Hey y’all. It’s not that I really need help spending $5k, I could easily do that. I just would love input from some of you more knowledgeable people.
Relevant information:
Money came from the sponsor specifically to be spent on tooling
Last year I purchased a Manual Mill with DRO and we got a good number of end mills donated. We used this a lot and definitely helped in building a better quality robot.
Recently Purchased Precision Matthews lathe with DRO installed. Still waiting for it to come in, and have not figured out exactly what I need to purchase additional. I did get a keyless drill chuck and BXA turning/boring tool set. I need to figure out what else I need to get for the quick change tool posts and to use the thinbits to cut grooves for retaining clips
Our robotics room is spacious enough for a full field and some build tables. It’s definitely getting crowded if we want to keep the full field (and I do).
Usually have access to a pretty good school 3D printer. I do not know the model, but can probably find out.
Need to figure out better methods of organization for our team
Have drill press, vertical bandsaw, horizontal/vertical bandsaw (stays in horizontal mode now that we have a vertical one), small belt sander, table saw, and miter saw.
Mostly good on the typical hand tools. Will probably be purchasing some allen wrenches with labeled t-handles because students are awful at putting them away when trying to find the right one.
9 of our 10 mentors are electrical/computer engineers. We have one mentor that has the bulk of our experience with regards to machining, but I do not believe he has much experience outside of mill/lathe and the typical hand tool type stuff - i.e. he . We only have 1 mentor that has real CAD experience, and she’s also our Chairmans mentor and is usually pretty busy during the build season with our chairmans and base subteams.
We do have 2 students that are pretty good with CAD, no thanks to their mentors, haha. I’ve had them training some of our freshman/sophomores this fall. I’ve dabbled in it, but I spend too much time handling the logistics of the team to really spend the time getting better at CAD
I am inclined to go out and spend the $$$ on a CNC router. I could probably consider spending it on our own 3D printer to make sure we have access to it whenever we want. Or I could spend a good chunk of it on getting things better set up for storage, and the rest on things like a mini-mill and other benchtop items so that people arent stuck in a queue line for the things we currently only have 1 of. My concern is that whether I go with a CNC router or a 3D printer, our mentors are not currently well suited to take advantage of it, and even if I spend a lot of energy researching the other threads, I probably wont feel confident that I’m getting all the right stuff. We will definitely learn it over time, but I’d really like input from people already more knowledgeable in learning curves, bang for the buck, and things like that. I’m also afraid to go out and just buy a CNC router if it’s just something I “want” after reading some other threads if it’d be better spent somewhere else. Ultimately I’ll have to make the final call, but am very open to input.
Personally, I would not recommend the X-Carve. I know it’s one of the most affordable CNC router options, but having used one on our team the past year, I would say it is not worth it for most FRC applications. If you are not able to afford a better CNC router, it would be better to save up rather then to purchase the X-Carve. Our team has replaced it with a Laguna IQ for the upcoming season.
A CNC router is a good choice, however it it a little concerning that your team doesn’t seem to have a lot of experience with it. A router has a ton of uses (one of my favorite tools), but it also takes a fair amount of skill to operate.
If I were in your situation, i would actually go with a CO2 laser cutter. We purchased 2 laser cutters over the summer. I wasn’t sure how useful it would be initially, but so far I have been blown away by how much we use it. This is one of the ones we have. https://fslaser.com/product/muse/configurator (and runs exactly $5k). The other is larger model from FSL, and had a much larger price-tag. There are some cutters available for under $5, however I have no experience with them, so I cannot tell you what is good and bad.
The reason I would go this direction is they are extremely easy to use and they are a very powerful machine for a robotics team. This particular laser has a web interface to control it, and can read PDF files (among other files).I set up the machine (which was fairly simple with the documentation they provided) and was cutting within a few hours.
You can cut or engrave Acrylic and Wood up to about 1/4" thick. It is a powerful prototyping tool as most of the parts that we end up cutting take less than 5 minutes to make. Because it is so quick, I find it more useful than a 3D printer in many cases. We have prototyped gearboxes, as well as designed some other useful devices out of acrylic with it already. I am really excited to see what the students will be able to do with it during the build season.
One thing I do have to point out is a negative is that a laser cutter should not be used to cut lexan, and acrylic is not a suitable replacement for Lexan (it is far more brittle). As a prototyping machine and a machine to make small parts on a robot, I think that a laser cutter could be an excellent addition to what you already have.
If I get a CNC router it would likely be the x8-2200 recommended by Adam Heard in the CNC thread.
With a laser cutter wouldn’t I need to worry about ventilation? The learning curve on a CNC without someone with experience would be intimidating, but it can’t be substantially worse than the learning curve for a laser cutter right? Also being in houston would leave me to believe there’s plenty of other local mentors that could help me get started.
We have some, but haven’t used it yet. Most of the stuff have been quick prototypes, so wood and acrylic have been appropriate. We will probably experiment with Delrin soon.
Ventilation is pretty simple in most cases. We bought a filter for our laser, however by default they recommend just running the exhaust out a window with a supplied blower fan.
Having used both, I can tell you a laser cutter is significantly easier to use than a router. With a router you are worried about different cutting bits, tool paths, mounting methods etc. Unless you are doing some really fancy stuff, you are only worried about power and speed of the laser. I had no experience with a laser cutter, and I was able to go from unboxing to cutting wood in only a few hours. The thing that I really find makes laser cutting easier is the fact that you don’t have to securely mount what you are cutting. You just put the piece you want to cut in the laser, and it does the cutting.
As a general statement, I would say that the learning curve on a CNC router is probably a bit steeper than a laser cutter, just because you have to program the toolpaths, deal with workholding, deal with cutters that wear over time, deal with a lot of things that laser cutting and 3D printing software have gotten really good at handling for you.
Once you’ve dialed in a router, it can be pretty straightforward though. From my experience, the cheaper the router, the tighter the window you need to hit on those settings (and maintain), which can result in some tail-chasing.
The value of cnc machining and 3d printers start with cad - 3d modeling. The most important thing for your team is to master cad and institutionalize it. Once your team has basic cad skills it can move on to slicing caming and actually running the machines. Once our team developed the cad skills we invested in 3d printing and a cnc router.
Our team team does a fair amount of welding. 2000$ could get an nice ac/dc tigg welder.
CNC machining definites requires the use of CAD and CAM. Given that it’s December already, I would skip the router and get a laser instead (as suggested above) or save the money if that’s possible. If that’s not possible, I would ask the CAD people if they would feel comfortable learning CAM before the season.
If you do go the CNC Router route, feel free to PM me and I can show people the basics. It’s not terribly hard to set up CNC routering but it does take some intial setup to get your feedrates set correctly.
EDIT: Welding can be really useful (especially post-FRC) but it takes a mentor to teach how to do it safely.
We do have a sponsor to do our welding, but it usually takes a week to get our frame back so getting doing own welding could be a good option too. Our main machining mentor had done welding and our school has a welding class.
Both of our students with real CAD experience are interning with some local businesses, I’ll need to see if either of them have CAM experience or could get their workplace to help us out. I think one runs some type metal cutter but I don’t remember if it was a router or a water jet.
I’ll look more into the laser cutter options. Or see if one of our mentors wants to focus on tackling the CNC router set up. I’m comfortable CADing plates and drawings that are really just 2D (or marking out holes in box tubing) and can teach our students that much. But doing the tool path and figuring out the tool speeds would definitely be something new for me.
I would go with the Shapeoko 3. It’s been great for our team so far, and powerful enough to cut aluminum well. The only issue we had was the loudness of the router while it was cutting. This was an easy solve though as we just built a plywood enclosure with some two-by-fours and some denim acoustic insulation. 5k should be plenty to get all of that.
We bought a CNC router from China this summer. Great price, and should be well spec’d (once rewired to Canadian standards), but it’s been a 5 month delivery process
Just keep in mind that the machine is only part of the cost. You might need an electrician to run a new circuit, tools for work-piece holding, a waste-board, storage for sheet stock, a compressor and/or vacuum and/or pump for cooling and chip-clearing, etc etc. We’re still working through those implications ourselves.
