Hey yall now that i have the learning curve for the actual machine under control i am wondering how many of you have used your altmill or any cnc for that matter to draw out patterns for things. the little sharktooth drawing tool made to mount into your spindle. how do you set tool depth with that? will gsender just send her out there without knowing the tool length? can i just set the zero a mm above the drawing surface and set the file to go one mm depth? will gsender even run without sending a speed command to the spindle? yes i have lots of questions.
I canāt say anything re tool speed but I can say that you canāt mount a pen rigidly. The pen needs to be spring loaded and you set the zero point just a tad below the paper so that the pen can press against the paper but not get forced into the paper (hence spring pressure)
The subject has come up in this forum (ie Spring loaded pencil holder for Altmill and others). You could also look at Thingyverse and search for āmill pen holderā or similar. Even if you donāt have a 3D printer, it will give you ideas.
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yeah there is a little tool im eyeing. its spring loaded made of metal. .25 shank. its a lil pricey but i still kinda want it. just trying to get some knowledge of the idea from some one that might have done this already. rather not learn the real hard way.
@courtney what @Jens said. Use a spring loaded holder and set the depth of cut to 1mm. I also disabled the spindle in gSender so the tool speed was irrelevant. Others have said they just put a speed of zero but vCarve didnāt want to let me do that. I didnāt investigate further once I figured I could easily disable the spindle.
Mine bolts to the front of the spindle mount. Done with $10 of plumbing parts
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ok. i have confirmed carveco maker + will infact let me make a tool path with zero spindle speed command. and now i can just turn off the spindle on gsender just to be double safe?
i intend to make stained glass patterns to lay out on a light table. (yes all of my cabinets are going to have leaded glass inserts dont judge me lol)
Pictures, we need pictures (of the result)
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Checkout Free Downloads ā DrawingBotV3 for a great piece of software to create drawing gcode with
@courtney If you search on āpen holderā, you will see a few ideas that members have cobbled together. There is also a simple 3D printed version that Iāve tried and it works very well. All are spring loaded.
Hereās a link to a post that I made, using a design by @kellyz
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I have the sharktooth and I use it off and on. I turn my VFD off (set to manual) and set the speed to 0 (minimum speed the spindle will actually turn is 400 so it would never turn on anyway)
I set the ādepthā by touching a piece of paper with the sharpie just enough to engage the spring and set that to Z zero. I set the depth to .2mm
I canāt say any of this is official and recommended but itās how it works for me. Iāve tried a dozen cheap homemade and 3D printed holders and none have worked consistently over time.
Iāve thought about doing this, and bought this pen holder on amazon, but I havenāt had the time to figure out how to integrate it. Just putting this here for brainstorming
Hey Steven,
If you have a genmitsu, then it should be as straight forward as replacing the spindle with tne pen holder, I guess. If you have a machine with a more robust spindle (65-80mm), I would opt to mount a seperate spindle bracket that will fit the holder (42-44mm) at tne front of the more robust one. Something like this:
You could even opt to mill or print something simular yourself.
