Hey everyone! We’ve been getting a lot of excited people for our dust shoes, end mills, touch plates, and all the really cool stuff that we’ll be selling alongside the LongMill.
Brand spanking new 1/4 inch end mills
Don’t worry, we’ll make sure everyone is going to be able to order stuff for their machine, as well as get it shipped alongside everything else.
We are currently in the progress of completing the product pages and doing all the work to get that up, they will be available before your machine ships.
We will be providing a coupon code that will allow you to order items for your machine with free shipping since we will be putting it alongside your machine. We do not plan on releasing that code until all of the items have been uploaded so that customers can make the full purchase in one go instead of having them split up.
Kickstarter backers will get the code in their survey. Folks who placed a pre-order will receive a follow-up email.
You will be able to include items such as:
Touch plates
Dust shoes
End mills
T-shirts
and anything else in the store.
If you want to order something right away and have it shipped, we will ship your items out within a few days.
I will cover some of the details on how production is going for the LongMill. A lot of stuff here is an update on some things in progress from the last update.
Gantry plates
I’m happy to say that the first batch of the gantry plates have come in. We haven’t gotten around to checking them thoroughly yet, but we will do that in the next few days and start to pack them up. As so far as I can tell, they look great!
The remaining plates will be completed next week and will be sent in to be powder coated.
Stacking the first batch of plates in storageAfter gantry plates are loaded into the trunk, the car drops down by 6 inches
NEMA 23 stepper motors
Manufacturing for all of the stepper motors finished on Monday and are being prepared for shipping! Our plan is to ship part of the batch of around 400 motors through express shipping (1-2 weeks) so that we can pack and ship them immediately, and the remaining 1200 motors by boat (4 weeks) so that they will come in when by the time we get through to ship the first 100 machines.
We have done extensive testing on these motors, and we are really happy to say that the quality of these motors and the performance we’ve been getting has surpassed the motors used on the beta testing machines. Not only do they provide more torque, they run cooler (after around 16 hours of running at full power, around 47-50 degrees for the new motors versus around 75 degrees on the old motors. We are using a new supplier that provides higher quality motors.
Power supplies
Testing is complete with the new sample power supply. We ran tests on it alongside our new board for 22 hours straight, as well as over the last two weeks on our LongMill. I am happy to say that the power supply has been working fantastic (running at around 39 to 42 degrees) and as so far, no issues.
The power supplies have been ordered and should also arrive in a few weeks. We will continue to use the power supply to see if there is any other issues that crop up.
Control electronics
We have assembled our prototype CNC control board and have been putting it through rigorous testing. This includes running the board at full tilt overnight as well as using it on our LongMill for testing and cutting. The board has been working reliability with no issues so far.
The drivers that integrate with the board are expected to arrive on Thursday. We will make one final test prototype with some improvements that will improve safety, ease of use, and reliability before making the full batch.
After hours of real world use
Packing progress
So…much…packing
We’ve been packing things as they have been trickling in. Some items include:
– Couplers
– Router mounts
– Aluminum standoffs
– Aluminum rails
and everything else that has been coming in.
We are trying to pack everything as soon as they come in and put them in storage so that they are ready to go ASAP once we have everything arrive.
If you’re in the KW area and want to come pack for us as well (during office hours 10AM to 5/6PM), send us an email at hi@sienci.com.
Rails in the process of getting packedWrapping and labeling aluminum router mounts
End Mills
We also got in all of the end mills that are supposed to come with the Kickstarter LongMills.
This includes:
– Single flute 1/8 aluminum cutting end mills
– 1/4 inch upcut and downcut bits
– 1/8 flat and ball end mills
There are extra that we will put on the store so that people can order more if they want/need and we will provide a coupon code so that we will ship those items alongside the LongMills for free.
Documentation
We are slowly starting to work on documentation. That means everything from unboxing, assembly, to running your first job. This will be on our website, but we are still working on it. It will be in a similar format to the Mill One resources
Please note that these dimensions may change by a bit, and I would recommend waiting until the final CAD has been released (when machines start to ship) before building things for the machine if they rely on exact dimensions.
Wrapping up the update
Stay tuned for the next update and thanks for following along! Although we are a few weeks behind, thankfully things are moving along and we are still sticking to the plan.
Thank you everyone for their patience and support, until next time.
Progress Update #6
Hi everyone! We are slowly reaching the final stages of our production, and we are working on the remaining details for the LongMill.
Here are the last remaining things that we are working on:
Finalizing the details and design of the LongMill shield before manufacturing.
Complete packing for many of the parts
Continue 3D printing parts
Finalize the design of the dust shoe
Below are more details.
LongMill electronics
We have done extensive testing on the new electronics. We will call it the “LongBoard” for now. I don’t have a better name for it yet. It appears all of the functionality is working well.
Before we go ahead with final production of the boards, we have made some small changes that improve the safety and reliability of the boards. The prototype boards are complete but we are still waiting on some of the components to come in to complete the board for final testing.
Packaging
We are going strong on the packaging, with two people working full time on all of the packaging, we will be implementing a second evening shift to increase our packing speed. We already have been working on packing all of the rails, gantries, fasteners, and other hardware. This week we should be seeing the remainder of the hardware such the lead screws, delrin v wheels, linear guides, and bearings.
3D printing
We’ve put 3D printing on hold for about a week and a half since we have run out of filament. Our new batch of around 500kg is estimated to arrive in the next few days. We will continue to print components for the LongMill on an ongoing basis as we pack and ship units.
Dust shoe
We are making some changes to the dust shoe design to improve the performance and ease of use. We have found that prolonged use and vibration can cause the dust shoe to unclip from the front. The new design is significantly more robust and provides more flexibility on the Z axis to adjust the height of the shoe. We should be able to finalize the design this week and start working on printing the shoes for shipping.
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Some other news
New touch plate design
We felt like we could make a better touch plate so we did. Backers who placed an order for the touch plate will get the new and improved touch plate.
This touch plate not only lets you find the Z height, but also find the corner of your part.
The only full complete assembly that reflects the final production machine is the one that is in the root directory (the 30×30). The full complete assembly of the 12×30 and 12×12 have not had a full assembly complete yet.
The parts and design files are a bit messy. Please use them at your own risk. They will be cleaned up and better documented over the next few weeks.
Some of the components may go through some iterations over time.
The link to the open source documents may change.
If you have any questions about the design please hold them for now. We’ll be happy to answer any questions once the design files are complete complete once we start shipping.
Moving?
To add to the fray, we’ve been caught in the middle of a renovation project by the City of Kitchener to demolish our office space at 44 Gaukel to rebuild new offices on the first floor. Our current plan for moving is to go to the upstairs of the building. Moving is of course somewhat inconvenient, especially at this time.
We would still be able to keep the storage and packing space in the back of the building, but in the next couple weeks we will have to figure out where the future home will be for Sienci Labs.
For the time being, the Accelerator Centre and the City have agreed to help us coordinate and assist in the move. Chances are we will temporarily move our operations upstairs before finding a new, more permanent home for the company.
As we continue to move forward, we expect that the company to grow and expand, and that means having a space to house everyone. We’ve gone to a team of 2 to a team of 8 already, and our space is slowing becoming more and more cramped.
Stay tuned for more details!
Again, wrapping up this update.
This feels like a bit of a shorter update. Now that a lot of the leg work has been done, we’ve got a lot of tiny little things to sort out. Thank you to everyone for their support again, and I was very thankful for everyone who’ve been showing their support and excitement online and through messages. It’s also been pretty cool to meet a lot of excited backers who have been dropping by our office.
I’m happy to say that production is moving smoothly for the most part, with the exception of a couple of different parts that we’re still waiting for.
I’ll start off with all the things that are going to slow down production before I fill you guys in for everything that’s moving along well.
I would say first batch of shipping right now will happen in August, but we can do a few things to catch up and ship at a faster pace once shipping happens such as pre-packing the stuff we already have. I will try to hire some extra help to get thing pushed out if need be.
Some smaller things that are in progress:
– 3D printers are running full time, we have about 10 or 11 machines churning out parts
– We are pushing the manufacturers/suppliers to send us parts ASAP. Some delays on shipping/production on that side that we don’t have much control over at this point.
– All of the gantries are in the middle of being cut and painted. Because we have so many parts, they will be batched out over 4 weeks.
Power supplies
We are currently in the middle of dealing with sourcing power supplies. The power supplies that the beta testers have been using are open power supplies, which are a little more dangerous (open mains, exposed electronics), so we are trying to switch to a closed power adapter. Our supplier provided us with a power supply that we set out to test.
Testing was done by basically connecting all of the motors and drivers together to provide a realistic type of load, and we cranked up the load by adjusting the current and speed to the motors.
The idea is to run the drivers and thus the power supply for a long time to see if they fail.
Well, after about 1 hour of testing the power supply, just stopped working. We’re not really sure why, but we opened it up, and we couldn’t tell if there was any physical damage inside. The supplier has arranged to send us another power supply.
Once we get it (hopefully at the start of next week), we’ll put it through testing again to make sure that it can run reliably.
After we complete the testing, assuming that the power supply works well, it will take about 3 weeks for it to be made and shipped to us.
A janky test setupInside of the power adapter
Control electronics
We’ve gotten our physical boards made up, and our next step is to assemble and test the boards.
The last two components, the power barrel plug and the voltage regulator are two parts that we’ve had some issue getting in. We’ve ordered the parts, but we are still waiting on the supplier to ship.
We may be able to put it together partially to test most of the basic functions however, so I will provide an update on that later.
We’re pretty excited about this new board because:
1) It will make it a lot easier for customers to assemble the electronics
2) It will provide support for many features that customers have been wanting, which include end stops, touch probe, spindle control, and more
I expect that the remaining parts will require another week to arrive, and the final production batch to take about three weeks once the testing is complete.
Raw PCB
These are the two things that right now need to be ironed out. Here’s some updates on some good progress we’ve made however.
Lots and lots of aluminum
We got our batch of freshly drilled, milled, and tapped rails in this week!
With 6 people, it looks us just under 1.5 hours to unload all the materials. A good morning workout.
Jason posing in front of the railsRails in our storage room
We’ll be cleaning, wrapping, and packing them starting next week!
Packaging
As we have parts come in, we’re working on getting packaging materials in so that we can start pre-packing materials.
We’ve come up with a basic design of having four cartons on the top and two on the bottom like in the photo. One large carton will carry all of the small parts.
Having these separate cartons should make it easier for us to pack all of the different variations between the different size machines, add-ons, and other bits and bobs. We will try to pack parts into cartons as they come in and set them in storage so that they are ready when we start shipping
Lots of cardboard
Surveys and other details
Please read this part carefully.
You want to make an adjustment on your order/pledge
A lot of people have been messaging us to ask for additional add-ons, changes to the size of the machine, ect. We can help you with that. If you are wanting to make a change, please follow these instructions.
1) If you need to change the size of your machine (eg 12×30 to 30×30), please wait until you receive a survey from Kickstarter, which will ask you for your shipping address and other details. We will have a spot for you to tell us if you want to change the size and to what. Please wait until you receive the survey.
2) If you want add-ons, end-mills, or anything else to ship with your machine, we will set up a page on our website to allow you to purchase those things. We will provide an update with further instructions so that you will receive free shipping on those items.
When will I get my survey?
You will get a survey a few weeks before your machine ships. You’ll have plenty of time to fill it out, so don’t worry that you’ll miss it. When it will come out will depend a lot on how the production comes along, since we want to focus on that first. We’ll put it in the later updates on more clarification on when you should expect them too.
– Lead screws, pulleys, couplers, bearings, collars, acme nuts, and other transmission parts
– Aluminum rails and linear guides
– V-wheels and eccentric nuts
– Arduinos and drag chains
We expect that these items, will be complete or have arrived near the middle and end of June.
The motors however, are estimated to arrive in early July since it takes a few weeks to manufacture.
Here are the things that still need to be ordered:
– Power supplies
– Drivers
– Some of the fasteners
– Gantry plates
We expect to have the remaining electronics parts to be ordered in the next week or two. We were trying to make sure that all of the specs for the electronics are up to par and are as safe and reliable as possible. However, with waiting and testing for samples, things have taken a little longer than expected. For example, making sure that the DC female connectors are able to handle the full current from the power supply, and running the driver for many many (15+) hours to check for drifting and temperature.
Below: Stress testing the drivers for drifting and temperature change.
With this in mind, we expect that parts are estimated to be arriving in mid-July because they are being ordered later in the game. Backers (at this point) should expect shipping to start near the end of July.
A new shield
The beta testers will know that we used a ST25 shield with the Arduino involves a complicated nest of wires. This makes assembly complicated and unreliable.
An ST25 shield
We’ve created a new shield that will make the wiring easier, along with all the features so people can add more easily:
– Endstops/Limit switches
-Z axis probes
– Spindle control/lasers!
New LongMill shield
Some small improvements you can expect
Between the beta machines and the newest machine, here are some minor improvements you’ll see.
– Aluminum router mount (discussed in previous updates)
– Better bearing support on the lead screws that can support more forces
– Some small tweaks to the gantry design to offer a little bit extra travel
– Steel motor plate on the Z axis to improve heat dissipation for super long jobs
– Lock nuts in as many places as possible
Example of the Z axis motor mount plate
Shirts
Thank you to everyone who commented/messaged us letting us know that they are interested in shirts!
T-shirts have been ordered from DNA Screen Printing situated about a block from our office. Shirts should be ready at the end of the month and will be shipped out as soon as they are done. If you haven’t completed your survey yet AND YOU ARE A BACKER WHO ORDERED A SHIRT, please do so.
Also, just out of curiosity, is anyone interested in buying shirts from us? Should we make that available?
New printers in the 3D printing farm
We’ve added a bunch of new printers to our farm! We’re in the progress of testing all of them and setting up them to print parts for the LongMill. We will be making a couple of mods to the printer this coming week to ensure that they provide the best quality prints.
We’ve ordered new filament to be shipped to us (about 500 rolls of filament), but chances are it will take a few weeks to show up. In the meantime, we’ll be ordering filament from a local supplier to keep the print farm running.
Aluminum rails
Material for the rails have been ordered and should be at the manufacturer at the start of this week. From there it should be a few weeks to have them all cut, drilled, and tapped.
Gantries
Design for the Z axis gantry has been tested in steel (versus aluminum like in our last test). Seems a bit more solid which is promising. We are making some small changes to the X and Y axis gantries before having them sent out to be made. I am hoping that the small set of test parts will be ready to pick up this coming week.
One thing that needs to be considered is the coating method for the gantries. Because there is an interface between the aluminum and the Y axis that needs to have fairly high tolerances. Here are some options that we have:
1) Powder coating: this was our initial coating option and the process we’ve used for the Mill Ones. However, it was brought up that the thickness of the coating can vary, and thus creates some uncertainty on how well the aluminum will fit. We can of course, estimate the coating thickness and make the gap slightly wider to accommodate, but of course we want to have the fit to be as close as possible.
2) Black oxide: this is a new process that was recommended by one of our manufacturers. Essentially, it’s the process of adding a black oxide layer to the steel. Most of the bolts used for our machines go through this treatment actually. While this is a good process is good for tolerances since the coating thickness is very very small, the potential downside is that often times a oil or wax coating is added to the material which can leave residues.
3) Bare steel: all of the beta LongMills do not have any coating on the steel. This of course is the fastest, cheapest, and easiest option, but is probably the less attractive looking. From using our machines, there hasn’t been any rust, but of course the bare steel does…just look like bare steel.
I think that we will try to account for the thickness of the gap in powder coating, since according to our manufacturer has a variation of less than 3 thousandths of an inch, which should be small enough to not make that big of a difference, but it would suck to make around 800 plates to have them not fit properly.
We could potentially do the X and Z axis plates first and powder coat them, and throw in a couple of test Y axis plates into that batch, which may add two to three weeks to our schedule.
Ordering parts from China
Almost all of the parts have gotten ordered from China, there are a few more things to be ordered. We expect everything to show up around mid to late June. Some of the things have been pre-packaged for us in China, making it a little easier to do final assembly.
Final thoughts
We’ve definitely have had to be much more careful in ordering parts and manufacturing especially at the volume we are building, and that has slowed down things a little bit. We of course want to make sure that things are built at the highest quality possible, and done right the first time. Luckily we haven’t hit any major snags besides trying to take things at a quick but careful pace.
I think that I was expecting to have had ordered most parts from China about a week or two ago, but it took a little longer from trying to vet the quality of the parts and get the right quantities ordered. I just wanted to mention this so that people can get an idea on where we are along in the original schedule.
The stuff made in Canada is pretty much on schedule still.
If you are one of the fifteen backers who backed us at this tier, a survey has been sent to you. Please fill out the survey to help us get your shirt to you.
Payment processing
You should have noticed that your pledges have been processed. There are a very small handful of people who have had issues with your credit card payment. If your payment didn’t go through and you want to stay on the list, please get in touch with us.
Manufacturing updates
We’re going to cover some updates around the manufacturing here on this update.
Just so everyone knows, we’re still waiting on the Kickstarter funding to come in. We talked with the lending company to spot us some cash between the end of the Kickstarter and when the funding comes in, but it seems that the process took a little longer than expected, the fees for the loan are quite high, and it might be better to wait for the funding to arrive first for some of the larger purchases.
Luckily some of the manufacturers we work with have net 30 days or don’t require us to pay for everything up front so the timing should work out for this.
We’ve also been using the money already in our accounts to start off with some of the smaller purchases, but some of the bigger ticket stuff may need to wait a little bit.
3D printing
As you might have saw, we’ve been 3D printing parts on our two Prusa i3s and at a lesser degree on our two Cetus printers. Due to the volume of all of the printing we need to do, it will be hard to keep up with all the printing. We have ordered 8 new 3D printers to add to our farm to let us produce more parts per day.
Just for the record, the 3D printers that we ordered are the Anycubic Mega-S. One of the reasons we got this printer is because of the Ultrabase print surface, a dimpled glass surface that releases prints right off the surface once they are done with very little or no force. In a print farm scenario, this is really important because from our experience, the most force that a printer experiences in its lifetime comes from removing prints, and by minimizing that, the printers can be more reliable and last longer.
I have been testing and printing on one of the Anycubic Mega printers in the office over the last week or so, since I wanted to order one off Amazon to test quickly before making a bulk purchase, and the print quality and reliability have been good.
I expect the printers to arrive at the middle of next week and we will start putting them together!
Aluminum router mounts
On the last update we were talking about the potential to use aluminum mounts versus plastic printed mounts. We received several samples of the mount last week and have been testing them.
Basically what we did to test was to use a dial indicator to measure deflection at the tooltip by applying a force. The Z height for the gantry was kept the same, and the router was moved to be at the same height for both tests. Pulling 10kg (about 22lbs) from the router collet in the Y direction for both types of mounts resulted in approximately 0.014″ of deflection. Since both mounts have approximately the same deflection, we can conclude that the performance for both mounts are approximately the same.
Here are some other things to consider.
We tested the aluminum mount on an aluminum plate. Aluminum is slightly less stiff than steel, so performance may be slightly better when the plate is made from steel.
The height of the router and gantry, and the placement of the mount on the Z axis has an impact on rigidity as well. The aluminum mount may have better performance depending on where the mount is located on the gantry.
Since the performance of both mount are approximately the same (with more potential for the aluminum to be better), we’ll be working on using these mounts over the plastic ones, but we will have the mounting points available to have printed mounts for the non-standard router sizes.
Aluminum rails
We are just finishing up tallying the amount of rails that we need to manufacture and finalizing the design. We’ve reached out to our manufacturer to get the quotes and process finalized as well as the material supplier as well.
I am also working on finalizing the drag chain mounting points and size which the rails will need.
Gantries
We are planning to pick up a couple samples of the Z axis gantry on Thursday to test with the aluminum router mount, and once that is all looking good, make about 400 of them. As mentioned before, the steel should be more rigid that the aluminum.
We’ve made some small changes to the Z axis that will let us get a bit more Z axis travel which is pretty exciting!
Next step is to have the X and Y axis gantries finalized and sent in for manufacturing as well.
Hey everyone. Thank you for your support and being part of far surpassing our goal. If you are a backer, there are a couple of things you should know and be prepared for. Please read this carefully
T-shirts and dust masks
If you backed us by either choosing the t-shirt or t-shirt and mask option, you should expect to see a survey asking for your size and address within the next couple weeks. Please fill out this survey in a timely manner and we’ll have your stuff shipped out as soon as possible.
LongMill kits
If you backed one of the reward levels for a LongMill kit (any size), you will receive a backer survey through email which will ask for your most up to date delivery address and other details to help us fulfill your order. You should expect this to happen approximately a month and a half before your estimated delivery date. Production schedules will continue to be updated on www.sienci.com/longmill/schedule. Please fill out this survey in a timely manner to ensure we can ship your machines shipped out as soon as possible.
Additional add-ons, such as dust shoes and z axis touch plates will also be uploaded online so that if you want to purchase add-ons and you haven’t through the Kickstarter, you can. We will ship any additional items alongside your machine. Please give us a few weeks for us to put these items up on our website. We will update any new add-ons that are available through Kickstarter updates and through or social media channels.
Hi everyone! I just wanted to provide a quick production update and let you guys know what we’ve been up to, as well as some things that you might see in your LongMill. Please note, we are working on making small changes that will improve the performance and ease of assembly of the LongMill. The changes mentioned in this post may or may not show up in the final production version.
We’ve been spending a lot of time the past week to get the parts prepared overseas and taking advantage of the economies of scale to make some small modifications to the hardware to improve performance and assembly for the LongMills. Here are some of those things:
Parts printing has started
We’ve been continuously been printing parts for almost two weeks now, fine tuning the settings on the parts and making adjustments if needed. We are starting with printing the middle Y axis rail supports and X axis rail brackets (Chris calls them “shoulders”), since the designs are finalized on those. Other parts that are being finalized for printing include the X axis motors mounts and the Z axis motor mount. We have asked our motor manufacturer to add threaded holes to the mounting face of the motors to make assembly easier, but we need to have the samples come in for us to make sure that everything comes together perfectly. Samples should arrive in the next week, so we should be able to see how that turns out pretty soon.
We are currently running our two Prusa i3 Mk3s about 16 hours a day. We have two Cetus printers that just went through some TLC so we will have those up and running soon. We are planning to grow the farm by an extra 4 to 8 printers once we finish up the calculations on print time and see how many we need to keep pace with orders.
Using an off the shelf aluminum router mount over a 3D printed mount
We’ve found a good option for an aluminum router mount to replace our 3D printed mount. This means that
We can save on printing time
Potentially secure routers better and with more rigidity (but we still need to test this)
Customers and builders can source the mount from multiple sources if needed
The exciting part of using this off the shelf router mount is that it comes in several sizes, making it easier and more secure to attach some of the larger routers and spindles. We will have to do some testing to see what the Z axis performance is like in terms of moving larger spindles (52mm to 80mm), but it is good to know that it is a possibility.
If we find that the performance isn’t as good, we will stick to printing our mounts. Test mounts are on the way and should show up in the next week and a half.
Taller Y axis plates and Y axis dust protection
We’ve gone and adjusted the height of the Y axis to allow for the LongMill’s Y axis to be flipped to the other side. This can help if you:
Want make the machine more narrow
Are worried about dust getting into the lead screws
Fit more stuff underneath the machine and cut thicker items
One downside of flipping the axis is that it is trickier to set up the drag chain along the Y axis. We’ve come up with another way to make a “shield” that works as well to help block dust.JUST A QUICK DISCLOSURE… all of the machines we’ve been testing and using have had no dust protection on the Y axis and have worked fine over all of the testing. We’ve concluded that this is just an optional precaution if you really want it.
We’ve been getting a lot of questions from customers on whether or not the LongMill can be mounted vertically, such as on a wall or on the floor, to help save space in a cramped workshop. In this video, we show the LongMill running a job vertically.
There are a few things to know when using your CNC machine at an angle, which you can learn about below.
We want to make sure it is clear that your machine will run the best while sitting horizontally on a table. You will have to make some adjustments to your machine to make it run the best vertically.
Fighting the force of gravity
When the machine is vertical, some of the motors will have to work harder. If you have the machine so that the Y axis is vertical, then your Y axis will have to work harder to move the X axis because it needs to fight the force of gravity. Or if you turn it 90 degrees and have the X axis to be vertical, then your X axis will have to work harder to move the X and Z axis gantries and router.
There are a few things you can do ensure that your machine works reliably in the position you choose:
You can reduce the max feedrate on the axis that has to fight the force of gravity. Stepper motors have higher torque at lower speeds, so running the machine slower also helps reduce the chance of losing steps.
Consider using a shallower mounting angle to reduce the load on the motors.
Increase the current on the drivers for more torque. Please note that increasing the current will cause the motors to heat up much faster, too high current will cause overheating.
Consider running shorter jobs or allow the machine to cool down between each run.
Consider using a counterweight, bungee, or spring to assist lifting the axis.
A consideration on wear
Because of the orientation of the machine causes a heavier load to be on some of the delrin anti backlash blocks, this can cause more wear on the part than if otherwise horizontal.
We haven’t had the chance to do long term testing in this configuration, so we won’t be able to give an accurate estimation on it just yet, but these nut blocks are pretty durable and we’ve been using them on our machines for a long time without having to replace them. They are adjusted to account for wear over time.
Replacement blocks are easy to install, and you should expect to pay about $8 to $12 dollars per block (there is one per axis). You can buy them from us and they also sell it online at other retailers (Openbuilds part).
One thing that we do know is that because of the weight of the machine on the block, it actually could contribute to reducing backlash, like on some dual drive 3D printers. We’ll provide updates as we learn more.
Conclusion
Can the LongMill be put vertically for storage? No problem.
Can it cut while vertically? Yes, but there are a few things to know before doing that. But hey, why not try it?
The past week has been so busy for us at Sienci Labs. Here’s an update on what we’ve been up to.
MRRF2019
Tom and Chris talking about the LongMill on camera
MRRF2019 in Indiana was a blast. I think one of the greatest things about this event is just the fact that there are thousands of dedicated makers and designers pushing to grow the reprap movement. And of course, as machine designers ourselves, it was an awesome opportunity to learn about new designs and technologies, as well as connect with lots of people in the industry.
Also, Tom from Toms3DP made sure to drop by and interview us about the LongMill! Make sure to subscribe to his Youtube channel to watch the interview when it comes out.
Josh from i3Detroit
Before we left for Canada on Sunday, Josh from i3Detroit invited us over to come check out his makerspace. We brought over the LongMill to make some stuff and we also tried out standing and handstanding on the LongMill’s X axis to demonstrate how tough it is. Dangerous, but we signed a waiver.
Chris stands on the X axis while holding a sign that we just made
Kickstarter and production
Wow, we’re just about a week in, and we are almost 300% funded! Due to the huge response, we have decided to start doing as much manufacturing as we can right now. The first place we will probably start with is the 3D printing. We will do a final once over on the parts, make any final changes and start printing them. The few other things we can do is start to order the parts and electronics in over the next couple weeks.
Webinar next Wednesday
We’ll be hosting another webinar/workshop next Wednesday (April 10, 2019 at 7PM). The topic will be around 2D carving/signmaking.
Some things we will cover include (topics may change):
