Thread: Carving CNC 6040 machine - painless (so far)

Just a quick update - I went ahead and wired the VFD's relay output across the pump switch, and with a change to the VFD settings, the pump now comes on automatically once the spindle is up to speed (in my case, after the 4s ramp-up).

I also added an earth wire from the mains filter to the VFD, which at the moment probably isn't doing much, but is a step before I replace the spindle cable with shielded cable and in doing so, add an earth connection to the spindle.

Originally Posted by RustyArc

Moved on from experimenting with MDF to aluminium composite and acrylic. Engraving the latter seems to be a bit tricky, leaving a lot of churned-up plastic in the engraved grooves.

Longer term it'd be nice to have Mach 3 control spindle activation and speed, but one thing at a time

Acrylic has to be done quite shallow and at a speed where the chips look like snowflakes. If the speed is too fast the chips get welded back into the acrylic.
Extruded acrylic works quite well, cast acrylic not so well.
Have a look here
Vectric Forum • View topic - Acrylic edge lit sign
I just ordered the same bit.

After some more playing around, and learning how to and how not to secure work, I came back to a nagging issue - when any axis was jogging, there was a rhythmic "chunking" sound about twice a second. I'd also found that in motor tuning my max speed was only 3,200mm/min despite the machine's manual specifying 3,500mm/min, but if I tried this speed, the axis would move a bit then randomly stall.

I put this down to some kind of binding, but thinking more, it seemed unlikely that it'd be happening on all axes, and that they'd all make the same regular chunking sound.

Anyway, after disabling services etc. to no avail, I tried downgrading the computer from Multiprocessor ACPI (the machine's an old 3GHz Dell Pentium D) to "Standard PC" and problem solved - axes are smooth-as with no glitching or chunking.

Rapids are now set to 4000mm/min and I did a 10 minute job routing out MDF with the flat-bottomed engraving bit at doing 2mm DOC at 1,800mm/min cut speed with no lost steps or any kind of problem at all (needed to wind the spindle RPM from 12,000 up to 18,000 to keep the cut smooth).

So I think I've lost my second processor (or core, or hyperthreader or whatever) but the machine's not required to think very hard. Down the track I guess the other option is a Smoothstepper.

Received my 6040 today
Packaging was excellent, very well protected but they forgot to put the software and the manual in
So I have to wait seeing how it works until I get it.

You should be able to get the software and manual as an online download.

??? do they come with software and manual ???? , lol , ???? its a china import , it dosnt even come with a earth cable

Originally Posted by SAISAY

Packaging was excellent, very well protected but they forgot to put the software and the manual in

Was it from Carving-CNC? In my case Lance sent out an email with links to the manual and software to people receiving that batch of machines (interesting to see the range of nationalities the email was going to).

Originally Posted by SAISAY

Received my 6040 today
Packaging was excellent, very well protected but they forgot to put the software and the manual in
So I have to wait seeing how it works until I get it.

Mine didn't come with a manual or software either. Its not hard to put together. I downloaded a manual off the net after googling for it, but I think I only referred to it twice.

Happy with mine so far, though I'm still playing with software and learning what I can do. I didn't bother with their controller.

At least your controller appears to be working out of the box.
But of course that was a lesson I needed to learn and I've
met some awesome people along the way.
AAAnd The Gecko G540 is just fantastic.

Ian

Originally Posted by RustyArc

After almost a year of research, I finally got off my #### last week and ordered a Carving CNC 6040 machine with extra fruit - rot axis, vice & wireless remote.

Did you get any destructions how to mount the rot axis?
Direction etc.
Please share if you do, I have no idea.

Originally Posted by SAISAY

Did you get any destructions how to mount the rot axis?
Direction etc.
Please share if you do, I have no idea.

No instructions, just an extra bag of bolts and square nuts to hold the chuck and tailstock down. I haven't tried using it yet as I'm still busy ruining MDF, aluminium and other materials learning how to do work in 2D.

That said, how hard can it be? Pick a pair of slots that match the holes in the chuck & tailstock, bolt them down, plug in the stepper, turn on the switch for the rot axis driver and away you go.

At a guess you might have to remount the spindle a bit higher.

What else is there to know?

That's not what I meant
Which axis would you place it on?
It seems like the X axis would only make for very short stock unless you mounted it outside the table..Sorry if my questions annoy you, I will leave you alone now

Originally Posted by SAISAY

That's not what I meant
Which axis would you place it on?
It seems like the X axis would only make for very short stock unless you mounted it outside the table..Sorry if my questions annoy you, I will leave you alone now

My apologies - as you mention, I didn't understand exactly what you were asking.

As I said, I haven't tried using mine yet, but I assumed I'd mount it in line with the Y axis - I kind of think you'd have to in order to be able to slide the tail stock in the slots to fit whatever you're going to cut.

You probably need to swap out the X axis for the 4th Axis. In simple cutting the spindle doesn't need to move across the work piece (x) only along (y) as the work piece can be rotated to expose uncut material. Obviouslt being able to control all 4 axes simultaneously allows for a lot more options cutting wise.