Technorelax: the beauty and power of CNC machine tools

Our community of makers has a lot of 3D printers: there is even a person who has four 3D printers, and he has printed his last printer using other models. Not surprisingly, many interesting ideas can be implemented in DIY with a 3D printer, and the number of devices themselves (except for the price) is not limited - it is more important what tasks they solve with their help.

3D printing, which quickly gained popularity, is still not a mass production method. Industrial production remains a more reliable, faster and cheaper way to get the desired object. When we decided to make a selection of interesting 3D printers on the advice of the DIY community, it turned out that they are not that interesting.
')
All have already seen that the printer is able to create an office building , print with liquid metal or cook dinner . However, even such impressive models remain single copies that have all generic diseases of 3D prints: they are slow and not very large.

Let us turn to what can be called a worthy and more impressive alternative to three-dimensional printing - CNC milling machines.


Interchangeable programs printed on punch cards using a binary code were already used in a jacquard loom created in 1804. Now numerical control machines have gone beyond the bounds of factories and are actively used both in offices and at home.

What is their main advantage compared to 3D printers? They work with almost any objects: plywood, rubber, granite, and so on. The speed of work is great, the accuracy is higher, in terms of modernization are incomparable. But it is better to see several times than read a hundred times.


If you do not know what technoporn is, then you will understand from this video. It captures the process of manufacturing springs on modern CNC machines.


CNC do not work with food production? This is how to look. At the earliest stage, there is little to compare with the efficiency of the machine - it can help you grow vegetables in the most efficient way. The FarmBot machine does not require any programming knowledge - an intuitive control interface allows you to start growing radish to anyone.

FarmBot source code is open, there is detailed documentation. In general, if you are interested in high technologies in the field of agriculture, get connected .


This is not an ordinary production machine, which makes the helmets, and it's not in its size. This unit is designed to demonstrate the technology. Daishin Seiki Corporation is one of the leading suppliers of industrial prototypes and specializes in the production of technologically complex parts using 5-axis (coordinate) CNC milling machines.

One of the most interesting types of 5-axis machining is continuous 5-axis milling, in which all five control parameters simultaneously change: two angles and three coordinates.


Machines are used not only to create utilitarian objects, but also used for pure creativity, in art and feature films. In one of the best DIY-horror films (yes, sometimes it happens) in 2016, one of the main sinister roles was played by the CNC machine.


Classics of the genre, without which no selection of CNC machine tools can do. Lathe milling machine DMG CTX gamma 2000 TC with multichannel control of ShopTurn 3G and an additional 12-position turret head in addition to the lathe milling spindle.


A little more old school: Carmen project - milling on a three-dimensional computer model.


Let's run onto the side of 3D printers. In this video, the converted digital images are printed in dot patterns. Nothing complicated, the usual jpg convert to DXF , which "understands" the machine, and the drilling of holes on the black painted board begins. The resulting holes-pixels form an image of halftones.


The result of a more advanced method of creating images everyone could appreciate in the cemeteries. Here is a machine that “scratches” a drawing on a granite slab.


One example of a desktop homemade CNC machine. Mattias Wandel from Canada created his own version of the machine, based on the pantograph invented in 1603, a device for copying maps, plans and other vector drawings. The design of Matthias can be repeated using the drawings and instructions for manufacturing .


CNC 5-axis milling machine able to quickly create unique monolithic structures.


Small perversion - control of the machine using a PS3 controller. The description of the video describes how to repeat this method of control at home.


Let's finish on the ultimatum-beautiful video, containing at once 5 top machines capable of working with steel, wood or plastic: BoXZY, Nomad CNC Mill, Stepcraft 2, Pocket NC, Othermill.

A CNC machine will not make you a complex multi-part object (although with due diligence everything is possible), does not know how to work with many materials (in food production, for example), it often costs extremely expensive, it hardly fits in an ordinary apartment, but its capabilities in many areas - both for mass production, and for individual home use - still surpass the beautiful and popular 3D printing technologies.