Hi
I have just ordered the snapmaker A350T, and I know it has a CNC head. It should be easy just to put a drill in there and drill holes, right? I actually want to make tapers in holes to a 1,5mm laser cut metal piece where the holes have been already cut by the shop. It would be great to have the Snapmaker make the tapers, and maybe even create threads in them, too. Can that be done?
What kind of metal are you working with? Iāve heard of people milling aluminum and tiles, but I havenāt heard of anything harder than that.
Treat anything I say below as āif I was going to do it, this is how Iād startā. I have zero experience doing any of these things.
Thereās nothing limiting the snapmaker from doing any of those things, other than software and maybe power. I havenāt done any CNC, but my understanding is Luban expects to be milling surface contours, not doing plunge drilling. ie, it does everything in a single X/Y plane before moving in the Z direction, and Z movements are only down.
I would try to build a series of programs that taper out each hole individually, then run them in succession. The taping Iām less sure about. Maybe load a CNC tap, then plunge mill a single hole. Assuming the CNC motor is powerful enough to drive a tap in your material.
It doesnāt have enough power to do much with metal.
Some soft stuff with aluminum, copper, brass.
And most people who have done anything like that have had to modify and add guide rails and additional support for the bed. I tried adding a higher power spindle (stock bed and linear modules) but kept having problems with the rails losing steps. I ended up ditching it. (thereās a post somewhere on here about my experience)
Luban is useless for creating paths. Youāll need to use Fusion 360 to have any control over paths and create anything usable.
-S
Thereās plenty. Primary is the ridigity of the machine; secondary is the spindle power. That means, in practice, that youāll primarily be limited by rigidity. The most common consequences of poor rigidity are broken tooling, out-of-tolerance cutting, and bad surface finish. Iāve written plenty on this subject in this forum; please search if you want more.
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