Debugging is a fact of life when it comes to machine tool building. Newbies should expect to have to do some mechanical and elecrical debug with a new machine build. The old hands on this forum take that for granted but we should help the newbie to avoid underestimating what is required to finalize a machine.
The DIY world for the most part emulates FANIC and NIST "standards". As for the NIST, much of LinuxCNC came from a project there, as such many DIY GCode interpreters try to emulate the behavior of LinuxCNC which is very very close to FANUC behavior.
Beyond that all bets are off. Basic GCode ends up being similar but beyond that you can have all sorts of specialized functions.
At work almost everything i work on is custom except for the injection molding machines. Robots for instance can be GCode based ( very similar) or something completely different. Multi axis controllers for packaging machines can be GCode based or not. Frankly i find CNC (GCode based) motion controllers to be easier to work with than some of the solutions that use PLC programming and bus attached motion controlers.
I can see why custom software would be needed for non-standard machine configurations with multiple cutting tools in a production line / automation environment. I have seen companies make huge savings with custom in-line equiptment.
This can be compared to motion controlers that are programmed in BASIC like languages. The languages are very similar to BASIC but obviously isnt BASIC as we know it from the PC world. Further these languages are almost never compatible from one controller manufacture to the next. In a nut shell every manufacture goes his own way but trys to produce a somewhat familiar language.
In the end GCode is probably more portable than many motion control solutions out there. Portable in the sense that you as a user can easily move from one platform to another.
Ive seen companies spend millions on entire production lines that never made a cent. These lines then get sold off to scrapping companies for a few cents on the dollar. Companies do crazy things.
Frankly $100,000 for a CNC machine is peanuts these days. Sometimes as a business you need to gamble that you can find the money/business to succeed. This especially if you want to grow a business.
Prototyping labs are a good place to try to score used machinery as yhey are often lightly used and higher end machines. Sometimes you need a machines specific capability even if it won't pay for itself in the usual way.Clearly a different level of expenditure is need for a heavy 24/7 continuous use production machine vs a small prototype of hobby machine making a few parts here and there.
This is why job shops exist!!! You just have to be willing to pay for their services.In my case, a CNC machine might save me a little time but it is unlikely to increase my income sufficiently to justify a 6 figure investment at this stage.
I wouldnt say all do! However the major suppliers of CNC controllers all have compatibility issues to some degree. Given enough volume or the desire to implement advanced features companies will consider DIY controllers and these can drift away from standard GCode significantly.I didn't realize that high end CNC machines all ran custom software.
Lots of machine tools are built with such hough i wouldnt call them expensive. Each though implements its own dialect of GCode.I thought they used expensive but mostly off-the-shelf control boxes and drivers made by brands like Fanuc and Mitsubishi.
What you can do as an individual depends upon your resources and how you value your time. For example you won't build a high end machine unless you own a machine shop that is well equiped or have access to one. That right there has a major impact on machine cost. It is simple things too, high end machines are heavy which means having equipment to handle that material. There are many things that we safely ignore on a low end machine that really impacts ones ability to produce a high end machine.You're obviously someone with a lot of experience of using both high end machines and smaller homemade devices. If you tell me that making a machine of comparable quality with a $150,000 budget is not possible then I believe you. If someone with your experience could not do it then nobody could.
Yes that was the only mistake on that build was the Galil control, as soon as he got rid of the Galil control, for the smoothie Board all was flying
This was a person that had no experience in building a machine like this, he designed the machine, had the frame built in China, the rest he mostly did himself, he learned how to use a milling machine, I worked on some parts of the machine, and yes it cost a lot around $60k, the machine payed for it's self, very quickly though
When you look at the component costs he did not cheap out on anything, each gearbox $2,600.00 x 3, Ground Helical Rack and pinion Yaskawa Ac servos, BT30 Spindles ( 2 ), the list goes on, the pinion in this photo tells you what kind of build this was, with built in lube supply, the build is 95% all steel construction, and can run at 2600 IPM rapids test cuts where at 500 IPM
Mactec54
Yes machines are sometimes bought on venture capital. For established business the cost of the machine is amortized over its service life, and the depreciation as deductions. Usually the company has funds set aside for capital investments, and has figured out their ROI. Sometimes the machines are financed or leased.
This is all true for well managed companies. On the other hand I've seen really strange things happen in large business. For example R&D operations spending huge sums on 3D printing technologies that spend most of their days idle. Lathes and mills just sitting idle in the same department. Meanwhile at the other end of the building the machine shop, doing world class optical tooling, has a extremely tight budget and staffing. Sometimes companies just don't care if a project, tool or whatever is justified in any economic sense, it isn't so much venture capital as it is free spending that the rest of a company never has access to.
I'm pretty fond of my simple easy z axis I hacked together. The panels are 1/2" Baltic Birch ply. The first panel is supported by the linear guides and the second one the router is attached to is supported from flexing with some 1.25" square steel tube tapped and threaded to the back of it. This is incredibly stiff I have no play anywhere and I have to say I see no reason to remake these plates out of aluminum in the future, this is more than adequate
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