I recently bought a chinese CNC3040T-DJ off aliexpress, concretely this one:
Free shipping from UK CNC Machine 3040T DJ Router Engraving Drilling Milling Upgrade from CNC3040-in Metal Engraving Machinery from Industry & Business on Aliexpress.com
It's exactly the model you see in the pictures, with the black control box and 230W brushed spindle. I basically want it for cutting fiberglass laminate and milling some 3D wood parts, and maybe to cut and engrave plastic or aluminium or finishing 3D-printed parts.
I configured the machine according to the guide provided by the seller. Everythink looked allright and seemed to work OK. The provided calibration settings also looked to work OK. I loaded some 10mm thick wood and told the machine to cut through it to a depth of 10mm and the last pass was spot on at the very bottom of the wood board, barely scratching the sacrificial layer.
I then tried to engrave a logo in a piece of wood but the X axis drifts and each pass didn't overlap with the previous one by more than 1mm in the X axis. Y and Z seem to be perfect. I've tried several thing I've read in forums like this, like tightening the coupling between the motor and the axis, both in the axis and in the motor side and I've also tried increasing the direction and step pulses length to try and mitigate possible noise-related problems. It just keeps failing, with every layer being more and more offset towards the X+ direction than the previous, rendering the engravings useless.
I'm running the machine from a laptop (only computer I have with paralell port) with a fresh windows XP installation and ACPI disabled. It gives 3.3V levels in the paralell port which seem to work OK with the machine, although the paralell port doesn't recognize the safety stop button as it gives a low voltage of 0.85V which is still recognized as a 1.
I've thought about making a parallel port level shifter to provide 5V levels to the machine using some slew-rate limited buffers to try and mitigate crosstalking in the connections, but I'm not sure why this problem only affects the X axis, with Y and Z behaving just perfectly.
Any idea about what could be happening?
Also, is there a simple method to machine a piece from both sides? I mean, when you turn the piece over to start machining the other side, is there a simple method to align the piece with the toolpath?
And also, any simple way to perform manual tool changes and compensate for the difference in tool lenght for the Z axis? I've read that there are depth gauges that u use for that pourpose, where you simply send the machine to the gauge position and let the tip of the tool touch it, and the software automatically compensates the Z offset from the prevous tool, but I don't have such a device.
I'm using mach3 and i'm generating the toolpaths with vcarve pro and cut3d.
Thanks in advance for your answers.
Free shipping from UK CNC Machine 3040T DJ Router Engraving Drilling Milling Upgrade from CNC3040-in Metal Engraving Machinery from Industry & Business on Aliexpress.com
It's exactly the model you see in the pictures, with the black control box and 230W brushed spindle. I basically want it for cutting fiberglass laminate and milling some 3D wood parts, and maybe to cut and engrave plastic or aluminium or finishing 3D-printed parts.
I configured the machine according to the guide provided by the seller. Everythink looked allright and seemed to work OK. The provided calibration settings also looked to work OK. I loaded some 10mm thick wood and told the machine to cut through it to a depth of 10mm and the last pass was spot on at the very bottom of the wood board, barely scratching the sacrificial layer.
I then tried to engrave a logo in a piece of wood but the X axis drifts and each pass didn't overlap with the previous one by more than 1mm in the X axis. Y and Z seem to be perfect. I've tried several thing I've read in forums like this, like tightening the coupling between the motor and the axis, both in the axis and in the motor side and I've also tried increasing the direction and step pulses length to try and mitigate possible noise-related problems. It just keeps failing, with every layer being more and more offset towards the X+ direction than the previous, rendering the engravings useless.
I'm running the machine from a laptop (only computer I have with paralell port) with a fresh windows XP installation and ACPI disabled. It gives 3.3V levels in the paralell port which seem to work OK with the machine, although the paralell port doesn't recognize the safety stop button as it gives a low voltage of 0.85V which is still recognized as a 1.
I've thought about making a parallel port level shifter to provide 5V levels to the machine using some slew-rate limited buffers to try and mitigate crosstalking in the connections, but I'm not sure why this problem only affects the X axis, with Y and Z behaving just perfectly.
Any idea about what could be happening?
Also, is there a simple method to machine a piece from both sides? I mean, when you turn the piece over to start machining the other side, is there a simple method to align the piece with the toolpath?
And also, any simple way to perform manual tool changes and compensate for the difference in tool lenght for the Z axis? I've read that there are depth gauges that u use for that pourpose, where you simply send the machine to the gauge position and let the tip of the tool touch it, and the software automatically compensates the Z offset from the prevous tool, but I don't have such a device.
I'm using mach3 and i'm generating the toolpaths with vcarve pro and cut3d.
Thanks in advance for your answers.