws. For these types of parts I almost feel that using a dovetail vice might be a better solution. I'm going to stick with what I've got for now because most of what I'm working on is being done on the fixture plate that now sits across those two aluminium slabs most of the time. I've made probably 10 sets of jaw fixtures which are machined in the traditional way by bolting them through counterbored holes to the fixed jaw. this was my first fumbling attempt at making something useful with absolutely no skills or experience.
I’m family with the concept of a RUclipsr making impressive upgrades, but… holy cow. That’s a beast of a machine. How did they even get it to your shed, let alone inside?
@@Scodiddly There was 18 mm of clearance between the too of the machine and the giant oak beam above the barn doors. They used thin machine skates and a lot of clever rigging. They told me they usually move machines weighing ten times as much. I'd done 3D models of the barn and the internal walls and knew it was possible. I had 6mm UHMWPE sheets ready as sliders in case things got really tough. Their fork lift wrecked lots of paving slabs and caved in the underground water catchment tank a bit. Should have put steel plate down, but it's all repairable
In BobCAD CAM (I am pretty new to CAM & CNC as well), there's a variable for stock remaining. It's supposed to be stock aware (you configure the stock before setting up any operations) but I noticed that your stock remaining value does impact the distance away from the feature that it starts cutting. I also noticed the 2D adaptive roughing doesn't create as complex or constant-contact tool paths as 3D adaptive roughing does for 2D features. I think it'll just be a matter of playing with your CAM to get more familiar with what does what - make minute changes to the program and run the simulator to see exactly how each strategy or setting affects the tool path...
The weird part is that it's completely aware of where the stock is but it's making choices about the order of machining so they were obstacles that it had to go round and then it's re-cutting areas. It's already cut as it's unaware of the size of the cutter, but the re-cutting is, on paths where it's already removed material. I'm going to compare what happens with some of the other post processes and see if the simulation looks the same and if the code has any differences. It does look like it's a fusion issue and nothing to do with the post processor.
Nice machine. How do you like it. I passed over the Syil back in 2021 because of a lack of information on them. Really good job for your first run. I remember pressing the cycle start button for the first time and i was puckering lol. No formal training here. Also for the contour you can use an open chain because the relief corners don't need to be cleaned up.
I think the 2021 version (like Naomi Wu had?) was rather less refined than the later versions. Now I have this one, I'd be happy to buy an old Haas or whatever and get it restored to full performance, but I wanted something I could use to develop fast-iteration prototypes, and this little (two tonne) machine really fits the bill
@@raindeergames6104 one thing I like is that the factory says they will be able to supply spare parts for all of their machines, including any that have become obsolete. I hope I don't need to take advantage of that, but it's an indicator of long-term thinking and quality that's often absent from low cost machines.
I think your issue with the 3d paths is the containment boundary. It looks like it wants stay within the boundary instead of cutting from the outside in. Best of luck with this!
@@TomZelickman I worked it out and you are right about that pocketing, but compared with 2D adaptive, the 3D is just silly at times. I'll get it sorted soon
Also I'm doing other sizes for 8.4 GHz as well as WR 90 and 75 plus various 24GHz sizes with 2.92 or 3.5 connectors. I'll also do silver plated brass and gold over copper on brass
@ I'll also do TNC and N versions for all the variants for WR-112/90/75. Also doing a range of round horns with oval irises for various f/d ratios and from 8.4G to 47G. I have no kit or testgear for 76 GHz yet
@@fletcherreder6091 I have some TNC sockets on order, I'll be making a batch of transitions with TNC female on WR112, 90 and 75. Bodies in anodised or alodined aluminium or silver/gold plated brass. Not finalised pricing yet.
When engraving, face mill the surface, leave 0.001" in height above your desired depth. Engrave your text, then come back with the face mill again and skim off the remaining 0.001" and it will clean off the burrs and rough edges of the text.
@@BlueFinCNC I didn't show that step because it felt a bit repetitive, but i took a second facing cut 0.005 mm *above* the engraving with that face mill. I found if I took a really fine cut, I was getting a slightly worse finish in that 6082 material. Taking a cut a tiny bit above the surface cleared up the burrs perfectly. The problem is the finish deep in the grooves, which is very poor. I changed from a four flute carbide engraving tool to a single flute for the more recent engraving work and the difference is spectacular. I've been using a DLC coated single flute and graver with a 60° point but an asymmetric grind to improve chip clearance, but I think I prefer the appearance of the 45° cutter. I just need lots and lots more experience and a better feel for the way the different grades of aluminium, copper, brass and steels behave when being engraved. In fact, I just need a whole lot more experience of everything. The great thing about RUclips is having an informed audience telling me where I'm going wrong so I can learn from my mistakes.
If I still have access to my cam program I can do a few programs for you and show you some 3 axis milling magic that you can probably use for some future parts
If you haven't figured out the air cutting yet... Maybe, depth of cut... for example, you are trying to take off 12mm of material from the back of the part - if the tool is set in CAM that it can only take 6mm depth of cut then it will take 2 passes. If you let it take all 12mm it will be one pass 👍
@@themikemyers It seems to be related to ramping, so I'm having a look at a Fanuc post processor code compared with the Syil to see if there's anything machine-specific that Fusion is trying to do but that's missing in the LNC firmware. There are passes that are just cutting material that's already been cut. There are some other oddities with the options to start and end a spiral 3D contour with circles, I don't get clean starts sometimes. In the end, I wrote some Perl and C++ code to post-post-process the emitted g-code and fix it. Fusion sometimes inserts code that is in Fanuc machines but not in the LNC, so although I can modify the Javascript to fix some of that, I don't know who to raise change requests with for bugfixes
It's a short story. I was setting up a simple job and had a clamp on a plate temporarily. I pressed the wrong button when trying to move the bed towards the front of the machine, and the clamp handle was about a centimetre too far back, so it bashed the covers. I was tired and taking a shortcut that I should never have needed to do. I'd mislaid the tiny Kant-Twist clamp, so used one that was an inch too large, and the handle smacked the covers. I couldn't get my head to map the key presses to the direction of motion. Needless to say, after that learning experience, my muscle-memory is now 100% accurate. I need to order two or three new leaves, or maybe I can do a bit of gentle panel-beating and heat-treat to get them back into perfect shape.
@@MachiningandMicrowaves I wouldn't be too hard on yourself - almost every machine I've seen has SOME kind of way cover damage from someone making a mistake. I'd try taking the cover off and just working it with a ball peen hammer on a block of wood to straighten it out. If it's stainless, it might be pretty hard to get perfect, but it should be good enough!
Not bad for a first attempt, probably better than I would be too 😂. Weirdly my brain doesn’t function well enough to draw in 3D cad and reading anything like manuals and help files just simply doesn’t go in the grey matter. Yet I can draw in 2D cad easily and could machine this part manually ok , work that one out, dimentia probably 😳😵💫🙄🤭.
Congratulations on your new toy. I mean, tool, vitally important, absolutely necessary tool! Now AIMEE can send her files to the machine, and you can make fun of her machining skills...
@@davidjh7 I had a Terrible Idea. Remote monitor program that uses AIMEE's voice to announce job progress and status. I think the remote monitor is available, but like the file transfer program, it uses proprietary protocols.
I'm fighting a losing battle with myself about a 4th axis for making cylindrical parts that are asymmetric cross-section. However, I am also keen to get a proper probing setup so I can do in-process probing and tool break detection and stuff. I've been coding since 1972, so I do like a bit of code now and then. I've been writing little routines that I can call as macros. Trouble is, I don't want to get too interested in CNC stuff, it's a means to an end, like the manual machines. I REALLY don't want to turn into a job-shop, I'm not interested in production runs, just prototyping and fast turnaround iterations of parts that would otherwise need ANSYS or other modelling software that would cost WAAAAAY more than this little machine.
@ The best thing is that I can make highly specialised parts for other experimenters who would otherwise find it difficult to get electromagnetic simulation, mechanical design, vacuum, electrochemical, machining, electronics, metrology and radio system testing all in one place. OK, so you won't get aerospace quality, but you get to do stuff that would otherwise be completely out of reach.
Btw the "63mm endmill" is not a endmill nor call a endmill. It's a facemill. Will help you knowing that if/when your gonna look for a new bigger/smaller face mill
I must have been asleep when I said that! It was at 3.15 AM local time. I'll amend the captions, but I can't get rid of the silly misnaming! Well spotted, thanks.
@@flikflak24 That one is only ever used on copper, brass and aluminium, it's a Teknik that I got free with two boxes of inserts. I have two 80mm facemills on R8 arbors that I use on the Bridgeport. One is for stainless steel and the other for copper and aluminium. Those only have a single insert, so there's nothing to adjust other than the tram of the Bridgeport head. On the SYIL, I like to run the tool faster, so to keep it balanced, I tested a whole box of the 90 degree inserts and found the smallest one and put that into the smaller of a pair of pockets that had the largest height difference. Those cheap Tekniks are actually quite good, the difference was only about 5 micrometres, and the variance in the inserts was a little less, so I had 0.007 mm difference in height. I did consider making a non-cutting counterbalance, but running at 500 mm per minute and 5000 rpm with this setup gives an excellent finish. The inserts have a flat on the bottom edge, and leave almost no cusps. I checked for runout with a 2 micrometre DTI on the radial faces of a full set of inserts, but with only one insert actually being used, I didn't think it was important. I wanted to be sure the face mill was seated correctly on the BT30 arbor. I would like to be able to test the surface quality using an optical flat, but the remaining cusps are a bit more than two wavelengths of light, so I can't get it to show fringes. I checked for concavity in both X and Y direction cuts using my Mahr Millimess and couldn't see anything obvious other than the micrometre or so of random fluctuations. I also tried it as various speeds in case there were any resonances, but I didn't see anything obvious. I have NO IDEA if my approach is anything like what a real precision machinist would do. I have one giant cutter on a 50 taper that has shims for adjustment, but when your face mills cost $0.00, I guess you have to accept what you get!
@@MachiningandMicrowaves well since its a $0.00 face mill it wouldnt be that big of a loss moding it ( to have a screw on top over the insert so you can push them down a tiny bit so you can get them in to run perfect with the other insert's ( i made my own 70mm dual mcd diamond insert facemill with hight adjust so both inserts runs within 0.001mm of eachother and the finish i get out of it is perfectly fine for a optical flat ( i prefer those with cccp marked on them ) otherwise eventhough it might be a bit expensive i would pick a sandvik CoroMill 590. since it have buildin hight adjust with a flexture feature
@@flikflak24 Heh heh, I have some of those optical flats! I'll try that adjustment screw technique on the 80 mm face mill first as I have a spare for that. If I can get it to work, I'll do the 63 mm as well. Those Coromill 590s are very nice, but I think I'll be modifying cheap ones unless I start doing a lot of work needing very fine flat finishes. I usually hand-lap the waveguide flanges, so if I can get a good enough finish with a facemill, that would be a time-saver, although I'm only likely to be doing a few hundred of those per year.
Nice. Just never start the spindle with the coaxial in the chuck, that doesn't end well. As a certain channel can, and did, demonstrate. Seriously, enjoy your new and expensive (very) tool.
@@TheOwlman I take it out when I'm not running code or measuring. I guess there's a way of locking it out but I never ever use position 16 in a program. One day it'll bite me and then I'll have to go and buy a Renishaw look alike
@@MachiningandMicrowaves alright not bad. how come you don't have the siemens controller? is that something they only recently started offering as standard?
@ The Syntec was £2k more than the LNC and the Siemens was £5k more. Titans mostly sold the Syntec I think. I didn't feel like spending the extra, maybe I'll live to regret it but it gave me another £5k to invest in vices and tooling
@@TruthOrDie-h3w I recognise that I am in a hugely privileged position, at least temporarily, of having the financial resources to burn on what interests me, but I have worked for 45 years doing a boring and unchallenging job doing things to computers, so this is a little payback. Some folks go on holidays or buy fancy cars, I'm living my best life being a mad scientist.
@@zebo-the-fat it is the worst. I cannot imagine what sick mind generated it. Possibly lost in the mists of time when machinist didn't have computers. Who can say
@@MachiningandMicrowaves It's a G-Code keyboard, literally placed the same way as a keyboard with the most useful letters on home row, but it's a single-handed home row keyboard where the useful letters are according to G-Code utilities. First line are operations/commands, second line are axes, third and fourth lines are parameters for operations and the rest of the alphabet. "Home row" are the axis as they are the one you'd type it out the most while typing G-Code. You don't type anything at a CNC machine, the only thing you'll type are quick commands in G-Code, so it makes sense, if you are typing any length of text while operating a CNC, you are doing it wrong.
I notice that now I've had the machine for a few months, it's getting to be intuitive as I expected it would, although the X key never seems to be in the same place twice. Most of the others make sense now
Channel has really took a turn from what subscribed to 😢, used to be hand made lathe and milling operations but now it's just a lot of talking about this and that but cnc thing is not what subscribed to, so goodbye good luck and well wishes, but un-subscribing this channel, this message is for owner of the channel, not all the keyboard warriors in their mom's basement so if you have a comment, just don't, 👋👋👋
I've changed, there will still be lots of hand machining, but right now, my head is full of CNC and earning some money. I'm sure the novelty will wear off eventually, but I'm definitely more driven by radio-centric stuff than the proper manual machining channels
Glad we have Amy back!
This magnets idea is brilliant!
Oh! Please don't keep the Heimer in the tool changer. It will be dirty by chips and coolant. Don't be lazy to keep it clean and insert it manually when needed
I 2000% agree
Well, the 3D-taster mode is IP67 rated, and I do take it out of the machine after hours to prevent condensation, but I've had it in the machine daily for four months now (this video is a mix of then and now) and there's no sign of problems with the Haimer. If there was a spindle release button on the X5, it would be very simple to pop it in when needed, but I have to load it into the toolchanger. That makes it a pain to do repeated probing. I need to get a proper wireless probe so I can do auto probing. That Haimer is a bit beaten up, not my best one, but I keep it carefully calibrated and it works.
@@MachiningandMicrowaves btw how do you calubrate it/make sure that its runs as true to the spindle as possible ( i already know it and done it a few 100 times but still like to hear how you do it )
More of Amy would be a treat!
Congratulations on your new CNC machine. Nothing wrong with the LNC controller, I've got one on my older X7 machine. Seimens is the way go as you can always get a technician to come around to sort issues out (not cheap though). Good work with the CAD CAM. Fusion has lot of little quirks, but you'll get there the more you use and dabble. Cheers Aaron.
PS: I take it you bought from George in the UK? He is bloody top bloke and very supportive.
Yes I am hehe
Yep, except he disappeared and went to Greece, so I've been managing with direct support from the factory. Not heard much about the new UK team, I was going to pop over to see them, as they had an office at Magna near Rotherham. I've been far to busy with TV-related projects to do much other than make hundreds of parts for a replica of a historic bit of tech from the 1920s, but there's lots of interesting stuff in the pipeline. I hacked up a Fanuc lathe postprocessor in Fusion to make the X5 behave as a lathe with a tool rack on the bed and stock chucked up in the spindle. Worked extremely well with brass, but terrible chip clearance issues with aluminium. The postprocessor is just a bit of noddy Javascript, but the lack of detailed documentation for the LNC was annoying. Guess I'm used to microcontroller-based SCADA stuff with really detailed APIs and proper documentation. I got some excellent finishes on ellipsoid and hyperboloid reflectors, just need to find the right speeds and feeds to break chips, or program in chip-breaking steps or something.
@@MachiningandMicrowaves you may also have to look into different tooling. i didn't think there was much difference between tooling until i saw it first hand with our lathe at work. the difference in performance from tools that sometimes appear near identical is astounding
Wonderful video! New toys are 😁
Be careful trying to hold 2 workpieces in one single-axis vice clamp! Just imagine if one piece is slightly thicker, the other piece wont get clamped at all...
A good multi-part clamp should have some compensation rocker etc, so differences in thickness won't matter.
Yes, you might expect your pieces to be the same thickness since you CNC made them, BUT it is always good practice to design a clamping system that does not rely on having perfect parts before it can clamp ok. 🤔
@@wizrom3046 the moving vice jaw has a little rock so it can compensate for minor differences. I'm only ever going to be using this for production runs where each pair is made at the same time in the same set up. If I ever find it a problem, I'll be adding a flexure to the moving jaw to take up any differences.
@@MachiningandMicrowaves You might get differences from heating due to machining one part and not the other. Alternating operations between parts can minimize that. It might never end up being a problem, but if it does it'll definitely be on the final operations of a fancy part in expensive material!
I'm making the assumption that because these are small aluminium parts and there is flood coolant that any temperature differences are absolutely minimal. I suppose I could try using an infrared camera to see if there are any transient heating effects, but for this specific instance the only machining that's happening with the parts in horizontally is some engraving, drilling five holes, trochoidal milling one of them and thread milling the other four, so the operation time and amount of tool engagement and heat is minimal. This was my first attempt and since then I've made fixtures taking 50 or more parts and taking into account the possibility of differential expansion. I don't think I would do it this way again, but as the workpieces are cheap aluminium and the machining steps I'm doing are very light, I think the benefit of having two parts machined at once is probably worth the extra risk. A far better approach would have been to use two or more small modular vices with hardened jaw teeth or possibly dovetails. I rather lust after having a set of 50mm self-centering vices with an indexed mounting system, but that's a huge extra investment. Might make sense for production, but If I want to do large quantities, I'll be farming it out to a CNC shop that can do it a great deal more effectively and efficiently than I can.
Cheers M&M! Hope you are well mate
Doing well thanks! Hope all is good with you too
This is like going back to 1980 designs. Very nice old RF designs.
@@erikev Probably a lot older than that, I have things made in the 1940s that I'm replicating. I hope to get permission to repeat the original 60 GHz radio experiments by JC Bose in the 1890s, and play with ammonia masers and make a quadrupole mass analyser and..... yeah. Only one lifetime to do it all
Nice to see Amy out of jail. This is fascinating to watch and hear you describe. I love how you spend as long making the parts to hold the parts you want to make. Anyway, all good practice/more machine time/skills learned.
What have you got lined up next?
I've been up in the Kingdom of Fife for a few days, meeting up with all of the GM microwavers at Burntisland. My brain is fizzing with ideas as a result. I have about 60 hours of video in the can now, so I'm spoilt for choice!
@@MachiningandMicrowaves excellent. I did contemplate going to the round table, but a diary clash killed that idea. They're a funny lot, Fifers. Glad they let you in, and back out again. 😁
I have been looking at the x5, thank you for your content 👍
That machine is awesome! It will serve you well.
Woah thats a fancy machine!
What are the two big slabs on either side of the vise? Workholding for large plates? Coolant/swarf guards?
@@hadinossanosam4459 I made a very large fixture plate that sits on top of those as you'll see in upcoming videos
I was going to ask the same question. 👍
11:25 made me choke on my cup of tea :-)
Congratulations on your new part machine and the new direction of your channel.
Does Aimie have an rtfm procedure for other things in life or just the new part maker?
That sure is a very nice toy to play with. And with fountains :)
My mother liked the pretty photo I took with backlighting through the sprays. "Nice water-feature" she said.
8:09 Any finally makes an appearance. My 2c (or perhaps pence) you're enjoying your new toy a little too much.
Awesome job. I will try to save you some money on engraver bits and tell you that you can use a center drill at shallow depth and it will last for some time in steel and nickel based materials. It doesn't even notice aluminum. For reference, I usually use a #3 or #2 at .005" depth. They work a treat. I only bother with engravers when a customer wants .08" height or smaller.
@@leroyjenkins3580 I have an Alexander D-bit grinder so I can grind asymmetric engraver bits, but I found some cheap DLC carbide engraving bits that work well in some types of aluminium. Not as cheap as a centre drill though!
Hi, this is my first of more to come (I hope). Do you mind if I ask you a few questions. B4 you settled on this CNC mill , What made you settle for this 1. I ask because I haven't seen any used in a 1 man setup. Thanks
1) Syil were cool enough to send a machine to Naomi Wu
2) it was the biggest machine that I could fit under the oak beam at the door of the barn
3) ongoing costs were not silly
4) the epoxy granite frame seemed like a good idea
5) I have absolutely no impulse control
@@MachiningandMicrowaves Thanks I am looking forward to seeing more.
Hello Neil.. I wish you could have made it to the MUD last month, would have loved to have met you.. You were putting out fantastic things before but now !!
The new CNC is fantastic.. Sure makes my machining projects look sad, ha ha.. Good job.. Skip, VE6BGT
@@VE6BGT Hi Skip yeah it would've been great to have made it but I learned my lesson about cheap airline booking agencies and dodgy airlines. I drove up to Scotland for the Scottish microwave round table this weekend and had a brilliant time meeting up with the folks from north of the border. Burntisland on the Firth of Forth is *almost* as exotic as Vancouver for me. Almost. Breaking bread with a distinguished mob of microwavers is always stimulating, wherever it takes place. I'm now fizzing with ideas even more than usual!
Well Neil I think Scotland would be a lot nicer to visit than Vancouver!!
Yes getting good together with different folks Is a lot of fun but then it's almost overwhelming.. Still lots of fun.. Looking forward to more of your CNC adventures.. Skip
I'd have approached this differently. I'd have fixed the main jaw using the 2 normal screws, with their holes counterbored so their heads clear the cavities. The second jaw seems redundant - they are called "soft" in terms of machinability rather than their tendency to damage the part - but you could always use a piece of paper, plastic or card to cushion the part. Then, with both jaws fastened in the vise, clamp a spacer piece between them to create a defined gap. Then machine the cavities from above with the jaw in situ, rather than from the "side" as you did. You don't need to ensure the soft jaw is replaced repeatably, as you will need to reset your part origin each time anyway. Being clamped in its final position during machining will help to ensure the faces are orthogonal. There's no right or wrong way to do this but I like to minimise the number and complexity of the operations. Bloody impressive effort for a first job - and your machine is jealousy-inducing!
@@murrayedington the problem with the Girardi is that the holes are on the other face of the jaw when you're using these pulldown jaws. I made a set of bolted onto that side but all of the other operations are using the pulldown jaws so this is a bit of a Bodge job really. The reason for the second job is only that if I use the steel jaw, I get a small reaction between the jaw surface and the aluminium which discolours the workpiece so the plain jaw is more of a protector. I could certainly use a piece of shim instead. The actual machining steps start with one of the blocks held in the device and I do an intermediate stage cutting the pocket and mounting holes and the sides of the flange then I flip it over and machine the back of the flange and the body and rear face and then I put it into the fixture just to do the engraving and the four holes which are blind tapped and the stepped central hole. Then I turn it on its side to do the finishing on the flange face and cut the o-ring groove. i've filmed the process already so I'll probably publish that as a video but then includes some of the improvements that have been suggested. I wish that I bought several of the self centring modular devices that are about 2 in.² along with an indexing system so that I could, move parts between the CNC the manual mill and lays without taking them out of the vice. However, that was a hell investment when I hadn't got any experience of what I needed to do. I have other jaws forthis Gerardi, but the step jaw has a 5 x 5 mm step which is much too great for most of the tiny parts that I'm making. Now I'm using parallel and thin parallels I can get much less waste and also drill and thread holes much closer to the vice jaws. For these types of parts I almost feel that using a dovetail vice might be a better solution. I'm going to stick with what I've got for now because most of what I'm working on is being done on the fixture plate that now sits across those two aluminium slabs most of the time. I've made probably 10 sets of jaw fixtures which are machined in the traditional way by bolting them through counterbored holes to the fixed jaw. this was my first fumbling attempt at making something useful with absolutely no skills or experience.
I’m family with the concept of a RUclipsr making impressive upgrades, but… holy cow. That’s a beast of a machine. How did they even get it to your shed, let alone inside?
@@Scodiddly There was 18 mm of clearance between the too of the machine and the giant oak beam above the barn doors. They used thin machine skates and a lot of clever rigging. They told me they usually move machines weighing ten times as much. I'd done 3D models of the barn and the internal walls and knew it was possible. I had 6mm UHMWPE sheets ready as sliders in case things got really tough. Their fork lift wrecked lots of paving slabs and caved in the underground water catchment tank a bit. Should have put steel plate down, but it's all repairable
In BobCAD CAM (I am pretty new to CAM & CNC as well), there's a variable for stock remaining. It's supposed to be stock aware (you configure the stock before setting up any operations) but I noticed that your stock remaining value does impact the distance away from the feature that it starts cutting.
I also noticed the 2D adaptive roughing doesn't create as complex or constant-contact tool paths as 3D adaptive roughing does for 2D features.
I think it'll just be a matter of playing with your CAM to get more familiar with what does what - make minute changes to the program and run the simulator to see exactly how each strategy or setting affects the tool path...
The weird part is that it's completely aware of where the stock is but it's making choices about the order of machining so they were obstacles that it had to go round and then it's re-cutting areas. It's already cut as it's unaware of the size of the cutter, but the re-cutting is, on paths where it's already removed material. I'm going to compare what happens with some of the other post processes and see if the simulation looks the same and if the code has any differences. It does look like it's a fusion issue and nothing to do with the post processor.
Nice machine. How do you like it. I passed over the Syil back in 2021 because of a lack of information on them. Really good job for your first run. I remember pressing the cycle start button for the first time and i was puckering lol. No formal training here. Also for the contour you can use an open chain because the relief corners don't need to be cleaned up.
I think the 2021 version (like Naomi Wu had?) was rather less refined than the later versions. Now I have this one, I'd be happy to buy an old Haas or whatever and get it restored to full performance, but I wanted something I could use to develop fast-iteration prototypes, and this little (two tonne) machine really fits the bill
Man om really like these Syil machines
@@raindeergames6104 one thing I like is that the factory says they will be able to supply spare parts for all of their machines, including any that have become obsolete. I hope I don't need to take advantage of that, but it's an indicator of long-term thinking and quality that's often absent from low cost machines.
Great job. Thank you 😊
Thanks for watching!
I think your issue with the 3d paths is the containment boundary. It looks like it wants stay within the boundary instead of cutting from the outside in. Best of luck with this!
@@TomZelickman I worked it out and you are right about that pocketing, but compared with 2D adaptive, the 3D is just silly at times. I'll get it sorted soon
Nice work! Nice looking single piece transition. When can we start to place orders? :D
I need to get the finishing process sorted. I could use Alochrom 1200, but I like the idea of using a dyed anodised finish
Also I'm doing other sizes for 8.4 GHz as well as WR 90 and 75 plus various 24GHz sizes with 2.92 or 3.5 connectors. I'll also do silver plated brass and gold over copper on brass
@@MachiningandMicrowaves Great, that'll be good for DSN stuff 8.4 GHz/3.5 mm
@ I'll also do TNC and N versions for all the variants for WR-112/90/75. Also doing a range of round horns with oval irises for various f/d ratios and from 8.4G to 47G. I have no kit or testgear for 76 GHz yet
A couple questions: How much are these, and can they be had in TNC?
@@fletcherreder6091 I have some TNC sockets on order, I'll be making a batch of transitions with TNC female on WR112, 90 and 75. Bodies in anodised or alodined aluminium or silver/gold plated brass. Not finalised pricing yet.
When engraving, face mill the surface, leave 0.001" in height above your desired depth. Engrave your text, then come back with the face mill again and skim off the remaining 0.001" and it will clean off the burrs and rough edges of the text.
@@BlueFinCNC I didn't show that step because it felt a bit repetitive, but i took a second facing cut 0.005 mm *above* the engraving with that face mill. I found if I took a really fine cut, I was getting a slightly worse finish in that 6082 material. Taking a cut a tiny bit above the surface cleared up the burrs perfectly. The problem is the finish deep in the grooves, which is very poor. I changed from a four flute carbide engraving tool to a single flute for the more recent engraving work and the difference is spectacular. I've been using a DLC coated single flute and graver with a 60° point but an asymmetric grind to improve chip clearance, but I think I prefer the appearance of the 45° cutter. I just need lots and lots more experience and a better feel for the way the different grades of aluminium, copper, brass and steels behave when being engraved. In fact, I just need a whole lot more experience of everything. The great thing about RUclips is having an informed audience telling me where I'm going wrong so I can learn from my mistakes.
If I still have access to my cam program I can do a few programs for you and show you some 3 axis milling magic that you can probably use for some future parts
If you haven't figured out the air cutting yet...
Maybe, depth of cut... for example, you are trying to take off 12mm of material from the back of the part - if the tool is set in CAM that it can only take 6mm depth of cut then it will take 2 passes. If you let it take all 12mm it will be one pass 👍
@@themikemyers It seems to be related to ramping, so I'm having a look at a Fanuc post processor code compared with the Syil to see if there's anything machine-specific that Fusion is trying to do but that's missing in the LNC firmware. There are passes that are just cutting material that's already been cut. There are some other oddities with the options to start and end a spiral 3D contour with circles, I don't get clean starts sometimes. In the end, I wrote some Perl and C++ code to post-post-process the emitted g-code and fix it. Fusion sometimes inserts code that is in Fanuc machines but not in the LNC, so although I can modify the Javascript to fix some of that, I don't know who to raise change requests with for bugfixes
New machine, and the z-axis way covers are already all bent up??
It's a short story. I was setting up a simple job and had a clamp on a plate temporarily. I pressed the wrong button when trying to move the bed towards the front of the machine, and the clamp handle was about a centimetre too far back, so it bashed the covers. I was tired and taking a shortcut that I should never have needed to do. I'd mislaid the tiny Kant-Twist clamp, so used one that was an inch too large, and the handle smacked the covers. I couldn't get my head to map the key presses to the direction of motion. Needless to say, after that learning experience, my muscle-memory is now 100% accurate. I need to order two or three new leaves, or maybe I can do a bit of gentle panel-beating and heat-treat to get them back into perfect shape.
@@MachiningandMicrowaves I wouldn't be too hard on yourself - almost every machine I've seen has SOME kind of way cover damage from someone making a mistake. I'd try taking the cover off and just working it with a ball peen hammer on a block of wood to straighten it out. If it's stainless, it might be pretty hard to get perfect, but it should be good enough!
Not bad for a first attempt, probably better than I would be too 😂. Weirdly my brain doesn’t function well enough to draw in 3D cad and reading anything like manuals and help files just simply doesn’t go in the grey matter.
Yet I can draw in 2D cad easily and could machine this part manually ok , work that one out, dimentia probably 😳😵💫🙄🤭.
Congratulations on your new toy. I mean, tool, vitally important, absolutely necessary tool! Now AIMEE can send her files to the machine, and you can make fun of her machining skills...
@@davidjh7 I had a Terrible Idea. Remote monitor program that uses AIMEE's voice to announce job progress and status. I think the remote monitor is available, but like the file transfer program, it uses proprietary protocols.
Lovely, you will be adding a 4th axis next. You always say to yourself......if only I had a.......
Enjoy 😊
I'm fighting a losing battle with myself about a 4th axis for making cylindrical parts that are asymmetric cross-section. However, I am also keen to get a proper probing setup so I can do in-process probing and tool break detection and stuff. I've been coding since 1972, so I do like a bit of code now and then. I've been writing little routines that I can call as macros. Trouble is, I don't want to get too interested in CNC stuff, it's a means to an end, like the manual machines. I REALLY don't want to turn into a job-shop, I'm not interested in production runs, just prototyping and fast turnaround iterations of parts that would otherwise need ANSYS or other modelling software that would cost WAAAAAY more than this little machine.
@@MachiningandMicrowaves I think you just do hobbies that make you happy and keep your mind healthy... it's great men... that's my dreams too
@ The best thing is that I can make highly specialised parts for other experimenters who would otherwise find it difficult to get electromagnetic simulation, mechanical design, vacuum, electrochemical, machining, electronics, metrology and radio system testing all in one place. OK, so you won't get aerospace quality, but you get to do stuff that would otherwise be completely out of reach.
Btw the "63mm endmill" is not a endmill nor call a endmill. It's a facemill. Will help you knowing that if/when your gonna look for a new bigger/smaller face mill
I must have been asleep when I said that! It was at 3.15 AM local time. I'll amend the captions, but I can't get rid of the silly misnaming! Well spotted, thanks.
@@MachiningandMicrowaves your welcome. btw what brand is the face bill anyway ? amd os tjere a material you cut most with it
@@flikflak24 That one is only ever used on copper, brass and aluminium, it's a Teknik that I got free with two boxes of inserts. I have two 80mm facemills on R8 arbors that I use on the Bridgeport. One is for stainless steel and the other for copper and aluminium. Those only have a single insert, so there's nothing to adjust other than the tram of the Bridgeport head. On the SYIL, I like to run the tool faster, so to keep it balanced, I tested a whole box of the 90 degree inserts and found the smallest one and put that into the smaller of a pair of pockets that had the largest height difference. Those cheap Tekniks are actually quite good, the difference was only about 5 micrometres, and the variance in the inserts was a little less, so I had 0.007 mm difference in height. I did consider making a non-cutting counterbalance, but running at 500 mm per minute and 5000 rpm with this setup gives an excellent finish. The inserts have a flat on the bottom edge, and leave almost no cusps. I checked for runout with a 2 micrometre DTI on the radial faces of a full set of inserts, but with only one insert actually being used, I didn't think it was important. I wanted to be sure the face mill was seated correctly on the BT30 arbor. I would like to be able to test the surface quality using an optical flat, but the remaining cusps are a bit more than two wavelengths of light, so I can't get it to show fringes. I checked for concavity in both X and Y direction cuts using my Mahr Millimess and couldn't see anything obvious other than the micrometre or so of random fluctuations. I also tried it as various speeds in case there were any resonances, but I didn't see anything obvious. I have NO IDEA if my approach is anything like what a real precision machinist would do. I have one giant cutter on a 50 taper that has shims for adjustment, but when your face mills cost $0.00, I guess you have to accept what you get!
@@MachiningandMicrowaves well since its a $0.00 face mill it wouldnt be that big of a loss moding it ( to have a screw on top over the insert so you can push them down a tiny bit so you can get them in to run perfect with the other insert's ( i made my own 70mm dual mcd diamond insert facemill with hight adjust so both inserts runs within 0.001mm of eachother and the finish i get out of it is perfectly fine for a optical flat ( i prefer those with cccp marked on them ) otherwise eventhough it might be a bit expensive i would pick a sandvik CoroMill 590. since it have buildin hight adjust with a flexture feature
@@flikflak24 Heh heh, I have some of those optical flats! I'll try that adjustment screw technique on the 80 mm face mill first as I have a spare for that. If I can get it to work, I'll do the 63 mm as well. Those Coromill 590s are very nice, but I think I'll be modifying cheap ones unless I start doing a lot of work needing very fine flat finishes. I usually hand-lap the waveguide flanges, so if I can get a good enough finish with a facemill, that would be a time-saver, although I'm only likely to be doing a few hundred of those per year.
Nice. Just never start the spindle with the coaxial in the chuck, that doesn't end well. As a certain channel can, and did, demonstrate. Seriously, enjoy your new and expensive (very) tool.
@@TheOwlman I take it out when I'm not running code or measuring. I guess there's a way of locking it out but I never ever use position 16 in a program. One day it'll bite me and then I'll have to go and buy a Renishaw look alike
Hi, this looks odd, you apparently only use water without any cutting oil in it !?
@@hankhulator5007 Very expensive clear fully synthetic coolant
Not all coolants are water-soluble and white, that looks like coolant with clear coolant.
@@MachiningandMicrowaves Hmm, marketing has hit again… :)
@ Cutsol Crystal Cool fully synthetic at 8% with the just the right amount of minerals
@@MachiningandMicrowaves It's what the plants crave!
what did you end up paying for the machine? i might be able to convince my boss to get one lol
It was priced in dollars, the total including shipping and delivery was around $34k at the time, but it's easy to contact them for a quote.
@@MachiningandMicrowaves alright not bad. how come you don't have the siemens controller? is that something they only recently started offering as standard?
@ The Syntec was £2k more than the LNC and the Siemens was £5k more. Titans mostly sold the Syntec I think. I didn't feel like spending the extra, maybe I'll live to regret it but it gave me another £5k to invest in vices and tooling
I want a big CNC machine for my garage, but I only have a Chinese machine which is small and noisy and doesn't have much power 🤦♂🤦♂😅😅
@@TruthOrDie-h3w I recognise that I am in a hugely privileged position, at least temporarily, of having the financial resources to burn on what interests me, but I have worked for 45 years doing a boring and unchallenging job doing things to computers, so this is a little payback. Some folks go on holidays or buy fancy cars, I'm living my best life being a mad scientist.
Losses at 10 Ghz in thin co-ax would be quite high I think
@@foxbat888 PTFE semirigid is not terrible, but the lines are usually less than 4 inches
Nice toys! but wtf is that bastard keyboard from hell at 10:50? (not a machinist but that makes a Dvorak keyboard look sensible!)
@@zebo-the-fat it is the worst. I cannot imagine what sick mind generated it. Possibly lost in the mists of time when machinist didn't have computers. Who can say
@@MachiningandMicrowaves It's a G-Code keyboard, literally placed the same way as a keyboard with the most useful letters on home row, but it's a single-handed home row keyboard where the useful letters are according to G-Code utilities. First line are operations/commands, second line are axes, third and fourth lines are parameters for operations and the rest of the alphabet. "Home row" are the axis as they are the one you'd type it out the most while typing G-Code. You don't type anything at a CNC machine, the only thing you'll type are quick commands in G-Code, so it makes sense, if you are typing any length of text while operating a CNC, you are doing it wrong.
@ Indeed, it's connected over gigabit ethernet fibre back to my main network.
Makes sense.
I'm always astounded watching someone like James Park or Chris Maj punch G-code in and get the results they do with so little input.
I notice that now I've had the machine for a few months, it's getting to be intuitive as I expected it would, although the X key never seems to be in the same place twice. Most of the others make sense now
Looks like a TARDIS!
Well it does eat a lot of time....
Channel has really took a turn from what subscribed to 😢, used to be hand made lathe and milling operations but now it's just a lot of talking about this and that but cnc thing is not what subscribed to, so goodbye good luck and well wishes, but un-subscribing this channel, this message is for owner of the channel, not all the keyboard warriors in their mom's basement so if you have a comment, just don't, 👋👋👋
I've changed, there will still be lots of hand machining, but right now, my head is full of CNC and earning some money. I'm sure the novelty will wear off eventually, but I'm definitely more driven by radio-centric stuff than the proper manual machining channels