 Ah, you thought I meant a wireless router like for the internet. Get your mind out of the deep web. Today's video is about our fancy new CNC router that, hold on, I know what you're about to say. I will admit that here at Linus Tech Tips, our track record for maker type projects isn't exactly pristine. But the point is, we want to get better. Now, we could spend years honing our craft, making mistakes, learning from them, and eventually becoming masters at working with our hands. But instead of doing that, we're gonna build a robot to do all the difficult machining for us. So here it is. This is our four foot by four foot CNC router that CNC router parts sent over to us. And we're gonna walk you guys through how to build it and how to use it to do really cool stuff. Like make this. Memory Express is the go-to place for your electronic needs and services in Canada. And they're opening a new store in Victoria, BC. They're hiring for all positions. So check them out at the link in the video description. So here we've got 13 boxes. That's maybe what, like a ton worth of crap. And we're gonna have to make all of that using a 244 page document. And in the end, hopefully we'll have a fully functional CNC router. I guess we just start now. They call this the industrial erector set. And I don't know, anyone who's an engineer definitely gets 80, 20 boners. So it makes sense. This must be for the gantry. That thing is huge. So once this is tightened down on there, that is not going to go anywhere at all. Putting the router table together is pretty straightforward thanks to the excellent included instructions. You just join the extruded aluminum together using the anchor fasteners, tighten them down, and then repeat what feels like 10,000 times. Extruded aluminum is actually great for machine frames because you can create extremely strong joints without giving up modularity. So compared to a welded steel frame, if we decided in the future that this router wasn't quite big enough for our needs, expanding the bed is relatively simple. This table is so fricking sturdy, like, holy crap. I can like, this thing is not going anywhere at all. I guess that's why it's called the pro version. Holy crap. Oh. Precision linear rails are added to the sides of the table to give an excellent bearing surface. Then to make sure they run smoothly, we just need to add a little bit of grease. Yay. The gantry holds the spindle and moves around above whatever we decide we want to cut. So from here, we added the stepper motors and we were basically good to go mechanically onto the electronics. So you guys have seen computer power supplies before, but look at this guy. Holy crap. So I'm just making this up because I don't actually know what everything is, but I'm guessing that these two are power supplies. We've got a board here that's going to be the controller that goes to your computer. And each one of these is a stepper motor, or it'll be an output to a stepper motor. So we'll connect one to each one of those and they probably take fairly high voltages. I'm not totally sure. But this power supply right here is for one motor only. And it's good for 2,200 watts. That's, wow, there's not even a whole lot in there. That's crazy that they can get all of that power in that small of a thing. Oh, that's heavy. So this is going to be the real business end of the CNC. That's good for three horsepower, 24,000 RPM. Okay, okay, okay. Don't be a show off. I don't want you hurting yourself. Geez. Yeah, we're going to have to move it too. That'll be fun. We're going to need like six, seven people to move this like comfortably. Holy crap. Yeah, it's not going to be a great time. This end's not so bad. But like, is this all manual assembly? Like every one of these plates? Yeah. How are their instructions? Really good. I guess we should probably close that door. Everyone's being loud. Yeah. Guys, we're filming here. Yeah, the spindle on its own has a 2.2 kilowatt power supply. What? Holy crap. So to put that in perspective, this motor consumes more power than even the beefiest gaming rig, including its monitor and peripherals. I'm going to hit it and see what happens. It's alive. Is this wood here because we're sacrificing it or? No, it was just a table. Okay. Really? This is a table. I would never have known that you had a table based on how many of the tools for this project ended up on the ground. There's a little light that's turning on on this. Okay. It's good, I guess. So the sensor's definitely working, but I don't know if it's inputting into that. I was like, oh, it'd be nice to see this stuff a bit, big. No. So it turns out that if all we wanted to do was turn it on, there was a switch that we needed to flip, but that wasn't our biggest problem anyway. So basically what we're doing here is I was an idiot and put the spindle and the whole gantry assembly on the wrong way. So when it homes over here, it's like a good foot off the table. So we need to pick up this whole piece right here and flip it. And that's why we have four dudes. Okay, so one person just stop it from tilting. All right. That looks like me. All right. Picking up. That's a feather. That's a feather sitting in the corner. All right. Do the twist. Which way? Anti-clockwise. Anti-clockwise. We're going this way. Anti-woo! Okay, so I think me and John are going to have to fold it and you guys will have to go under. Oh my God. All right, James, go for it. I could have went around. Okay, watch fingers, everybody. Now that everything is assembled correctly, time to fire it up. So now that it's all working, let's take a look at our finished router. Now, I'm sure many of you haven't seen one of these things in operation before. How the heck does it cut things? How does it get to 1,000th of an inch of cutting resolution? Basically, code is sent from the computer here and then executed by the stepper motors, which you'll find here, here, here, and over there. So those are the ones I alluded to earlier. Now, a normal DC motor will rotate continuously when a voltage is applied. More voltage means more faster, which is great if you just want to go, but it doesn't give you any control of the position. Stepper motors contain a stationary magnet attached to the output shaft with magnetic windings all around it. So by energizing these electromagnets, the internal magnet is attracted and aligns with them. To move the motor one step, the next set of electromagnets gets energized, moving the shaft however far it is between electromagnets. So our stepper motors have 200 electromagnets, meaning that each full step is 1.8 degrees. Then that resolution can actually be doubled with half steps. So that's where two electromagnets are energized to have the shaft move only half as far. And then beyond that, micro stepping, which relies on multiple electromagnets at different ratios, can be used to further increase our resolution. All of that lovely precision can be ruined though, and very quickly by bad gears. So right here, we have a 3.2 to one gear reduction to increase our torque from five foot pounds to 16. This allows us to remove more material at a time. But anytime there's gears involved, backlash can quickly become an issue. So backlash is the slop between two gears that causes a loss in precision when you reverse the direction. Experiencing something like this once in a run might only result in a couple thousandths of an inch of accuracy being lost, but on a machine that will normally be changing direction hundreds of times while making a part, all of those little errors would really add up. So to combat this, our gears are actually preloaded with a high stiffness spring right here. This smashes the gears together, preventing them from shifting about willy nilly. Now, of course, our previous explanation of the instructions come from the computer wasn't exactly the best. So let's take a closer look at where those come from, because it's not quite as easy as just hitting go, like on a 3D printer. For some of our parts, we'll use SolidWorks and HSM Express to create the CAD and tool paths, but we will also be using VCarve Pro for other parts due to its greater ease of use. In the software, we end up having to define many parameters, like how fast the router will cut, for example. We have to do this because, well, think about if you were using a handsaw. You'd actually find yourself adjusting how fast you move your blade, how hard you press, and all kinds of little things intuitively based on how it feels. But the thing is that this robot isn't gonna back off if something's amiss, and it will happily destroy a cutting tool or anything else in its way if you don't program it correctly. That's actually one of the reasons that they have built-in safety stoppers that we have to wire out before we start doing anything. So to make sure this doesn't happen, the correct RPM for the cutter and how fast the spindle moves has to be calculated based on the force of the cutter. From there, those instructions are compiled and sent to the laptop that's connected to the router. Now, down here, we're running what's called Mach 3, which directly interfaces with the router and runs G-code, a programming language for CNC machines. And because this has all been preset up, we should actually be able to just hit go once we are, of course, fully clear of the machine. So right now, what we're doing is we're giving it a known zero height, is that correct? Yeah. Okay, cool. I only know about these, what my neighbor told me during Scrapyard Wars 2. Next time it goes past here, it's gonna be taking about a thousand off, so it'll just clean this up. You ready? Yep. Boom. I don't think what you're doing is really helping. Yeah, not really. You might as well just get that out of there. This poor laptop. Well, hold on, hold on, at least get a shot of it. If it's gonna suffer, it might as well. All right, go ahead. Well, no, don't scrape it back over it. Doesn't seem quite right. So you go through with the big bit to get most of it done, and then you come in and do the fine details. Got it. The smaller one. Beautiful, so where's our smaller bit? Ah, it's in here. And this is safe to just go right in there? Yep. That's considered safe practice. I wanna make sure whatever we're doing in this video is what you're supposed to do. It's pretty close. Okay. Yeah, we definitely clearly need a better material capture solution here. So is this the last thing on your wish list? Cause this is one of the things you've been trying to get me to get since you started. A metal lathe would really top it off. And a TIG welder. We're at the point now where we can basically make anything out of acrylic though. Oh yeah. Okay. Or like any plastic. Like our dust collector is gonna be made out of this guy. Oh, okay. Wow. Wow, that sounds heavy. Is it considered safe for me to just reach in and grab this? Yep. Well, you can't pick it up. I can't? Oh, it's double-sided taped down. Oh, what the crap? Okay, I think we need to use not that GoPro tape because this is ridiculous. That stuff, like how much did you use? You could have used just like a tiny amount of it. The world's most spectacular. You put that much on? Well, I could have told you that was gonna happen. Yeah, it broke. Wait, no, it didn't. Oh, this is just some cleanup that we need to do. Yeah, you could have put like this much times four or five and it wouldn't have gone anywhere. And that my friends is about how this whole thing goes down. So it does take a little bit of cleanup to get it to quite this stage, but surely you guys can kind of see how we get there. So we are, to say we're really excited to make some crazy things with this would be a gross understatement. We do still have a little bit of work to do before we can really go ham. Like there's the dust collector that is highly necessary. We're gonna attach that to the cutting head and we're gonna be making a spoil board that goes on the table for easier mounting. But we're well underway and that's pretty much it for this. So huge thanks to Nathan from CNC router parts for sending this guy over and to Rod from BS mods for giving us some extra advice and big thanks in advance to you for the awesome suggestions that you'll be leaving in the comments for projects that you guys wanna see. While you're at it, by the way, we actually need a name for our friend here because that joke at the beginning of this video, the router video, ha ha, ha ha, get it? Well, it's actually really confusing referring to this as the router around here. So the top upvoted name in the comments below, we're gonna cut out a sign with that name. We are gonna mount it to the machine. Have fun. The Massdrop XAKG K7XX Red Edition open backed headphones feature their predecessors legendary sound and build quality, which were both big hits with the audio file community and some additional tweaks. The highs were boosted by an innovative flat wire voice coil. The mids were brought up to better balance the range and the lows were raised by three decibels for an immersive sound. This collaborative design between Massdrop and AKG includes a custom Ruby red colorway to help the aesthetic really pop from the competition as well as a 10 foot detachable cable. Check them out now at the link in the video description. So thanks again for watching guys. If you disliked this video, you can hit that button. But if you liked it, hit like, get subscribed, or maybe consider checking out where to buy the stuff we featured at the link in the video description. Also down there is our merch store, which has cool shirts like this one and our community forum, which you should definitely join. See you next time.