[PhilBa]

Congrats. It's a fairly small machine - cutting area is about 12 x 7. What are you hoping to do with it? It probably can cut wood and plastic. I would be surprised if it handles metal at all.

Even though the literature says it doesn't need a computer, you probably should plan on hooking it up to one. The little remote controller is really limited.

Probably the first things you should get is software - CAD and CAM packages. Which ones depend on what you want to do with the machine.

 

[PhilBa]

check out F-Engrave. It's free and is good for signs and simple v carving. I use it quite a bit for doing both images and text. Photos of a couple of box lids done with F-Engrave are attached. Basically those were black and white line drawing images created with a drawing app (Affinity Design, $50) but Inkscape would work fine and it's free. Even Microsoft Paint could be used. You can also get F-Engrave to directly use TrueType fonts of which there are thousands available for free. Those box lids were made with a 90 degree V Bit - 1/4" shank. Does your machine take 1/4" bits? I couldn't see anything on the amazon page that said if it did.

I should warn you, that machine is not likely to be able to make deep cuts without flexing so you will have to take multiple shallow cuts. Not the end of the world, it will just take longer.

By the way, you will probably want to dump the PC software that comes with it. The router runs GRBL and there are lots of free "control" programs that work with it. GRBL Panel, bCNC, UGS and several others work pretty well.

If you want to really crank out plaques, you will probably want to look at investing $2K or more. If you can get $100 for a plaque and crank out 10 a day, it would pay for itself pretty fast. The more rigid the machine, the faster it can run. But there is also the question of how long will the machine last. Your little chinese machine probably isn't that reliable. Frankly, I would want to have something like an Avid Pro4824 ($6-9K depending on how much you do yourself) for that kind of business. And, maybe two of them for more reliability.

 

[PhilBa]

Here's the amazon page for it. FWIW Sainsmart is a Chinese company that is trying to brand all the standard chinese stuff.

 

[PhilBa]

Sarah let us guys with not much money how well it works will need pictures. That would help making simple signs. When is it coming?

Probably the biggest limitation for making signs is it doesn't take 1/4" shank bits. A 60 or 90 degree V bit is standard for simple signs. a 1/8" shank V bit will take a lot more carving to get a similar effect. A ball nose 1/8" bit might be a better choice if you can't use 1/4" shank bits.

 

[PhilBa]

There are couple of control programs for GRBL machines out there. UGS, GRBL Panel, bCNC sping to mind. I use GRBL Panel and like it a lot but it's not being supported by the author anymore. Lots of people swear by bCNC and it can be run on a RasPi. UGS is kind of the old man of the bunch and is rock solid. I think you can find Candle for download somewhere but I've heard a lot of complaints about it. Not sure if it's FOSS.

[edit] mike beat me to it. he's got a faster feed rate! [/edit]

 

[PhilBa]

You should get a 1/2" mdf board the same size as your bed for a waste board. You will want the bit to cut into the waste board. It's a replaceable item. You should check your bed for flat and level but chances are it's not. So, you will want to surface the waste board - skim a thin layer off so that it is flat and level with respect to your spindle. If you don't, your carving will be to an uneven depth. Surprisingly small differences will show up. I'm not sure what bits are available for that with a 1/8" shank. I use a "fly cutter".

On the point about not wanting to use a PC to feed your GRBL machine - you shouldn't be using it for other things while running a job but I've not had any problems stemming from windows. It's pretty stable and the GRBL drivers aren't very demanding - not a single job of mine was messed up because of the winPC. I've used the openbuilds control app and didn't like it at all.

I use F360, too, but it has a huge learning curve. F-Engrave just takes a few hours to get going.

 

[PhilBa]

I was wrong about the max value, sorry about that. I posted in the other thread (although it appears I need a moderator to approve the post for now). I'm still confused about the max value now though, as I just checked the page where you sign up and register for the Startup version, and it is still listing the 100k limit, but I don't have access to the license at the moment, I'm guessing it has been updated there.

For some reason, they never updated the web page where they talk about the hobbyist and start up plans. It's only when you actually dig into it do you see the 1K limit. I fell into the same trap when they announced the change - didn't seem like they'd made any changes.

 

[PhilBa]

It is a flat text file, I export my toolpaths with the .nc extension, but you can call it whatever you want, even csv or .txt, just so long as whatever software you are using will open it. I make a few manual edits to my toolpath file before running it in CNCjs, one being I keep forgetting to remove the the GRBL M6 command and CNCjs craps out due to my overly sensitive limit switches and a grounding problem, since I am not doing a tool change. The generic GRBL postproc in Fusion360 keeps adding it, and I have not bothered to figure out where the option to remove it is, since I can just use vi to remove it. (M6 is the manual tool change command, and even though the router carriage is no where near the limit switches, the moment I touch the router, the limit switch trips.. annoying as hell.)

In F360 manufacture module, select the post-process tool under actions and set "Output M6" to no. Facile, n'est-ce pas?

Here are my settings. Seems to work fine for GRBL.