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Reducing the Cutter Speed

A project log for Desktop CNC Mill

A small CNC mill using a Dremel and as much stuff as possible from the local hardware store.

deadpangolddeadpangold 09/25/2016 at 23:152 Comments

I bought various thicknesses of HDPE recently and have been milling that. It looked to me that I was on the verge of melting the plastic instead of cutting it and I wanted to reduce the speed of the Dremel, but I was already on the slowest setting. I'm using a Dremel 300 which gives speeds from 10,000 to 33,000 rpm. To get some slower speeds I bought a Fan Speed Controller for less than £10. At very slow speeds the Dremel's speed gets a bit unsteady but away from that bottom end it all works just fine.

I'm now wondering what cutting speed I am actually getting from the Dremel and how could I measure it. Some optical sensor connected to an Arduino with a 7-segment display perhaps. A home-made stroboscope perhaps.

Discussions

Lee Cook wrote 09/27/2016 at 21:59 point

Have you seen the Mantis CNC build?

Part 7 of 7 has a description of a DIY spindle with a very small run-out.

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deadpangold wrote 09/28/2016 at 11:03 point

Thanks for this Lee. It looks interesting but my satelite broadband connection doesn't let me stream video well. I got about half way through before I realised that the sound-track was about 30 seconds ahead of the video. No wonder I was confused. I'll have to watch this somewhere else. I'll get back to you.

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