Beginner Thread

21

Hi all,

You know, it seems to me that no one has recommended to beginners to learn about routing with a hand router and experience “feeds and speeds” by hand. Likewise, you can learn about conventional cuts and the (somewhat dangerous) climb cuts when done by hand. If you’ve bought a Makita, put it to use on some scrap and learn what it feels like, push it as hard as you can, and if you care, video tape it and figure out what feed and speed you were pushing it with. My first router was about 40 years ago, and I think using it by hand gives one a better sense of what to expect. Obviously, there is nothing dangerous about a climb cut on a cnc, but having that hand experience in mind might give you a better experience in what holding that router felt like. Just sayin’ if you are waiting on a delivery, go out in your shop and get some experience.

You might also learn why work holding is absolutely vital, and what works and what doesn’t. Nothing like a run away router in your hands to get you to respect tools!

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22

Something I’ve always emphasized when talking to people is a CNC is a tool, and shouldn’t be even one of the first 10 tools you buy. It’s similar to “i want to fix my car so I’ll buy a 2 or 4 post lift”. That’s commitment for someone who wants to change their oil when they don’t have an oil filter wrench. I know it happens, but i fight the urge to respond and scroll.

I think your idea of using the hand router is potentially misplaced. The beefy router or trim router you use 3 maybe 4 senses, with the cnc, your short one (feel) with an emphasis on sight and sound… it’s also hard to quantify how fast your moving through material, and the fact that beginners tend to over speed and/or under feed because of those preconceived notions that they gained from using a hand router… at least i did. I asked why is my collet hot to the touch, and that was when i learned the term chipload and it being dereived from f&s, and that chipload served a cooling function as well.

Even if there’s a onefinity exclusively sanctioned beginners cnc booklet, how many people do you think would look at it before powering it on the first time? Their too excited to make something, so their going to jump in and ask why isn’t this working right at the first sign of trouble.

It’s funny you mentioned the run away router though. I’ve always been a fan of move the piece around the tool, not the tool around the piece… then yesterday i lost a portion of my fingernail on my router table.

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23

I think two hierarchical documents, each with an index and the nested structure proposed by Aiph5U would be an excellent addition. I too find myself using the search function to get answers to questions but this is an indication that I have performed a step incorrectly or have a flawed assumption. i.e. Asking for solutions shows that I have done something wrong.
Given that the Elite machines differ quite substantially from the buildbotics, I wonder if a two documents might be better with 1/2 the information mirrored.

I have enjoyed forums where a ‘sticky’ thread at the top contains hyperlinks to other documents on the site with the BEST method to various processes and steps. I would propose that a series of users be selected to moderate that. Clearly there are members here with more knowledge than others but also, importantly, there are some users that do a darn good job of parsing the information and presenting it in a concise and easy to follow manner. Aiph5u for example is one that does an excellent job of providing hyperlinks and backup to his points of view. This is important as ‘anyone’ can have a point of view and position themselves as an expert (take a look at American politics!)
My rule is that “Point of view needs to be supported by rational and logic which in turn needs to be evidence by data”. That is…
“What I believe, Why do I believe it and Why should you believe ME”. :wink:

A long way of saying that this would be an excellent idea and ALSO thank you to all of you for contributing to this site and community

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24

I see this has gotten quite the response, maybe touched a nerve to some. It isn’t, and was never intended to be a manifesto on all things OneFinity. It is not intended to cover everything you could possibly need to know about running your CNC. It is also not intended to be relevant to any other CNC other than the OneFinity. It was merely an attempted to cover some frequently asked questions and frequent mistakes that new people make. Yes, the information is out there but if it was as easily accessible/found as some would like us to believe then people wouldn’t be making the same mistakes. We wouldn’t keep seeing the same questions being asked over and over by new people. I know I was very frustrated at the beginning, making mistake after mistake and not knowing what was going on, only to be given information I didn’t understand or having to sift through the multitude of YouTube videos to find out which one was relevant to my particular issue. And I’ve had 2 years of experience on a big Laguna CNC.
I thought it would be great to have a starting point where people can go to get answers to some of the very common mistakes and as it grew, others would start to add in links either to other places on this forum or elsewhere on the web, that people can go to for more information. Considering there is no manual that comes with this machine, I figure some brief guidance might be helpful. Yes, the thread would need to moderated but since I couldn’t find anything like it, decided to get things rolling and see where it takes us.

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25

This is the glossary of terms I worked on… hopefully someone who doesn’t know, wants to learn the lingo

glossary of terms.PDF (128.7 KB)

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Hey Dave,

I agree, as I already said above, that…

However, I’d like to mention that among the questions that, as you rightly point out, come up again and again, there are also questions that would not come up if people had first read the available and easy-to-find documentation.

I really have no sympathy for the fact that some people wait for months for their unit, but then when it arrives, it turns out that in all that time they have not managed to read the fine manuals (RTFM), some have not even tried to click on them. So when I am confronted with the situation that someone, on the day of having received the machine and having put it into service, has not even a clue that there exist a User’s manual or a Support link on the homepage because they didn’t even try to find it, it is difficult to stay patient. And when that comes together with the mentality of thinking, I don’t want to use the search function, I’m so important, I demand that the search work be done for me and that my question be answered individually, it can really turn me off.

So in a beginner’s thread or in a User’s FAQ, I would suggest to prepend the hint that before popping up with a question, it would be nice if that after ordering the machine, the user had already begun to:

  1. Download and read the Fine manuals (PDF)
  2. Had a look at the videos from the “Assembly Playlist” and the “Support” Playlist
  3. At least had a quick look at the FAQ documents provided by the manufacturer.

I know that Onefinity delivers the machines with a link to the Official assembling video, but not to the Official User’s Manual (PDF), but I really have no understanding when people not even searched the Official Onefinity Home Page for a “Documentation” or “Support” menu entry.

1 Like
27

Hey Chris,

a few suggestions for corrections:

Gantry:

A gantry rather means the entire X axis and its two feet running on top of the Y carriages, as a gantry is defined as…

an overhead bridge-like structure supporting equipment such as a crane, signals, or cameras.

– Source: Gantry – Wikipedia

A framework of steel bars resting on side supports to bridge over or around something.

– Source: Gantry – Wiktionary

In the CNC field, there exist types with different arrangements of the axes. One is the gantry-type cnc, which is defined as having the X axis as a bridge that runs on two Y axes, which usually makes necesary two Y motors. The X carriage runs on the X axis and holds the Z assembly.

Gantry_CNC_Machine_with_Z_and_W_Axis
Gantry_CNC_Machine_with_Z_and_W_Axis1368×955 90.3 KB

– Source: Kief, Hans B., Roschiwal, Helmut A., and Schwarz, Karsten: CNC-Handbuch, 31., überarbeitete Auflage 2020, Carl Hanser Verlag, München
Image: The description of a gantry-type CNC machine in a German textbook on CNC machinery (please don’t be confused by the fact they use X for Y and vice-versa, and that they have an additional W axis with which you can lower and higher the entire X axis to accomodate different workpiece heights.)

Bundesarchiv_Bild_102-10412,_Portal-Fräswerk_der_Firma_Schiess_Defries
Bundesarchiv_Bild_102-10412,_Portal-Fräswerk_der_Firma_Schiess_Defries628×800 77.8 KB

Bundesarchiv, Bild 102-10412 / CC-BY-SA 3.0, CC BY-SA 3.0 DE, via Wikimedia Commons
Image:

Gantry milling machine from Schiess Defries

A giant work of German engineering!

A view through a gantry milling machine for machining large workpieces. This giant machine is able to pick up and machine workpieces up to 4.5 m wide and high, as well as 24 m long. This gigantic machine, a product of the Schiess Defries company, is unique in the world.

Date September 1930

Source: Author unknown, Bundesarchiv

G-code:

G-code is plain text, so it is human-readable by definition (in contrast to binary formats), and before the advent of CAD/CAM software, the only way to use a CNC machine was that the CNC programmer had to write g-code as plain text. The amount of a human being able to internally visualize what the numbers mean is comparable to the fact that some humans can look at a sheet of music and can internally “hear” the music.

Workholding

I would not forget to mention the vacuum table. It is the only clamping system that holds your workpiece quite strongly (compared to blue tape and cyanacrylate) and at same time has no holding tools protruding the workpiece surface, so the only method to hold extremely thin workpieces that are too thin for the thickness planer (usually min. 6 mm / ¼") and the method to replace a wide belt sander with a CNC machine. Imagine bringing flat soundboards of musical instruments to desired thickness, which is necessary in tolerances of 0.1 mm, done with the CNC. You don’t really want to tape and glue such large surfaces.

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28

I guess the word i was looking for was z - carriage, I’ve always used them interchangeably.

Being plain text doesn’t mean it’s human readable, and given conversion time, i can read binary. Its easy actually, power of 2 from right to left. I’m a network admin, and IPv4 is 100% binary, and ipv6 is hexidecimal. IPv4 is just converted to human readable numbers. Cisco (networking industry leader) breaking it down. In the next segment i said it was possible to read small segments, probably should have added “thru pattern recognition”. Also if it was human readable there wouldn’t be a g20/21 code. It would be unit inch or unit mm. A human readable language means it doesnt need conversion, and can be read easy Human readable definition.

I’m sure there’s a dozen other ways people have found to hold them down… personally i use side clamps that hold it down, but i don’t do sound boards either. They’re not cam clamps, but it’s some of the same principles. Tiger claw clamps.

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Was there anything else that should be added. I would have uploaded it as a .docx but the forum doesnt accept that file format

30

Cool man. Yeah Im a definitely a Beginner. I got my elite delivered this past week, but cannot get to it till the end of the month due to work and school. Darn college projects are consuming so much time. :sleepy: i want to get to put my cnc together.

31

Hey Chris,

the article you refer to says:

“A G-code file is plain text; it’s not exactly human readable, but it’s pretty easy to look through the file and figure out what’s going on.”

As a programmer, I adhere to the definition of “human-readable” which in fact means not binary. G-code is plain text and not a binary format. The exact difference for a programmer is, I can open the first with a text viewer or editor, while when I open the latter it’s pretty probable that some non-printable characters will “tune” my terminal and make it unusable. So you see this definition of “human-readable” really means whether I can view it with a text viewer or edit it with a text editor, or not. It’s the difference that the “-a” option on grep makes. Use of “grep -a” is at your own risk :slight_smile: It’s also the difference between systemd and traditional UNIX init systems: According to the UNIX principles “KISS (Keep it simple, stupid)” and “Make each program do one thing well. To do a new job, build afresh rather than complicate old programs by adding new “features””, with the traditional UNIX init systems, as well as the other modern ones except systemd, you edit one single config text file for each service with a text editor, while with systemd you can’t do this since it saves its config and log files in binary format.

I am missing the logic of this statement. G20/G21 (Units mode) are modal settings that tell the controller whether to interpret the values as inches or millimeters. Altering or removing a G20 command would just result in another scaling of the object to be milled.

That’s the problem with clamping from the sides, if your workpiece is large but of shallow height, there’s the danger that it will be bent. And clamping from above is more secure but you have the clamps in the way. Such very different considerations and requirements are the reason for the large variety of clamping methods.

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32

On the clamping i understand… my intent is not to create an extensive list of every possible way. My goal was to make a simple list of terminology that a n00b could reference when someone uses a foreign term.

Again, i said it was possible to read gcode in small segments, i was referring to looking at anything more than a simple shape and be able to know what it says. I’ve written/modified macros to do what i wanted. I wasnt implying it can’t be done, but can only be realistically done in small segments as you can’t read 1,000,000 lines and know what’s going on like you could read a book and understand what the author is portraying. That’s the difference i was referring to it not being human readable.
The part about the g20/g21 is a simple example of something that isn’t human readable. Go to anyone on the street with 2 note cards. One says “the units is MM” and the other says “G21”. Ask them what each cards means without repeating it, you could get an answer that is “we don’t use inches” when that’s the answer for both. G21 could be a Firearm, A cell phone, , A biomedical group, when you want them to say “we don’t use inches”. It’s all based on interpretation.

33

Hey Chris,

G-code is a code. But it is written in plain text, which is by definition human-readable. (you click on the links I provide, don’t you? I rarely state something without providing my references :slight_smile:)

But to follow your definition of “human-readable” for a moment, I am pretty sure that before the advent of CAD/CAM programs, when entering G-code as is into the CNC machines of that time was the only way to run a CNC machine, those CNC programmers would have confirmed that they can read it. How else could the machining technicians have written the G-code program, with only a technical drawing from the engineers as the origin?

If you have learned to read a code, you simply read it. “乌克兰的荣耀” is human-readable, 1.2 billions of people will say.

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34

Yes i click them.
I get it your talking about Linguistically, can it be done, yes. Again i said “It is possible to decipher it in small pieces but no one can look at a million lines of code and see what will be created without the use of a visualizer.” I stand by that statement because i haven’t seen anything to the contrary, although maybe i should broaden the definition of visualizer to include grid paper for plotting

35

Hey Chris,

what I would say (to find a definition that pleases both of us), g-code is human-readable (by definition), but pretty cryptic :wink:

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36

Interesting. For me, any foreign language like French, Italian, Spanish would not be human readable as I can only read English and several programming languages including G-Code. Even British English requires some conversion from their idiosyncratic spellings or words to the comparable ones in American English.

You could argue that “human readable” means “a human” or even “many humans” can read it so French, Italian and Spanish are all human readable. But then G-Code would become human readable because many of us can read it. :man_shrugging:

Your own writing required conversions on my part - “doesnt” to “doesn’t” and “easy” to “easily” :grinning:

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I understand your point of not understanding written text in foreign languages, but the point of view i said that from is noone can look at 1,000,000 lines of gcode and know what is being made without the use of a visualizer. Taking the example from the wiki page aiph5u shared, the only example that would coinside with machine language is the use of barcodes because we can’t read the gaps.

What wasn’t looked at was the paired Machine code page. When you save code thru the post processor, your compiling the higher level language to machine code, which again largely speaking isn’t human readable, but it is possible to read in smaller segments. Alot of getting wrapped around the axel over this when I intended on it being a guide to terminology for n00bs.

Looks like i need to add post processor as well.

38

Hey Chris,

just like the Ulysses :rofl:

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39

glossary v1.1.pdf (441.5 KB)

Changed a few, added a couple. I hope the gcode reference is agreeable by all… still looking for any more basic terminology.

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MDI
DRO
WCS vs MCS
WOC
Surface speed
Conventional vs climb
Feed per tooth
Feed per revolution
Tool setter
Touch probe
…