What do you use your CNC for? Current or future.

[cray-]

I guess this question goes hand in hand with the "The BRAG Thread". Rather than cluttering up everyone's build threads and to encourage replies from existing users I thought I'd start a new thread.

What do you use your CNC for? ...and briefly, what kind of machine do you have?

I'm particularly interested about all the new X-Carve & smaller hobbyist machine owners. But also keen for big industrial rig users to chip in.

If you're still building your machine then what are your future plans?

Photos not mandatory but highly encouraged!

[snowyskiesau]

I have a 6040 CNC router which has seen limited use, I tend to use the 6040 owned by my local geek group the HobartHackerSpace

I have an XYZ-Carve on order. I don't really need another CNC but as I have a lot of the parts already, the price for the remainder was too good to miss.
It will be used to cut wood/MDF and plastics. Aluminium if it will handle it.

[elanjacobs]

Running a Biesse Rover 24 (as seen in the brag thread)
We use it for pretty much anything from nesting on sheet material to complex shapes in solid timber. Basically, if we can draw it in autocad we'll run it.

[beefy]

I’ve built a CNC plasma cutter (sorry to the wood guys, I know you are looking for routers, might make one some time). I originally made it to go with some other engineering toys I bought (lathe, mill, etc). I’ve got a little tight access excavation business and my plan WAS to make a whole bunch of attachments, but that idea kind of went to the dogs as I came to realise most customers simply had no idea how an attachment could benefit them. Seems they basically thought I was just trying to get extra money out of them when I’d offer an attachment for a bit extra cost. The operator can see the time and cost savings but the customers couldn’t LOL.

But still it’s a toy that I love and it has been very useful. Here’s a listing (+ photos) of some things I’ve got up to in my man cave:

Haven’t got photos of all the following (I must improve on that), didn’t expect to be showing them off. So I’ve just put the CAD sketches here.

GRAB & RAKE
TWO TREES IN ONE
Toys for my excavator. The ease of picking up things and the time savings on a job are enormous (remove your thumb and try and pick up a brick, that’s like an excavator without a grab). When it comes to vegetation (TWO TREES IN ONE image), I can grab huge amounts. Can’t do that with just a bucket. The rake stops you picking up dirt with things, good for pulling debris, roots, etc out of the soil.

GANTRY CRANE
Made this toy up for changing the slew ring on my excavator (2nd time, did it 7 years ago too). Drew this entire crane up in 3D cad because I had to get the dimesions correct so it would fit under the roof A-frames in my shed. The plasma table came in handy for cutting all the end plates with bolt holes for the tubes.

TYRE CHANGER
No photos, just the CAD sketch – just something I knocked up to deal with my little bobcat tyres.

PIN TAB NESTING
Cad sketch only – made these for the new excavator pins I was making.

PLASMA SLAT TOPPERS – NESTED
PLASMA SLAT TOPPERS – ASSEMBLED
Used the plasma table to cut parts for itself. With these toppers I only have to change out the individual burnt out toppers. The design also means minimal contact area to the metal sheet being cut. All the holes were “centre punched” with the plasma cutter on both the toppers and the slats, then drilled out afterwards (that was a lot of drilling LOL). The first picture show the cad nesting. I mucked about so that I only had one single pierce to cut all 288 parts. I also had to make a purpose designed circuit board just to get the hole marking the way I wanted and to do it fast. The hole marking is shown at work in this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yg-s-EAqMfI
Might give some people a laugh but I even used the plasma table to do CNC drilling on the above mentioned circuit board I made. Strapped a cheapo Ozito die grinder to the Z axis and stuck a 0.8mm diameter carbide drill in the collet. Worked fine but not quite as good as a dedicated PCB drilling machine of course. Us poor guys have to get by with what we have LOL:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eb8oN5rHYxM

REVERSE ENGINEER – CUSTOM BIKE BRACKET 1
REVERSE ENGINEER – CUSTOM BIKE BRACKET 2
A project engineer on a worksite was into custom bikes and asked me to reverse engineer some of his chrome brackets. Did these ones the hard way, tracing on a piece of paper, then scanning at 1:1 scale, then manually tracing in the cad software. After doing that I got set up with optical tracing on my plasma table so I can trace anything up to 2400 x 1500 size.

REVERSE ENGINEER – EXHAUST MANIFOLD - PHOTO
REVERSE ENGINEER – EXHAUST MANIFOLD - TRACED
I didn’t actually cut this one, just reverse engineered it for a guy that had his own plasma table. I did a manual trace from the photo he supplied BASED on the ruler in the picture. He told me the part turned out fine dimensionally.

CUSTOM ART – NINAS BICYCLE – DRAWING
CUSTOM ART – NINAS BICYCLE – MANUAL TRACE
CUSTOM ART – NINAS BICYCLE – IN METAL
A Dad wanted his little girls bicycle painting cut out in metal. I was supplied a horrible drawing which could not be auto traced so had to manually trace it to get an accurate reproduction with all the irregularities, definitely not a 2 min job. Had to change the original letter painting to make it cut as one piece. Here’s a YT video of this one being cut:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=miQD...ature=youtu.be

CUSTOM ART – SMITHVILLE – HOUSE SIGN
CUSTOM ART – SMITHVILLE – GATE ENTRY
Couple of signs I did for a mates wife. Sorry once again I didn’t take photos. The house sign photo is actually an artificial rendering I did from the cad file I made. At least I made a YT video of the house sign being cut:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3frWcfdv3E

MAPLE LEAF SCREEN VERTICAL
MAPLE LEAF SCREEN HORIZONTAL
A landscapers wife wanted a corten screen similar to one she already had on her porch (the vertical image), except she wanted this one horizontal and with more leaf cutouts and more leaves on top of the screen. Once again I didn't take a finished photo but the horizontal picture from my cad program is what I made. It was made out of 3mm corten and dimensions were 2440 x 1100 as requested (same as the vertical ones). He got a shock at the weight LOL and I suggested maybe he needs to strengthening on his fence. Anyway his wife was happy which is the important bit.

LINE BORING TOY
Just some YT videos of this, starting with the first of 3:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHSxLmJBD4Y
Somewhere in these 3 videos you might see the orange line boring gadget I made to hold the electric drill. That part was designed in 3D cad and I cut some of the parts out on the plasma table. Like I say the plasma table has been a useful toy for the workshop for making various bits and pieces.

Well hope that gave you some idea of what I get up to with my toy.

Keith.

[KBs PensNmore]

fantastic work beefy, how thick material can you cut??
Kryn

[beefy]

fantastic work beefy, how thick material can you cut??
Kryn

Cheers Kryn,

the excavator grab was 16mm steel but the machine torch should be able to comfortably handle 19mm (3/4") at the max 80 amps. A fellow plasma cutter has the same machine torch as me but his machine is 85 amps and he got some good cuts on 1 inch steel. I think the stars need to be aligned pretty well though to acheive that.

Just haven't had any 19 to 25mm steel lying around to play choppy chop on LOL.

Keith.

[cray-]

But still it’s a toy that I love and it has been very useful. Here’s a listing (+ photos) of some things I’ve got up to in my man cave:

Thanks Keith for that incredibly comprehensive answer. I've no idea how a plasma cutter works but your table looks like a beast and great that it's still perfectly capable of doing tiny detail work like that PCB.

And thanks everyone else for chiming in. Love seeing what everyone gets up to in their sheds and workplaces.