Last week was reading week for me and I finally got to finish up mounting the Z axis and do some CNC work for my electric car. I had resigned a new bracket for holding the alternator and power steering pump on the side of my motor using mostly 2″ x 1/2″ aluminum flat bar. So far the machine has been able to do circular pockets can cut rectangles with relatively low feed rates (2-3in/min) just to ensure the steppers don’t miss any steps. I think don’t know what the limits of the machine are yet, but here are some results:

Cleaning up an edge at 2in/min, 1000ish RPM, and a 1/4″ bit:

  Cutting a rectangular slug with the same parameters as above, but done in 4 depth intevals:

Cutting a pocket with g-code generated in mach3’s circular pocket wizard (it’s actually pretty circular!):

CNC X/Y positioning and manually feeding the quill down (makes drilling bolt patterns so fast and easy):

Some of you may notice I’m using a drill press vise in place of a proper milling vise. The jaw lifts and the bottom is not guaranteed to be level, but it’s still good enough for me to get CNC-ing. I’ll buy a nice vise when the time comes. Same with adding limit switches and a proper emergency stop button.