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Second only to a lathe, a mill is one of the most useful tools to have in a shop. For [juppiter], though, a proper multi-ton mill would take up too much space and be a considerable investment. His solution to his space problem is actually very clever: he converted a small, inexpensive benchtop mill to [...]

Tags:  space mill cnc cnc-mill juppiter space-problem tool hacks  

Here’s a PCB fabrication process that makes us envious. It’s pretty darn close to fab-house quality at home. [Cpirius] is using a CNC mill and through hole plating technique to produce his double-sided circuit boards. The video embedded after the break shows one board from start to finish. It begins with the mill drilling holes [...]

Tags:  hole mill home pcb-fabrication-process drilling-holes cnc-mill cnc hacks  

This desktop mill would be impressive coming from anyone, but we’re really excited that it was made as a high school project. [Praneet Narayan] built it during his design and technology class. As his build log shows, he worked with a range of different tools to make sure he had a rock-solid platform on which [...]

Tags:  desktop school mill technology-class design-and-technology high-school-project cnc hacks  

In the quest to add a digital readout to his mill, [Yuriy] has done a lot of homework. He’s sourced a trio of very capable scales, researched what kind of hardware his DRO should be based on, and even built a very cool display using seven-segment LEDs. After nearly a year of work, [Yuriy] finally [...]

Tags:  NON readout mill yuriy segment-leds cnc-mill cnc hacks  

[Hao] from Noisebridge showed me their CNC mill being used to etch PCBs. Using copper clad board, this MAXNC 10 mill routes the PCB with decent accuracy. This makes for very rapid prototyping of single sided PCBs. [Hao] designed the PCB using the open source KiCad EDA tool. This was used to draw the schematic, layout [...]

Tags:  pcb kicad mill eda hao eda-tool rapid-prototyping schematic-layout cons  

Even though the Roland MDX-20 CNC mill fetched a pretty penny when it was first made available 12 years ago, there were a few features that made any builder lucky enough to own one scratch their head. The only way for a computer to communicate with this mill was through an RS-232 connection, and instead of a normal [...]

Tags:  year turning mill roland-mdx- rs-232-connection pretty-penny workhorse cnc hacks  

This is the Mantis9 PCB mill. It’s the first time we’ve featured the project, but it’s already well known by some as it keeps popping up in the comments for other CNC mill projects. Yes, it’s made out of wood — which some frown upon — but we’re happy with the build instructions and the [...]

Tags:  pcb mantis mill cnc-mill cnc hacks  

[Roy] is getting to the end of his second CNC mill project and finally seeing some results. Here you can see a bear he milled in some floural foam. The project started out as an Arduino-based pen plotter. It move the pen along one axis, and the drawing surface along another, with the third axis [...]

Tags:  mill project cnc roy pen-plotter pleasing-results cnc-mill hacks  

[Joshendy] wanted to get a better look at the cutting head on his CNC mill when it was running. The problem is that the rotating blades throw up a lot of junk which you don’t want flying around the shop so they’re usually surrounded with a shroud connected to a shopvac. He just milled is [...]

Tags:  dust mill cnc cnc-mill shopvac shroud hacks  

For most of the past year, [Joel] has been working on converting a manual mill to a CNC mill with the addition of a computer, brackets and stepper motors. He’s put an amazing amount of effort into his project, and the result is awesome and much less expensive than buying and shipping an old Bridgeport mill. [...]

Tags:  converting mill cnc joel bridgeport old-bridgeport bridgeport-mill stepper-motors hacks  

It looks like the Internet’s resident steampunker is moving up a century or two. [Jake Von Slatt] rebuilt the CNC portion of a Bridgeport Series II mill so it can interface with a computer. It’s a feat even more impressive than moving the mill into [Jake]‘s garage. The first step of the build was tearing [...]

Tags:  resident internet mill jake-von-slatt jake bridgeport bridgeport-mill interface tool hacks  

Like just about everyone else out there, [Adam] thinks that CNC machines are pretty cool – so cool that he decided to build one of his own from scratch. The CNC machine was constructed mostly out of MDF and scrap wood, with drawer slides used for smooth gantry movement. An off-brand rotary tool was used [...]

Tags:  tad mill cnc adam cnc-mill cnc-machines cnc-machine hacks  

[Arthur Sacek] has really got something with the 3D Mill he built entirely from LEGO pieces. As you can see, it uses NXT parts to control the cutter head along three axes. The drill bit that acts as the mill’s cutting head is not a LEGO part, but that’s [Arthur's] only transgression. The demo sculpture [...]

Tags:  lego head mill d-mill arthur arthur-sacek lego-pieces cutter-head drill-bit cnc hacks  

If you’re milling your own grains for that next batch of beer you might be able to melt all of those extra calories away while you’re at it. [Eucherboy1] repurposed an unused exercise bike to power his grain mill. The propane tank is serving as a weight to hold the base of the mill in [...]

Tags:  beer lose mill propane-tank exercise-bike grain-mill hacks  

[Jonathan Ward] came up with the MTM Snap, a snap-together pcb mill as part of the Machines That Make group at MIT. We covered [Jonathan]‘s previous work made out of half-inch plywood, but the new iteration of his PCB includes a clever snap-together mechanism instead of screws and bolts. Although the MTM Snap looks a [...]

Tags:  pcb mtm mill jonathan jonathan-ward inch-plywood screws-and-bolts cnc hacks  

[Darrell Taylor] wanted to add a CNC control pendant to his mill but didn’t want to foot the bill which can often run several hundred dollars. These pendants are basically a physical remote control that operates the CNC software that controls the machine. Since he was already using a Linux box running EMC2, it wasn’t [...]

Tags:  control mill cnc darrell-taylor cnc-control linux-box hacks  

[Jeff] recently bought an SX2 mini milling machine with plans to eventually automate it for use as a CNC mill. After paying nearly $700 for the mill, he decided there was no way he was willing to pay for the $125 tachometer add on as well. Instead, he reverse-engineered the mill and constructed a tachometer [...]

Tags:  mini tachometer mill jeff mini-milling-machine mini-mill cnc-mill arduino hacks  

[Csshop] is setting a new bar for building an inexpensive CNC mill. Not only did he complete his build at a very low cost, but it seems to work quite well too. Check out the video after the break to see the device cut out thin wood parts for a toy plane. The majority of [...]

Tags:  junk mill cnc toy-plane thin-wood hardware-store hacks  

[Howard Matthews] never throws anything away, and because of it he was able to build this CNC mill using parts that he already had on hand. He pulled stepper motors out of broken stage light, precision rod and bearings from old dot matrix printers, and other various bits from his junk bin. We’ve seen [Howie's] [...]

Tags:  cobbling mill cnc howie howard-matthews dot-matrix-printers stage-light cnc-mill hacks  

This is a ball mill used for refining materials into a fine powder. [Jpoopdog] built it in two parts, a base and the tumbler chamber. The base itself is build using LEGO wheels as rollers. The motor and controller from an NXT kit is used to drive the rotation, with programming to stop the mill [...]

Tags:  lego ball mill tumbler rollers chemistry hacks  

This final project at MIT turned out quite nice. It is a CNC mill that cost under $100 to make. The tolerances are pretty tight as you can see in the pictures of the PCBs he has milled. He shows that he can even mill mild steel. It is a pretty brief writeup, but you [...]

Tags:  project mill cnc cnc-mill mild-steel writeup hacks  

[Fedeortiz12] and his team are nearing completion of their CNC mill (english translation). They set out to build a standalone machine that takes G-code in the RS274/NGC format from an SD card and machines parts accordingly. At the heart of the system is an ARM LPC2148 controller with a character LCD and control pad for [...]

Tags:  arm-based mill cnc standalone-machine character-lcd control-pad hacks