CNC mill?

[Ryan Mcdermott]

Looks like somebody was milling some wood on the CNC!  Nice!

Any idea when the next time people will be getting together to figure that thing out will be?  I'd love to get in on that/help if I can.

-Ryan

[Ben Humpherys]

We haven't yet tried to formally plan any meetups to work on things so far. It's pretty much just been myself, tim, and austin working with it whenever we are in.

There are a couple helpful things you could do though:

1. Practice manual milling. Experiment with different cutting speeds with roughing and finishing end mills in a variety of materials. Having a ballpark estimate of how quickly different things can be cut with different end mill would be helpful. The stated numbers are rough estimates at best. And being able to tell what noises are normal, and what noises signal eminent catastrophe will be sure to come in handy.
   
2. Teach yourself to use CamBam. You can download it here. The first 40 uses are trial uses, which let you do everything. After that, the only limitation it places is a program length of 500 lines. So you will still be able to do all program setup and so forth from any computer, and if necessary use the lab workstation to just generate the final g-code output. Unlike the laser, the machine won't have to be tied up while someone gets their files ready :)
3. Think up cool things to try milling. All of us are in need of things to practice using the machine with. So if you think of a project idea that you want to do that involves the CNC machine, or know someone who does, we can work through it together to learn the ins and outs of the whole process.