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IndustryArena Forum > WoodWorking Machines > Commercial CNC Wood Routers > Chinese Machines > Chinese 6090 router, first year impressions
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  1. #1
    Join Date
    Mar 2021
    Posts
    3

    Chinese 6090 router, first year impressions

    Hello to all!

    TL/DR warning!:drowning:

    I've been lurking here for quite a while, and have read many threads on the subject, and would like to take way too much of your time to post my impressions about a (relatively) inexpensive Chinese CNC machine which I purchased a year ago now from the guy in Chicago at Automation Technologies, Inc.
    First, a bit of why I chose AT... I mainly use the CNC as a hobbyist/ "maker" would right now, but my wife plans on retiring soon and I'll be following in several years as well. We both enjoy woodworking as a hobby, have sold a few things here and there, and would like to get into this kind of stuff as a full-time retirement "keep us busy so we don't waste away" type of thing eventually. Around 2 years ago, after we fell in love with the milling/routing/carving capabilities of a small ShapeOko-II found at a great price and quickly outgrowing it, we started researching what it would take to purchase substantially superior and more rigid Chinese CNC directly and import it to the US. The prerequisites were that it needed to be at least a 600x900x200mm machine, use square rails, have a cast gantry and frame, at least 2KW, use real leadscrews, and be as "complete" as could be, but without the motion control software, and most importantly, be under 4 Gees (Jeez? ). Tasked with the job from the wife of figuring it all out, and writing my own description of the type of machine we needed in a typical "shall be built with" and "must include" style RFQ (which, incidentally, I got the impression that most Chinese manufacturers never had to deal with before), I found quite a few and had whittled it down to two hard quotes, one from a vendor who frequents this forum, and one from a different vendor who I haven't seen on here. I eventually decided upon the blue and white one. The next week, I researched the importing end of things and learned way more than I ever wanted to about how to import something. The most important thing I learned was that being import-illiterate, it would be a good idea to pay a small fee to a broker so that things would go as smoothly as possible. After I talked to a broker and explained what I would be purchasing, I was very glad that the exist, as it turns out that with the current tariffs, this machine would be prohibitively expensive to import. I did not realize this due to the fact that the Chinese vendor had told me a totally wrong Harmonized Tariff classification - one that would have been just a few percent, versus what the machine actually is classified as, which carried a 3% duty, with a 25% tariff (last year's info) and an actual cited case involving a CNC machine purchased by a hopeful importer nearly identical to this one which was held in customs just a few months prior. I communicated my concern about this to the Chinese vendor, at which point he told me that he'd gladly "fudge" the classification to something that didn't carry such steep fees, and that all I had to do was go pick the unit up. Well, that's real easy to say if you're in China and aren't the one who would pay the fines, duties, and fees (and potential federal prison time) in case it was discovered, on top of the fact that I simply am not a dishonest person - especially when it comes to the US government. I politely explained to the Chinese vendor that I would not be purchasing the machine and my reasons why. I then started being badgered incessantly via email, at which point the "block" and "report spam" buttons were used. --- You know who you are, "Jack" - VERY sleazy!
    So I started looking for used machines in the states within a day's drive, and came up empty for a couple of months. At this point I decided to look into new machine vendors in the US who could sell something they have already imported. From my Google-Fu I ascertained that the closest one to me (in central North Carolina) was all the way up yonder in Chi-town. Great. Chicago. All of the sudden I heard some Jim Croche songs playing in the jukebox in my head, and I believe I shuddered a bit. At least it was within a day's drive.
    Communication ensued, and deal was struck on the KL-6090 in benchtop form. Looking at the dimensions, I figured I'd just drive up, stay the night in a hotel, rent a U-Haul trailer, load it the next morning, and return home. My vehicle I used was a trusty old 2nd gen Mercedes ML320 with more than a quarter million miles on the clock, and I had measured that it was just large enough with the seats laid down to put the machine into the back if needed. I set out one Sunday morning, stayed the night close to their warehouse, and met them at first light Monday morning. I inspected the machine, then went down the street to the U-Haul store. I learned from the salty old retiree running the shop that morning that since everyone is trying to abandon the area due to the political absurdities the area's lawmakers, legislators, and governance have been dishing out for the past several decades finally coming to an insanely asinine head, it would be ridiculously expensive (well over $600) to rent their smallest enclosed trailer one way to NC, even if they could locate one, which would take well over a week on a waiting list. Had I rented it in NC for the weekend and pulled it with me, back to NC, it would have been around $100. The U-Haul guy even said I could have likely worked out a deal taking a larger trailer full of smaller trailers up from NC to Chicagoland, where they would have paid me. Oh well - live and learn, and be glad I don't live near Chicago...
    Dejected, I drove back to AT's warehouse and started removing the spindle from the gantry so that I could stuff it all in the back of the Mercedes. Here's where I give huge props to AT's staff; I think it was the owners family - probably his Mom and children, or just cousins, nieces, nephews... not sure, but they were VERY helpful in getting the machine forked into the back. I had mere millimeters to spare, but "Mercy" (as my wife calls her) proved her truck-like breeding by gladly carrying the load back from Chicago to home with no problems other than dealing with Chicago area traffic and mobster-like tolls which I had no way to pay until they sent (more) mobster-like letters threatening kneecap breakage if we didn't pay them a 1000% fee on top of the regular price which I could not pay due to their toll booths being closed. In a nutshell, Chicago can KMA.
    Once home, I proceeded to set up the router on my workbench.

    And if you've read this far, congratulations! And I'm sorry too... I was a technical and creative writer in a prior life, so thanks for hanging in so far, and I hope at least one of you appreciates the (admittedly terrible) prose...

    Extricating the 500+ lb. router out of Mercy was akin to horse foaling, except I used the help of a 2-ton chain hoist and my wife's spiffy TSC metal garden cart in my garage/shop. Pull out of Mercy with hoist, slide onto cart, then slide from cart to workbench. My lazy adult teenaged son was too busy blowing up (hopefully Chicago) in his virtual-reality video games until the wee hours of the morning to help, so it was all done solo. Now the fun begins.
    Going over the machine, I will say that the fit and finish is not what I would have expected at this price point. AT was accommodating, but ultimately less-than-helpful with only a meager, half-hearted attempt at making things right. Several glaring issues were evident; bolts barely held in due to threading steel into aluminum and over tightening, willy-nilly (how does one say, "hand drill the hole right here looks about right" in Mandarin) type stuff, extremely porous castings, noisy bearings, fasteners too short (or too long), out-of-square component mountings, and more. Basically this is all stuff that would cost nothing to do right the first time, other than having more assembly skill. Ultimately, I'd rate the machine a solid 6.28 (two deep-dish Chicago pi's) on a scale of 1-10 for assembly/fit/finish quality. All things considered though, most of the issues were easy to rectify myself - I just don't feel that I should have had to on one hand, but on the other hand, I got to know the machine real well right from the start, and now I'm satisfied that it will take most anything I throw at it. I trammed the spindle, attached some PVC 1x4 spoil boards to the aluminum bed with double-sided tape, set up Mach4, milled the first surface from them with a mondo 2" surfacing bit at a (relatively to what I'm used to) crazy high speed (2mm DOC, 50MM/s, 18K RPM) for a torture test, and was pleased that the machine took it all with no problems and left a nice flat surface. The desperate need for a dust shoe became immediate, as the garage, my tools, the tool box, the boat... all covered. It looked like it had snowed inside. I was too happy to notice though, after seeing this thing come to life and being impressed with how comparatively, this is like a 5-foot boulder in both stiffness, power, and bed size, while the ShapeOko is like an ant hill. If I got my hand caught between the gantry and the end-stop on the ShapeOko, it would tickle, and the steppers would buzz while they gladly lose steps. If I did this with the KL-6090, I would draw back a mangled nub. This thing means business.
    The machine came with AT's motion control break out board KL-DB25-6 paired with their generic USB-to-Parallel port CNC-centric converter, both of which suited my intended purposes just fine. I had planned from the get-go to use a multitude of potential workflows; Mach4 (via the USB-to-parallel converter), ESTLCam motion control software (which uses an Arduino and Christian Knüll's own firmware), and GRBL (1.1) with UGS (on the same Arduino as I use for EstlCAM) for using my 5-watt blue laser for mild etching/cutting. I used Mach4 exclusively for much of the operation of the machine for testing - utilizing EstlCAM's gcode/tap output files. After familiarizing myself with the machine's idiosyncrasies, quirks, and personality, I milled an aluminum enclosure for an Arduino to use EstlCAM's own software/hardware based motion control and CAM package after realizing how good it worked on the old ShapeOko. The only change I had to do to enable the Arduino to work with EstlCAM and GRBL and the existing motion control board was to separate the common homing sensors to discrete inputs, which GRBL needs for automatic homing. I also had to re-configure Mach4 and EstlCAM to use the separate home sensors. All of this was pretty straight forward. Finally, configuration was sussed out with the Arduino and GRBL for allowing the same line to be used for spindle speed and laser intensity. I found an old DB25 A/B switch which allows me to switch the machine between Mach4 (direct USB to discrete parallel port style signals via the KL-DB25-6 board) and EstlCAM/GRBL/LaserGRBL modes. An extra shielded cable was ran to the spindle for the laser head, the laser control board and a run/focus button for it was mounted inside the control box for the router, the spindle cable was upgraded to a shielded 14-gauge cable, and three large ferrite cores were wrapped with enameled #14 wire and used as a mediocre du/dt filter to greatly reduce the voltage spikes and EMF which I could hear were starting to erode the bearings in the spindle. I designed and printed a laser holder which snaps in place of the vacuum end of the dust collector shoe that is used when I'm milling wood or plastic.
    Ultimately, for under 5 gees USD I have a very capable, extremely stiff and seemingly rugged machine upon which I can use several different workflows with Mach4, GRBL, and EstlCAM using the spindle or a diode laser.
    A year later, and probably only 20 or 30 projects in the past year, I smile every time I get to make something on this guy. We've affectionately (and likely "racist-ly") named it, "Fun Ting". EstlCAM has hands-down become the motion control package that we use all of the time for everything but laser mode, for which we use UGS. EstlCam has a handy one-button "upload the EstlCAM firmware to the Arduino" procedure, which takes about 2 seconds to do, and a complimentary 2-second "upload the original GRBL firmware to the Arduino" when we want to do some lasering. Using an Xbox controller and EstlCAM, the manual shuttling/zeroing "pendant" workpiece setup operations are intuitive, fast, and far better than using our VistaCNC iMach P4-S (one of the most useless purchases I've ever made) on Mach4 (one of the other most useless purchases I've ever made). To be fair, once we add the 4th axis to this machine, Mach4 will be far more useful than it is now, since EstlCAM does not (yet) support anything more than three axes. I have yet to set up the Xbox controller for use with UGS as well, but apparently this is a relatively easy thing to do.

    Thanks for hanging in there with my long post, and I hope someone at some time will find this info useful.

    If anyone would want to know specifics with setting up something like this with Mach4, EstlCam, or GRBL, let me know; I might could help.
    Have a wonderful Easter weekend, everyone!
    -Injuneer

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Dec 2007
    Posts
    25

    Re: Chinese 6090 router, first year impressions

    Matt-
    Great review and story. I loved your humor, and agree with getting to know a chinese 'hy qwalitee' manufacture; At least with my 6040, having to 'rebuild' it definitely got me intimately familiar with the whole of the operation. Sort of like a CNC 300 level home university course. But the foundational concepts I have learned will extrapolate out to all CNC machines. I would like to see some photos of your setup/projects. Thanks for sharing. Perhaps I will write a similar on my being thrown into the deep end by 6040.
    -Christian

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Mar 2021
    Posts
    3

    Re: Chinese 6090 router, first year impressions

    Good morning, Christian.
    I'll get some portfolio shots of Fun Ting and post them here in this thread. I should probably also post some sort of youtubes dummy-oh - I mean - videos of it in action with the different software workflows as well.
    I am by far no CNC expert, but I guess I am quite well familiar with how this thing is put together and what makes it tick. And what sometimes makes it tick is usually that damn loose Z axis home sensor hitting the set screw on the ballscrew/stepper coupler that the "builders" fastened with a machine screw into the thin, cheap aluminum casting and stripped the threads... I do have to get in there and fix that one of these days.
    Did I mention how we get what we pay for, so we better know how to fix things?

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Oct 2006
    Posts
    4

    Re: Chinese 6090 router, first year impressions

    After reading your prose, I am deeply touched!
    Thank you for your recognition of Chinese equipment.


    Friends who learn Chinese and exchange CNC can contact me!
    Have fun together!

    E-Mail:[email protected]

    WeChat:hx2642606012

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