New machine!

[NT_2112]

After a pause I have decided to enter the pen making hobby again.

I bought the Makera Z1 Pro from the kickstarter as I don't have a larger work area like I used to.

This is the first thing I made with it.

It's a small totem pole that I grabbed from maker world. No particular reason, I just picked the model because it had carvings from top to bottom completely around the circumference and it had some high points like the nose on the face of the totem.

And I figured since I paid for the 4th axis CNC option, I should test it out.

It went flawlessly, opened the box, plugged things in, opened the CAM app, import model then I used their fourth axis setup wizard and hit go.

The crazy part is that it was only an hour or so between the time that I got the CNC out of the box and on the table to hitting start.

Being able to do something like this an hour after opening the box I think says something about the state of the home hobby machines that we have today.

I remember getting my very first Ender 3 bed slinging 3d printer and it took me days to get that thing to print the first thing correctly, I was so clueless. And now I can do this right out of the box.

Very exciting times.

I am really looking forward to making the bespoke pens again.

So.... hi again...

 

[Bob Roehrig]

Very interesting and thanks for posting a video of it's operation. Only concern I have is.....I've tried CNC work in the past and basically couldn't handle all the software programs needed to input data for the machine. Had to keep finding a nine year old to help me.....HA!! What's involved with the input programming of this machine? Would love to hear a little more concerning some of these details.......thanks

 

[NT_2112]

Very interesting and thanks for posting a video of it's operation. Only concern I have is.....I've tried CNC work in the past and basically couldn't handle all the software programs needed to input data for the machine. Had to keep finding a nine year old to help me.....HA!! What's involved with the input programming of this machine? Would love to hear a little more concerning some of these details.......thanks

There's a lot of ways to answer that question.

I have noticed that many of the people that use desktop CNC machines for a hobby also use 3-D printers. Not always, but many of them do and those that don't would likely be able to walk over to a 3-D printer and produce something on it fairly quickly.

I myself have been doing 3-D printing for a number of years and I can honestly say that I pulled the CNC machine out of the box, plugged it in, fixtured the raw material, went to the 3-D printing site called makerworld and found a model that I liked, loaded it into their CAM software made a few minor adjustments to the size I wanted to cut and sent it to the machine.

That is the first time I ran a CNC machine of any kind from start to finish.

This gentleman made a nice video that I thought represented the machine well and how you could work with wood.

I think if you have no experience using machines to make things, start with a 3-D printer first unless you've got some sort of mechanical background. Because if you can use a 3-D printer, or if you've seen a friend use their 3d printer & thought to yourself, "I could do that", I think you could use the machine.

I think that's around the minimum threshold to try something like this.

The other option is to just get the darn thing and pay somebody to help you use it for the first time. But I bet, if you have "young" relative who has used a 3-D printer would be able to use this and they would help you for free.

So it's a rambling answer, sorry about that.