And thank you too, Jeff! Your “well documented build” was a great tutorial and a good motivating tool! WTG!
And I have a Q for you - I have CNC router in my future plans and, as I understand it, you built lowrider. Would you recommend it? My needs are like stairs for the staircase, railing for a balcony - nothing very precise but bulky. Or I am expecting too much from a CNC router?
I love my Low Rider and getting involved with the MPCNC has been a huge joy for me.
The low rider is great at cutting through large sheet goods. It is ok at carving and thicker material. But it is not a miracle tool and needs a lot of knowledge to run. I am having a hard time imagining what kind of railing or stairs would be easier to be cut out on a cnc. A lot of that kind of “house construction” woodworking is really designed to fit the common tools. Most of that is, cut to within 1/8", cover with trim.
The best application for a low rider is sort of ikea flat pack furniture. If you want to cut out a shape, add tabs for joinery and cut out small pockets, it will be great. Any kind of 3D shape or large areas of carving is going to be a massive job. Engraving or carving art on a large piece is fine, as long as the carving isn’t the whole area (job time is proportional to area, and gets huge quick).
Many thanks for your answer!
My projects usually require cutting, planing and sanding. I am living in the country and I am building rough and strong things:)
This is my desk, for example:
I am using cheap solid wood most of time, but cutting flat leafs ability would be useful too.
My biggest problem with the woodworking is my allergy. All this dust from planing and sanding is not good for me. Absolutely. And this kind of job is dull and my skills are low, it is not easy for me to do it more or less precisely.
So, my wet dream is to build a CNC, position it outdoors and drink coffee while it is working 
Surely, the reality is rough thing… but if I replace some %% of hand work with CNC it could be great.
And surely, I do not really understand what a CNC can and can not do at the moment…
You can see some stuff that is possible with the LR, but really, it is very hard to tell how much effort, and scrap wood were needed.
They say you shouldn’t leave your 3D printer unattended, but you definitely should never leave a CNC. The routers are about 600W, and they are operating very close to their limits, so if the but gets buried, it will have no idea and just grind away steel on wood, which will make a fire in a few moments. You will have less than a minute to stop things before you end up with an uncontrolled fire. It sounds like you want to watch it anyway, but just to be perfectly clear.
This is what I think is the ideal project. Creating high precision 3D furniture from sheet goods. Etching/carving patterns is also a great application (again, as long as you aren’t doing huge carves).
But, I may be underestimating your interest. Just know that some of the projects in that gallery are dozens of hours of cuts, and you have a high likelyhood of making fails. And then at the end, you still usually need to sand and finish the projects.
Many thanks for your input:)
I had a suspicion that there is no free ice cream… and you reinforced it! I shall use it outdoors only and let it burn!!!
Your stool project is quite nice. But when your boy is 20-25 it would not be so easy for you:)
Actually, I can see some real BIG and NICE projects in the gallery. I understand that it takes time and effort to build them. And CNC is just only one of the tools and not the magic wand.
On the other hand, the projects like the table I mentioned, do take quite a lot of time and effort with or without CNC
Anyway, I still have some issues to solve with the GridBot and I will use this time to decide about the CNC. But I like this idea.
Thank you again:)
That is a great looking desk.
There’s something pretty fun about building a cnc with parts printed on the 3D printer you made.
A few words about my build.
I relocated SKR board higher. It is a work in progress here, so it is messy. May be you can share the best ways to organize these cables, guys?
I added BTT TFT24 screen:
My hotbed is 310x310 4mm custom cut ceramic glass from a local glass shop (it is used for the fireplaces, brand is Robax, I believe). I am using a 220V 500W silicone heater pad from Aliexpress. Did not add a cork yet… BTW, what glue are you using for the cork, guys?
I am using 300x300 mirror glass tiles on the top. You can see this sandwich here:
I am using SSR to power the 220V heating pad:
This is my Z-axis end stop:
I reinforced the motor mount. ABS is strong but more flexible and the original mounts were twisting a little. As a result motor axis were not strictly vertical and the belt was drifting to the upper pulley cheek and rubbing against it.
This is my new mount:
I am sourcing the filament in 400m packages without the spool, so I have to print the spools. They are too big to be mounted on the back of the printer, so they are mounted in a standalone way.
I am using Octoprint running on Intel i5 18.04 Ubuntu server. I happened to had a few very nasty serial port mid print disconnects. I had to switch to short 1’ USB cable from SKR kit (grrr… VERY unconvenient) instead of 5’ long USB cable I used initially. I also split 220V supply - the board and nozzle heater are powered via the UPS now, and SSR feeding bed heating pad is powered from a separate wall socket. No more disconnects for now…
UPDATE: got another disconnect today after 5 hours of printing. very bad… My server and Octoprint installation are almost out of suspicion since they worked with my other printer flawlessly for many hours. Can be a PS problem?
My firmware settings can be seen here:
https://github.com/v0v/Marlin
Only “SKR-1.4T-DD-no-BLTouch” (this stands for SKR 1.4 Turbo board with direct drive extruder and with Z-axis end stop, no BLTouch probe configuration) is updated to my actual settings.
I am using E3D V6 chinese clone with 4010 cooling adapter for 4010 fan from Thingiverse.
Please share the STL or email me a copy. I’ll see if there are changes I can borrow to make the current mounts better.
How much wider is this than the v2 opening? It’s a simple parameter in the CAD model, so adding a few mm should be no problem.
And your email is?
Extruder is correct size. The fan housing is 5 mm wider on the left side, but is also higher. Again, I have 4010 fan here. Possibly, if I use 3010 fan housing it can fit.
In any case, you need a lot bigger top “decolletage” to open a hinge with screw like on my photo.
I cut extra plastic from your v2 design and here is what I got (did not make a photo when assembled, unfortunately):
Ah. removing all that plastic negates the increased rigidity and thus reason for the v2 design 
My email is sa@grid.space
LOL. Thats why I still have v1 installed 
But… after removing we can add some plastic. This brace has space to be a lot thicker. And you can extend it to the very left wall.
UPD: And the main plate too can be a bit thicker
Emailed the files.
The endstop you showed is the Z? The Z should be using the bl touch as its endstop and used for mesh leveling.
I do not have the BLTouch in my setup at the moment.
UPD 01:
Serial Port Disconnects.
I was really struggling with this problem for some time. 1-2 disconnects per day can ruin your efforts completely.
I changed EVERYTHING.
I was only able to improve the situation after I changed the OctoPrint server. My old battle-proven setup that flawlessly worked for months was not working with SKR board in a proper way. It is hard to understand why. My only clue is that my old printer’s UART to USB chipset was recognised by Ubuntu as ttyUSB, while SKR’s chipset was ttyACM. Different linux drivers, can it be the reason? Who knows…
Said that, I am using my old MacBook Pro as an OctoPrint server now. No disconnects for a few days.
UPD 02:
I had to abandon Direct Drive.
Not because of its concept (actually it was printing nice, at least at some low speeds), but because my Dual Drive Extruder was not working OK.
I got something like this part from AliExpress few month ago:
I tried it in Bowden setup, did not like the prints and put it aside. Now I tried it in a Direct Drive setup.
I like the way Direct Drive prints. But… this extruder (at least, the one I got) sucks. It stucks too often, a lot more often then my simple one gear extruder. And it takes time to disassemble and clean the hotend. Not to say that it ruins your print.
So, may be you can share some positive experience with Direct Drive extruders? May be something more simple and reliable then this Dual Gear one? Or better designed?
I have another printer with the E3D hemera and I like that a lot too. It is very well made. I haven’t pushed the speed on that printer, so I’m not sure if it’s a good match for the grid bot. But if I have more trouble, I’m going to try that next.
Did you try the Bowden set up? Stewart has more hours of printing than I do (by a healthy margin) and likes the Bowden.
Frankly, I never had prints with a quality that one can consider fine. Because of poor mechanics of my previous printer, cheap filament, low skills, etc, etc. I am trying to improve it with GridBot now.
I never used Bowden with Linear Advance before and I feel that many Cura’s settings are not compatible with LA. Should I switch to other slicer?
On the other hand, Direct Drive looks conceptually easier for me. May be it is a misleading feeling on my side.
Obviously, I need to learn a lot and I just did not make my mind which way to go - Bowden with LA or DD.
