Raison d'etra

I had a nice bonus at work, and decided to buy a new spindle for the machine - a 3-phase 24,000 RPM spindle with a VFD.

When it arrived, I realised that it was far far too big for the machine...

Since there were a number of annoyances I had with CNC V4, I decided that CNC v5 had to have some fundamental improvements over its earlier version - although the earlier version would be used to make parts for it (in the same way that my 3rd CNC machine made parts for the 4th).

Improvements

Apart from the spindle, the improvements I wanted to make were:

1. A much more solid construction. 2020 box aluminium and MDF can only go so far. When CNC V4 started drilling or milling vertically, it looked like it flexed a bit.
2. Faster motors. Moving the machine around was quite slow. This is mainly due to the amount of torque the (old) motors could cope with
3. Better controller. GRBL is fine, but it is a bit limiting
4. Potential to add in water cooled machining. Some of the work was getting hot on the earlier machine.