WING X99 | A CNC-milled Scratch Build! (Benchmarks, temps and wallpapers posted!)

[Charles Root esq.]

11 hours ago, Brodholm said:

But my question to you is how you want these updates if you could chose. Will be a lot of milling and programming in CAM and also design setup etc. Would you like the whole process with video of me editing code, setting up sheets, doing preparations, video of the actual cutting (cut down into manageable segments etc). Myself I think that gifs for example is a very good substitute for video when there is only short segments that I need to visualize. What is your opinion? Let me know, I would really like to have everyone's thoughts on this

 

As also stated above, bearing in mind the extra work needed in producing content, I am in love with this whole process and would like to see as much of the CNC work as you have time for

[Brodholm]

On 2016-09-29 at 0:28 AM, 8uhbbhu8 said:

Holy Crap!  This is an absolutely glorious start! Definitely following this log!

 

I like the idea of pics and gifs with descriptions underneath (But that's cause my PC can actually handle loading it all  even if my internet strains)

Great! I like it as well! Will continue with that then! It's quite a bit of work and I don't want to be making them If people do not enjoy them ^^

On 2016-09-29 at 1:32 AM, 0ld_Chicken said:

 

This is wonderful stuff!  Sorry to see that beautiful metal delivered in such poor shape!  I would love to see as much of the process as possible.  That being said, I understand the amount of extra time that it takes to prepare content.  The gifs are fantastic and I'm patiently awaiting more!

Yeah, got in contact with the company that sold them. They have shipped new sheets now! Should be here any moment. Until they arrive I will be using the others and polish them later.

On 2016-09-29 at 11:09 AM, Charles Root esq. said:

 

As also stated above, bearing in mind the extra work needed in producing content, I am in love with this whole process and would like to see as much of the CNC work as you have time for

I have put extra attention into this and have tried to go a bit more into the CNC process!

[Brodholm]

Update #3

First cuts on the project! Feels really nice! I have not gotten around to edit the video footage so you have to wait a bit for that .

Gifs to be ninja added in this post and in a new post I think. Also working on a video. Hopefully it will be up later this weekend If I don't run into trouble with my little to no experience using adobe premiere...

Tried to describe the whole process as good as I could. Took a looooong time so I will probably not do this every time and It would also become quite repetitive. But I thought it would be good for those wanting to get into CNC, and to those who just want to know how it works! Hope you enjoy!

 

A fresh start, with a fresh spill board!

I use these small 12 mm hardened shafts to align the work piece to make sure it is parallel.

As you can see here the aluminium sheets gets pushed toward 2 of these to achieve perfect alignment along the Y axis.

Very soft aluminium clamps. Too soft maybe, but they usually scratch instead of the material.

Bottom side of the clamps. Allows for a range of about 2-10 mm thickness to be clamped.

I used six of these to secure a 8 x 300 x 1000 mm 5754 aluminium sheet.

Very flexible, I constantly have to bend these back when I get too rough with them. That's not good since they flex past the yield point and will eventually break. But I just have to make some new and improved versions then!

This is the part I am machining today. The very bottom part of the case.

4 mm polished end mill for soft metals like aluminium, brass, copper etc. Also suitable for plastic.

These are ER25 collets that holds the milling tools in place.

Here is a pack of them. Goes from 1 mm to 16 mm. And to the right you can see the special tool that fits over the "clamp nut" (name?) that squeezes the collets and consequentially squeeze the tool.

Here it is, fastened in the spindle.

No rush, measure everything twice. And then again to be sure. Then doubt yourself and measure again 

I am centering the program on the bottom left corner. I need to make sure I don't have a collision with the holding clamps and also don't go too far.

The chassis is 235 mm wide. This means I have about 20 mm of space left on each side for the tool path (takes about 12 mm on all passes on each side) and the clamps.

The contour cuts, and holes are made on the main/first side I mill. The lines you see here are tool path lines.

About to plunge down into the aluminium!

Contact!

Here you can see the chip evacuation. I am having a hard time showing you since the dust shoe is in the way. I even lifted it up to get some better shots, resulting in a mess! But it was worth it

Very nice surface finish. Really sharp edges with no rubbing or vibration marks.

Cleaned up the cut a bit with some compressed air.

First tool cut done, now on to bigger (and better?) tools!

Up from 4 mm to a 10 mm end mill! I do not have any tight inner corners this time, and a larger diameter tool produces a better cut than a smaller diameter tool. So I will use this 10 mm for the contour cut!

Auto Zero after each tool change. Goes out to the reference position and adjusts the ZERO-plane after the new and changed tool height.

I use these droplet canons on each side to apply coolant/lubrication fluids. Works really well. You don't have that mist all over the shop and it also evacuates chips.

Now using a bigger ER25 collet! And, you guessed it, the 10 mm collet for the 10 mm tool Rocket science!

The inner profile cut under way. This is the first roughing pass. I am taking about 2 mm per pass with a feed rate around 600 mm/min.

Tabs are starting to show! That means we are close to cutting through the stock.

Inner contour done. Now I just have to get that thing out of there...

These are the tabs I am talking about. They hold the part in place so it does not come loose during the cutting passes. The part coming loose will result in either the tool breaking, or damaging the part, or pushing it loose from its clamps. A pain in the ass, but better than the alternative.

I use a rotating tool that uses air as propellant. And I use these small and neat cutting disks. Much more robust than a Dremel disk, for example.

Cut done. But you can see that I am now left with these partially cut tabs sticking out. So that's no good at all.

This is solved with another pass. In programming I saved about 0.5mm for a finishing cut. Where I remove the last bit of material and at the same time improves the surface finish quality even more.

This will go in the bin with scrap parts that I might have use fore later. It's big enough that I don't want to just toss it.

Surface finish is really good. Now I just need to keep it this good until final sanding and glass bead blasting.

This is the second side of the part. Chamfers and some M4 holes were made here. You can see that my stock is defined as XYZ with the Z-axis starting on the top of the stock here instead of the bottom.

With the outer contour coming next, I need to secure the piece to the table since the outer clamps will do nothing when the piece is nearly free from the stock. If you don't have clamps securing the piece from "inside" like this, you must either use tabs or you'll get a V-shaped artifact when the piece comes loose, as the tool will push the part away the last millimeter or so. This may cause the part to bounce back into the tool and cause all kinds of issues. And because you lose the position of the part when it comes off the stock, that makes it very hard to do a final pass on it to clean up tabs. This is a real issue if you can't clamp it down. I will have some parts like that later, I fear.

I got a bit worried about marks so I put some plastic pieces to protect the surface of the piece.

This is what the code looks like. Some basic G-code for those interested, the S defines the tool speed, so in this case 13610 RPM. The M3 turns the spindle on in clockwise direction. M8 turns mist cooling on. Then G0 followed by XYZ with numbers tells the computer to go to that position in rapid speed (the maximum speed you have set it to). G1 works the same way but with the difference that it does not go to XYZ in rapid but in a specified feed rate (F). So for example, G1 Z11.5 F317 tells the motors to move the Z-axis to 11.5 mm above the 0-plane in with a speed of 317 mm/min.

The purple crosshair shows the machine's current position. You can also see some G-code, for example those dotted red lines are rapid moves in the XY-plane.

Sharp corners. Always nice to know that the machine is capable of that. You can sometimes get round corners, especially when the machine is trying to keep a constant velocity.

After a few minutes the cut is done. Here is the result. Now I have to release the clamps and turn the piece around and do the other side. There are some chamfered holes and a few more holes to be drilled.

Was deciding on the width for the chamfers so I did a few tests on an aluminium sheet that I was in the bin. Decided on 9 mm for the M4 screws and 7 mm for M3. A bit smaller than the ISO standard of 10 and 7.5 mm respectively. But I think it looks nicer with the smaller diameter so that is what I am going with.

10 mm Chamfer end mill. 90 degrees with a sharp tip. Used for plastics, aluminium, iron etc. Some kind of titanium coating, if I remember correctly.

Chamfers done!

Surface finish is very nice, except from that oxidized surface due to storage... I'll have to sand that down.

Really pleased with the first part! No mistakes as of yet!

One completed bottom piece!

[Str8f4c3]

[ELSknutson]

the only thing im wondering about this build is what a pain this thing would be to trouble shoot if it had issues. ;p  

 

but other then that its sexy I wish i had your toys to do this to my systems 

[Brodholm]

On 2016-10-16 at 6:11 AM, Str8f4c3 said:

On 2016-10-16 at 9:42 AM, ELSknutson said:

the only thing im wondering about this build is what a pain this thing would be to trouble shoot if it had issues. ;p  

 

but other then that its sexy I wish i had your toys to do this to my systems 

What do you mean with troubleshoot?  Taking things apart or?

Well that is the nature of custom builds. It is very hard to get away from that. Also water cooling in general makes it a hassle to take apart due to the nature of fluids

[Charles Root esq.]

Thank you for the detail!

 

I am in awe. The design is gorgeous and the functional details are what engineer's wet dreams are made of. But, the real star is the execution. In this log we are getting to see how much forethought is needed for every cut and the very deep understanding of tools and materials required to safely attempt such a task. Yet you make it sound so simple... If this is what you do for fun, I am guessing guess you build Stargates for your day job?

 

Please submit this to the next Featured Build Logs vote. I would love to see Linus' mind blow-out over it!

[Brodholm]

On 2016-10-18 at 1:11 PM, Charles Root esq. said:

Thank you for the detail!

 

I am in awe. The design is gorgeous and the functional details are what engineer's wet dreams are made of. But, the real star is the execution. In this log we are getting to see how much forethought is needed for every cut and the very deep understanding of tools and materials required to safely attempt such a task. Yet you make it sound so simple... If this is what you do for fun, I am guessing guess you build Stargates for your day job?

 

Please submit this to the next Featured Build Logs vote. I would love to see Linus' mind blow-out over it!

Yes me and my bro MacGyver 

[Brodholm]

Next update, going from "2D" to "3D"

 

Ready to "rock and roll"

G-code for the PSU holder. Forgot a finish pass here... Might have to redo this part but I am 90% certain that I can fix it with just some sand paper and some manual labor! Blunder by me in the programming. So easy to make a single mistake that can cost you the part and hours of work.

First cut underway.

Fist cut done! This is the cutout for the PSU.

Time to do some manual cutting and remove the leftovers!

One waste piece removed.

Cleaned up the tabs with a finishing pass!

Next operation was holes for fastening the piece and also the PSU unit itself.

Third operation was chamfers on the profile.

And also on holes and the top part of the piece.

Fastening the piece before the final contour cut. A bit iffy setup. I would have wanted a clamp on the "other side" also but I took a bit of a gamble since I did not have space.

Cutting the contour.

About halfway through the cut.

All finished! Turned out okay. Forgot the finishing cut... The roughing cut took 100% of the finished (my mistake) size so it just did a hallow cut in "nothing" on the final pass... Well it took some material due to tool deflection but still there are some visible tool marks. 3 of the 4 corners will be adjacent to other pieces so I think I will just do some manual sanding on one edge and Ill be fine. Still buggs me, oh well...

Fastened with stainless M4 screws. I am either going to polish these or paint them black in the final assembly. I have yet do decide. What I did want is stainless though. On Model 01 a few screws have gotten rusty in the insex slot due to humidity in the air and I would like to avoid that here.

Really pleased with the overall results so far.

Going from "2D" to "3D" really makes a difference.

MOAR PIECES, NEED TO MAKE MOAR NOW!!! Finally assembling something feels so great. After more than a year of planing and fixing, finally!

On to the next pieces, I have run into some issues with the design or rather "I don't like" the a solution for a assembly that I would want to redesign. It is one of these design vs function questions. A few years back I would have been function all the way. But now I don't know. I want to find a solution that pleases both. It is how the plexi glass should be fastened. Either this VERY clean no fasteners on the whole side or make "tabs" that I can fasten the plexi glass on 4 places in the case. But they are visible. I have been thinking about this issue for a few days. Have to decide right now what I should go for. I believe I have found a good solution that satisfies both issues

[Str8f4c3]

Every update just gets better and better and better. Thanks for going into such detail as well, it really is interesting to see.

[Brodholm]

Finally got around to edit and post a video update. About 20 hours of video editing in premiere pro. First time ever using it. Lots and lots of features... I just need to learn them all! 

Anyway, my attempt at a progress video! Constructive criticism is always welcome!

Be sure to watch full screen and 4K resolution! (or whatever max monitor resolution you have!)
 

 

[paddy-stone]

1 hour ago, Brodholm said:

Finally got around to edit and post a video update. About 20 hours of video editing in premiere pro. First time ever using it. Lots and lots of features... I just need to learn them all! 

Anyway, my attempt at a progress video! Constructive criticism is always welcome!

Be sure to watch full screen and 4K resolution! (or whatever max monitor resolution you have!)

 

Thank you, have added it to my playlist in youtube

[Brodholm]

11 hours ago, paddy-stone said:

Thank you, have added it to my playlist in youtube

Glad you liked it!

[W-L]

4 hours ago, Brodholm said:

-SNIP-

Man love that machine work looks like it's going to be awesome, just wondering what CNC is that, something custom built?

[Charles Root esq.]

Thank you for that gorgeous video    

 

Subscribed.

 

@W-L  Brodholm is my new hero If you go somewhere near to the start of the log you will see him scratch-building the CNC!!!

[W-L]

3 hours ago, Charles Root esq. said:

Thank you for that gorgeous video    

 

Subscribed.

 

@W-L  Brodholm is my new hero If you go somewhere near to the start of the log you will see him scratch-building the CNC!!!

Ohhh I missed that part, more machinery to drool over!  

[Charles Root esq.]

2 minutes ago, W-L said:

Ohhh I missed that part, more machinery to drool over!  

So much machinery... 

[Brodholm]

On 2016-11-03 at 3:25 AM, W-L said:

Man love that machine work looks like it's going to be awesome, just wondering what CNC is that, something custom built?

Yeah, as charles said there are some pictures earlier in the thread. Designed and built by me. Took about 2 years to complete from drawings to building electrical circuits etc. Way longer than I expected. That's why I have been out of the modding game for quite a while after the model 01 build was completed
 

On 2016-11-03 at 8:34 AM, Charles Root esq. said:

Thank you for that gorgeous video    

 

Subscribed.

 

@W-L  Brodholm is my new hero If you go somewhere near to the start of the log you will see him scratch-building the CNC!!!

Yay!  I should probably post the last pictures from the CNC also. Just need to compile a post... So much work! 
 

On 2016-11-03 at 11:36 AM, W-L said:

Ohhh I missed that part, more machinery to drool over!  

 

On 2016-11-03 at 11:40 AM, Charles Root esq. said:

So much machinery... 

they are here to stay  

[Kevo05s]

DAMMNNN all I could say throughout the entire buildlog was "OW SHIT, SHITS GETTING REAL"!

It's amazing, you're doing an incredible job! Keep it up! and your renderings looks amazing!

[HeroXLazer]

Just asking, how many builds have you done so far and where can I find them?

[hwapyung08]

2 hours ago, HeroXLazer said:

Just asking, how many builds have you done so far and where can I find them?

There's the Model 01 build. You can go to his profile and do: "See their activity" -> "Topics" (on the left hand navigation). Dunno if that's all the builds he's done, but it's the other one they posted here. Awesome stuff; love seeing stuff made on the CNC

[HeroXLazer]

3 hours ago, hwapyung08 said:

There's the Model 01 build. You can go to his profile and do: "See their activity" -> "Topics" (on the left hand navigation). Dunno if that's all the builds he's done, but it's the other one they posted here. Awesome stuff; love seeing stuff made on the CNC

 

Yah I saw that. I was asking about different forums. Thanks anyway

[Brodholm]

On 2016-11-04 at 1:25 PM, Kevo05s said:

DAMMNNN all I could say throughout the entire buildlog was "OW SHIT, SHITS GETTING REAL"!

It's amazing, you're doing an incredible job! Keep it up! and your renderings looks amazing!

Thanks mate, appreciate the kind words!

On 2016-11-04 at 10:56 PM, HeroXLazer said:

Just asking, how many builds have you done so far and where can I find them?

 

On 2016-11-05 at 1:10 AM, hwapyung08 said:

There's the Model 01 build. You can go to his profile and do: "See their activity" -> "Topics" (on the left hand navigation). Dunno if that's all the builds he's done, but it's the other one they posted here. Awesome stuff; love seeing stuff made on the CNC

 

On 2016-11-05 at 4:18 AM, HeroXLazer said:

Yah I saw that. I was asking about different forums. Thanks anyway

Yeah, only the Model 01 build. I have made lots and lots of normal builds for friends, myself etc. But my first balls to the wall build was Model 01. Takes a huge amount of planing. Hoping to get more builds done now when I completed the CNC mill

[Brodholm]

Several days of design and building I finally got to test the custom bending tool that I made. I will be using this for the front bends on the case. Very pleased with the results. Was a bit worried about this.
 

Here is a test bend I made with a left over piece I had lying around.

[Hasle]

Looks very clean! Can't wait to see it all come together, and especially looking forward to when you'll be CNC'ing the acrylic blocks for the water cooling.