V1 Engineering MPCNC

[vavet]

I think I'm a little late to the party on discovering this Mostly Printed CNC (MPCNC) from V1 Engineering. When I searched here, there are a few comments buried in other threads about what you're doing in your garage today, 3D printers, etc, but no threads dedicated (that I can find) to the MPCNC or the Lowrider.

It's really freakin cool!
From what I gather, you buy some electrical conduit locally that serves as the frame, 3D print a lot of it (free download of the files) and you can buy the rest of the machine components from V1 Engineering for about $300. Add a router or drywall cutout tool and WHAMO! You have a MPCNC.

I'm not terribly clear on what software it takes to run this or how the file (is it G-code?) moves from a design program to the MPCNC controller. I know there are options for different controllers.

I'm hoping some of the people I've seen who have already made comments about this will chime in on this thread. Hope you don't mind me tagging you so you get a notification about this thread...and hopefully I know how to tag people.
@niget2002
@kaymccampbell
@banjopete
@pmason0

 

[niget2002]

I know GJ is a great forum, but I'm really going to recommend going to V1's site and joining their forum. There's members there that are dedicated to these machines and are a wealth of knowledge.

I'm on that forum as well and am pretty active there.

I personally use Fusion360 to create my designs and generate my Gcode. Then I use CNC.js running on a raspberry Pi for pushing that code to the machine. I started with a RAMPS board running mine, but switched to a mini-rambo. I don't use the dual-endstop firmware.

 

[anavrinIV]

I have a burly build MPCNC that a buddy of mine made; when he decided to upgrade to a "real" machine he passed it off and I have put it to to pretty good use. I cut a bunch of foam pieces to make a wing for our LeMons car as well as aluminum end plates for it, and I have made a couple dash pieces for my '56 F100 that was a veritable mess in the interior. I design in Inventor professionally and use that as my CAD program (also have access to Fusion 360 but have not tried it yet), I use Estlcam for the G code development and Repetier to run a Marlin board.

Repetier and Marlin are more focused toward 3D printing but they work well for the CNC too. This build is running a DW660 router as the spindle and I have, so far, worked with an 1/8" collet and 1/8" and 1/16" mills mostly cutting aluminum. Estlcam is pretty easy to run but a couple features are not particularly intuitive, especially island cuts.

I don't know a ton about the setup and programming side of things but I can design and learn how to run a tool.

Anyway, pictures since that's what we're all here for