CNC Router Shop Made

[jjr2001]

Thanks, that is great info. I like the dovetailed Z-axis and thick pieces of HDPE. Looks like I am going to start saving Folgers coffee cans and milk bottles.

Cheers, JR

[pfredX1]

Thanks, that is great info. I like the dovetailed Z-axis and thick pieces of HDPE. Looks like I am going to start saving Folgers coffee cans and milk bottles.

Cheers, JR

There is a discovery curve as far as melting HDPE goes. I watched a number of YouTube videos before I got going. Then I came up with my own method, which I refined. What I'm saying is it is a bit of a journey. No two people go quite the same way either.

But to describe how I do it in a bit more detail I made this box http://i.imgur.com/RpqLjJq.jpg that I line with non-stick parchment paper. Then when I have my material all melted I put that piece of diamond plate in the box, and clamp it down. That keeps the block of plastic flat. As the plastic cools I keep tightening up on the clamps. Because HDPE shrinks, and tries to warp a lot as it cools.

You'll see as you go. More valuable products are usually put into injected molded containers too. Like laundry detergent bottles, and probably your coffee too. You can mix blown, and injected plastic, but your resulting plastic will more resemble injected, than anything else. Thin plastic grocery bags are HDPE too. But they melt down to nothing. So you have to melt lots of bags to add up to anything. Anything with a recycling symbol of 2 in a triangle is HDPE. You can still get an interesting Damascus pattern melting bag plastic, if you alternate bag colors. Say do 10 layers of black, then 10 of white.

That's the other reason to make your own HDPE. For the wild patterns. This guy unlisted his videos but I found this in my history

I wish I could find the link to part 1 This guy is the God of melting HDPE

[jjr2001]

Thank You pfred, Good information. I am saving my bottles.

Cheers, JR

[pfredX1]

Thank You pfred, Good information. I am saving my bottles.

Cheers, JR

I have so much plastic saved up that I'm doing a melt right now. Processing plastic is something else again. I have a method worked out how I slice up gallon jugs. I do it while I watch videos on my PC. I cut every bottle up the same way, and I stack all the like pieces together, so they pack in my melt box real tight.

[jjr2001]

Well the machine does fine with plywood, aluminum and brass.
Post 3 in the link below has a brass flywheel that it cut out the spokes with a 1/8" carbide 4 flute EM.
Depth of cut was .050" per pass for a total of .500"
http://www.homemadetools.net/forum/c...3816#post78802

Next test will be some steel.

Cheers, jr

[pfredX1]

I have a milling machine for milling steel. It weighs close to a half a ton. At that I still need to know what I'm doing to get a good cut.

[jjr2001]

Hi Pfred, It would be nice to have a large milling machine in the shop but all I have is this little "mini mill" and then the CNC router.
The Cnc was built for plywood model airplane parts but I have been pushing it lately and find it works well with brass and aluminum.
The steel will be just some thin 1/16 to 3/16 sheet. Figure if I go slow it will work and I can finish it with a file.

Cheers, JR

[pfredX1]

yeah I wish I had a large milling machine myself. My RF-32 is one of them bench top mill/drill jobs. I ran a K&T Milwaukee #3 at a tool and die shop years ago. Now it was a large milling machine. I had to walk on, and into the mill to run it. It was I'd say about 10 feet tall. I think the table was 8, or 10 feet long? It could plow a two and a half inch diameter roughing mill into a block of steel like it was cutting balsa wood. You could balance a nickel on edge on the work table while it was doing it too.

Ours was bigger than this ours had the extended coolant reservoir.

[jjr2001]

Now that is a mill!

Cheers, JR

[pfredX1]

It makes a Bridgeport look like a toy. Ours for whatever reason looked a lot bigger. Maybe because we had it in a corner? Mills like that are so heavy they generate their own gravity fields.