I notice a lot of questions about leveling up shop tools on this forum, and since build season is starting soon, I thought I would let you all know about a new small CNC mill that might be relevant to your interests.
The Othermill is a desktop 3-axis CNC mill, with full CNC functionality and an excellent learning curve for new machinists. It’s great for prototyping circuits, cutting 1/8’’ thick aluminum sprockets, and fabbing small parts. It’s rigid, dependable, and comes with motion control software you can download for free.
It runs g-code, .brd files, gerbers and .svgs, and it a great tool to have in your arsenal. You can use it to fab emergency parts in the pits, cut down on your parts budget, and increase your machine tool time as well.
See more about features, specs, and used cases at our website: www.othermachine.co
I’m also happy to answer any questions you may have.
Thanks, and have a good build!
Simone Davalos
Project and Support Engineer
Other Machine Co.
GOFIRST has one of these-- I haven’t used it too much, but it’s been quite nice for our purposes (what you’d expect-- light machining and small prototyping). We used it for stands on a quadcopter we rebuilt this spring. Cool little machine.
The mill’s motion controller is currently only for OS X (we are working on porting it to Windows), but the machine can be controlled with a 3rd party software platform called Chilipeppr (Chilipeppr.com).
We have a bunch of Windows users who have had good results with Chilipeppr. It’s free and open source, and speaks to our TinyG control board natively.
You do need to have a little bit of experience with G-Code, but if you are working in CAM software that has g-code export, what you see on the screen is what the machine will make!
On your site it says available to ship in 8-12 weeks. This might be a bit long for robotics teams. Do you have any ways to expedite that for teams who want them by build season?
Othermill has some nice integration with existing PCB creation tools (Eagle, ect), mainly. Would also depend on the age and state of the Bridgeport in question (don’t get me wrong, my high school had three older Bridgeports, and I loved them, but one of them was a lot more finicky than the others).
Are you saying that I CAN’T make a PCB faster than this micro machine!? Oh, we are ON!
But seriously, it would be very difficult to manually mill a complex PCB. That is one thing that this Othermill does well as it’s CNC right out of the box. However, for the amount of PCBs most teams do I would find it hard to justify such a purchase. If they want PCBs, OshPark has less than a week turnaround, or teams can just buy a Shapoko. It’s around 1/6th the cost and has a much larger build volume.
As for portability… I don’t see why you would want that other than as a pit gimmick.
In case you did not know, the FRC build season is 6 weeks long, starting the first Saturday of the calendar year.
What is the expected life of the spindle motor? What type of bearings are used in the spindle motor? Are replacement parts readily and quickly available? Is it possible to run the mill continuously, to churn out multiple parts, for several days at a time or is there some cool down period required between jobs?
Is there some way to hook up a vacuum when milling PCB’s? The dust from some PCB materials (fiberglass) is not particularly good for you.
Do you anticipate developing a version with a larger build volume than your current model (5.5" x 4.5" x 1.25")?
Since I started, I think I’ve had about 6 made. 3 of one copy in 2006 and 3 of another in 2010 (technically because we could fit 2 boards on the min size panel).
“The average FRC team” does not have the tools to make PCBs. Your question is similar to trying to gauge the demand for a bridge based on how many people swim across the river.
In the time I’ve been with the TechnoKats, we have designed and had built several hundred LED panels, a hundred or so small PIC-based controller boards, and about a dozen and a half largish Arduino peripherals. We’ve also hand-wired a handful of small boards that would have been well suited to in-shop circuit board fabrication.
On the other hand, there is a dedicated PCB router that has been sitting idle and decaying in the shop since before I joined. Nobody still on the team has the slightest idea how to use it, and I’m likely the only one who really knows what it is.
Milling PCB’s is a waste of time IMHO, It made sense a couple of years ago when the typical minimum to get a PCB manufactured was 85$ but now you can get beautiful double sided silk screened boards made in a few days for a couple of dollars. The lack of a solder mask on a in shop fabricated board makes smd soldering almost impossible.
The spindle motor is a belt-driven, brushless DC motor, and out of roughly 250 machines that we have shipped, we have had one bad motor that needed replacing. I run the machines all day, every day and have yet to need a motor replaced.
The machine is fully enclosed, although you can pause the job and vacuum as necessary. We recommend using FR-1 board instead of FR4 in the machine, to avoid the fiberglass issue.
Even if you don’t need it regularly for PCBs, it’s there and available if students want to branch out and experiment. It’s also great for milling sprockets and other small parts to spec.
It works straight out of the box with our software. No kit to set up or calibrate, and novices can go from set up to miling in about an hour. Our interface for the machine is on OSX, but there is also a relatively user-friendly way to run it on a PC if you are not Mac compatible.
It works on g-code and on the same principles as the big machines, so if a student didn’t have access to a full machine shop, the skills they’d learn on an Othermill would give them a head start when and if they did.
Plus it’s great for practicing CAD and CAM with.
Sadly, given lead times and holidays, it will not be arriving in time for this build season. But if you are participating in other competitions in the spring such as RoboGames, Botball, or Vex events, having a mill would be a great chance to get your students using it and comfortable once the 2016 FIRST build season starts!