March 2023 Production Updates

Posted on March 3, 2023April 14, 2023 by Andy Lee

Hey everyone, here are the production updates for this month.

For all news and updates, please see our Blog.

Just as a reminder, if you’d like to get these updates as a weekly email newsletter, please subscribe here: https://sienci.us13.list-manage.com/subscribe/post?u=720f140325aaa668a8aa09916&id=e18d59a085

Update on customs hold-ups for US customers

Many US customers with LongMill orders may be experiencing a hold-up at the border for LongMills. For more information about the situation and what it means to you, if you are waiting on a shipment, please read our post here: https://sienci.com/2023/02/21/us-customs-hold-ups-in-detroit/

We have not seen a decrease in these hold-ups, and we are still working on some solutions for this. At this time, we’re working on:

Looking at a new shipping software that can improve the quality of documentation to reduce hold-ups
Talking with the Canadian Trade Commissioners and US Border for additional help and information
Working on consolidating shipments and working on the classifications for our products
Looking at alternative distribution methods and production methods

We have also been establishing a US entity, which means that very soon we will have a US corporate presence (and a lot more paperwork to fill out).

Because some of the bits and parts are being made in China and are on invoices, certain items are now being charged an additional 25% duty due to the Trade War (China Section 301-Tariff Actions and Exclusion Process) which was established several years ago but lax on enforcement. However starting this year, we are now being charged extra for duties and taxes.

At this time, we continue to cover the costs of duties and taxes for US customers. We hope to find a way to mitigate some of these duties and taxes soon.

It should be noted that order under $800USD regardless of the origin of the items being shipped, that enter the US, are not charged duties and taxes. You can learn more about de-minimis here: https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/national-media-release/de-minimis-value-increases-800

LongMill MK2 and Extension Kit Production

Sales for machines have been extremely high at the start of this year, with an 84% growth in revenue from last year this time. The LongMill MK2 has now been in production and shipping for 1 year! We are expecting that before the end of this year, the LongMill MK2 will surpass our population of LongMill MK1s which was released in March 2019 and was in production for about 3 years.

Our sales at the end of 2022 and going into 2023 have been far higher than expected, and because of this, we are continuing to struggle with keeping up with the pace of orders. Although we are expected to ship our pending orders within 5 weeks, we will keep our lead times of 5-6 weeks as we are still waiting to restock some items used in our 48×30 machines. Some items we’re likely looking to run out of first include:

NEMA 23 motor cables and inductive sensor cables
T12 delrin nuts and T12 ACME locking nuts

These items are currently on order, and are expected to finish production in the next 3 weeks.

Last month we brought on three new packing and assembly staff, and are currently hiring more management team members. This has helped catch up on packing, but we still have around 150 LongMills still in the queue. We are additionally working on bringing in more tooling and equipment for tapping, as we are hitting a new bottleneck in the plate and rail tapping process.

We’ve also been looking at some new places to move into, as our currently 8200 sqft + back shop + outdoor storage is bursting at the seams. At this time, we’re making machines in 1500-unit batches, but for us to keep our sanity, we’ll need to increase our batch sizes. With lead times for specialized items being so long (usually a couple of months to half a year), we need more space to hold more stuff so that we don’t keep running out. Our lease ends in our current building in September, with the option to renew, so we will be making a decision fairly soon.

LaserBeam Production

Our latest batch of aluminum and copper heatsink components have now arrived and are being used in production. We currently have a 4-6 week lead time for lasers, but many may ship out earlier than expected. We are currently assembling and packing lasers at a regular pace.

At this time, we have the parts needed to continue production, but we are expecting our bottleneck to be with our stock of cables and fans. They are currently in transit and are expected to arrive in mid to late March.

If you didn’t hear, we’ve made some tweaks to our heatsink design to improve the assembly. With this new design, it takes us about half the time to put it together while slightly improving the heat dissipation performance!

A look into the resources at Sienci Labs and why it’s important for you and our business

Posted on February 27, 2023February 28, 2023 by Andy Lee

Just last week we posted a video where Jason covers the ins and outs of our online resources that we’ve continued to put together over the years. I just wanted to highlight this video and talk bit more about why this is so important to us, and you as the user and community.

The resources pages has a single fundamental goal which is to encompass all of the information one may want to or need to know about our products. This includes the LongMill, the LaserBeam, all of our accessories, and gSender software. In essence we wanted to make it so that if a meteor fell on our office and all of the customer support team perished, our users would still have no problems assembling, using, and troubleshooting our products.

Probably the most important reason for these resources to exist is simply to help you, the user, to use the products we create. Many of our products require assembly, instructions, or additional guidelines to use and enjoy. Additionally, CNCing as a hobby in general comes with many things for a new user to learn, such as choosing bits, workholding, dust collection, and more. The resources contain information and guides on ALL OF THOSE THINGS.

Here are some things you can find in the resources pages:

What a spindle is and information on setting one up with the LongMill
How to set up an IOT relay
Open source design files, gerber files, CAD, and BOMs for many of our products and accessories
Speeds and feeds for our end mills
Demo projects and files
A wizard to help you choose which software to use with the LongMill

You can even search topics by keyword!

I’m not kidding when I say the resources just about covers everything you need to know, and will want to know. One of the main strategies in our resource development is to continually cross reference our resources from the questions that our community asks to make sure that we cover all of our bases.

This includes basic topics, as well as just about any type of troubleshooting that one can do for the LongMill and all of our other products. Although I don’t answer technical tickets and questions that often anymore (we have the rest of the engineers and our customer support team to help out with that now, thank goodness), I read every single ticket that comes in. I do this because:

It keeps me in the loop for any issues that may be production or quality related, such as a faulty part
It lets me update our CNC Issues and Fixes page whenever I see a new problem

Let me tell you, the CNC Issues and Fixes page actually covers more than 99% of the problems that LongMill users send in technical tickets for. Additionally, I’ve also included a link to an article I recently wrote that talks about common misconceptions about machine issues and some troubleshooting tips. Frankly, if people listened to what we had to say about troubleshooting their machines versus strangers, albeit very helpful and well meaning strangers, on the internet, it would save a lot of time for users to diagnose their machines. I am almost certain that if people looked at this Issues and Fixes page and actually went through to check the recommended solutions, we would have nearly zero troubleshooting tickets.

In fact, when training new customer support staff, we typically just get them to read over our resources so they get familiar with everything, and then use that as a starting point for helping customers.

So it turns out, the truly challenging part of making the resources isn’t putting together the information itself, but actually getting people to read it! And that is one of the reasons why Jason put out a video to help promote the resources site.

How our resources fits into our business model

One really important thing to know is that CNC support is a huge part of what people pay for when they buy any CNC machine. The technical support, troubleshooting calls, and customer service alone can account for 20% or more of the actual cost of the purchase price. In essence, anytime you ask for help, it’s coming out of your own pocket!

So you can see that reducing the human interaction time and cost means being able to pass those savings along to you. That’s why I strongly recommend that people check out our resources, since it saves the company money and saves you time. In this way, we can keep making affordable hardware while making sure we take care of our users.

As our company grows and scales, the customer service burden will continue to grow and may potentially be a bottleneck in our development. Additionally, while we currently have a very strong reputation for amazing customer service, it becomes more and more difficult to hold the same level of standard as a company grows larger. This is why investing in our online, self help resources, as well as making sure everyone is using it is so important for the long term.

It’s been challenging understanding the psyche of our users and how they use and navigate our resources, and I think there is still a long ways to go until we get to the point where everyone’s adopted using it. We’re exploring a couple different things, such as turning more of the resources into video content or creating an e-book, and hopefully a combination of these things will continue to improve engagement with our vast and growing resources.

Alas, thank you for reading this article, and happy making!

US Customs Hold-Ups in Detroit

Posted on February 21, 2023February 21, 2023 by Andy Lee

Hey everyone. This is an update on how things are looking for the customs situation for certain LongMill orders coming into the US. Over the last few weeks, some LongMill shipments going to the US have been held at the border requiring customer SSN or TIN numbers to clear.

If you are in the US with a LongMill on the way, please read this post carefully.

This post is to inform everyone about the situation, what to expect, what to do, and what we’re working on to fix the process.

What is going on?

Due to changes in the shipping and customs processes implemented by the US Customs and Border Protection Services earlier this year, some shipments for the LongMill are getting held up at the border.

Why are shipments getting held up?

There are currently two main reasons why shipments are getting held up.

First is the high-value nature of some of the shipments containing LongMills. This article (https://help.cbp.gov/s/article/Article-314?language=en_US) contains information about the clearance of shipments. While we continue to cover the cost of duties and taxes directly, customers still need to provide this information.

Second is the implementation of Section 301 Articles of China. While most of our products are made in Canada, some items are made in China. There is currently a trade war between China and the US, which means that the US will identify and apply duties to Chinese-origin items separately. This means that these parts are more likely to get flagged as well. We automatically provide the correct data for customs services, but sometimes this can require additional processing to complete.

What do you need to do?

If we need your SSN or TIN number, we may:

Contact you by phone or email
UPS will contact you by phone or email

If you want to be proactive, you can contact UPS by day@UPS.com (please cc orders@sienci.com) or calling the UPS national warehouse at 313-967-0457 and providing them with tracking number as well as your SSN# or Tax ID #.
If you do not feel comfortable with providing your SSN and do not have a Tax ID number you can get a free tax ID number at: https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employed/apply-for-an-employer-identification-number-ein-online

Alternatively, you can send us an email or contact us with your details directly and we will forward them to the right place.

If you see that your item is in the warehouse, please contact us ASAP.

If we don’t receive a response within 10 days, we may need to re-ship your items.

What else are we doing to address this?

There are currently several things we are doing to reduce the friction in sending orders to the US. Some of these we are implementing right away, while some things are longer-term plans that may take several weeks or months. These include:

Updating our customs form to provide more information and mitigate the chances that the order will be held up at the border.
Proactively contacting customers and placing notices for people to follow to get additional information
Creating a US entity/corporation to help assist with the transfer of goods between the US and Canada
Establishing a system for communication between us and customs clearance to provide the information more quickly.

With over 60 shipments currently affected, we are working on this as quickly as possible. However, in the meantime, it is likely we will need the co-operation of our customers to help work with customs to get everyone’s orders to them!

February 2023 Production Updates

Posted on February 1, 2023April 14, 2023 by Andy Lee

Hey everyone, here are the production updates for this month.

For all news and updates, please see our Blog.

Customs Hold-ups for some US customers

We’ve recently experienced some of our customers having their machine orders held up at US customs. For some orders above the value of $2500USD, UPS is requesting customer tax information for clearance. We are working on eliminating this process, but either UPS or Sienci Labs may reach out to you for the extra info. Some changes to our customs documentation implemented in the last few days should mostly eliminate this issue, and we are working on automating a system to let customers that fall under this specific set of rules (US customers with high-value shipments) about the situation proactively. Currently, this has affected about 10-12 customers in the past few weeks, which is a small percentage of the overall number of issues, but we just want to let everyone know just in case this happens to you.

Please note that this DOES NOT mean you will need to pay duties and taxes, but it does mean that we may be charged warehousing fees if the item sits in storage for too long.

LongMill and Extension Kit Orders

We have raised lead times for LongMill orders as we currently have a large queue. We are consistently shipping out machines on a daily basis, but due to a big increase in sales this month, we are currently at full capacity. By next week, we will have another three new hires to assist with packing and assembly, which should bring down our lead times. Additionally, we are currently working on acquiring additional production space to relocate our rail processing and create additional inventory storage space.

We are also actively working on Batch 8 supply chain. Based on current sales numbers, we expect to start Batch 8 in around May or June. This is quite a lot sooner that expected. Although many of the key components for the LongMill have been ordered, due to the long lead times we face for some of the parts, we expect that there will be longer lead times closer to the transition point in Batch 8.

LaserBeam

Due to a shortage of some components, we have raised lead times for the LaserBeam. However, most customers may have gotten theirs a lot earlier. As our typical fashion, we want to provide conservative lead times. We have partially restocked all of the parts, which means that we are currently working through the assembly for the remaining orders in the queue, and expect to wrap up pending orders by end of next week. For new orders placed now, we’re telling customers that they may need to wait up to 6 weeks potentially, but it’s likely most will ship sooner.

We’ve made some design changes on the heatsink and wiring that we’ve started implementing, which will reduce assembly times so that we can produce these items faster.

Additional parts for the LaserBeam are expected to arrive around the start of March, at which point, we can pre-assemble and keep inventory on hand for Lasers.

Rotary Axis

We’ve been getting a lot of questions about the rotary axis. For more info about it, please see this post here: https://sienci.com/2022/12/08/everything-you-need-to-know-about-4th-rotary-axis-on-the-longmill/

The engineering team has continued to work on the rotary axis kit. Here are a couple of updates.

We received a sample rotary axis a couple of weeks ago which we have been using for testing. Due to some imperfections, we have been reconsidering our strategy for the production of the rotary axis. Initially, we were planning on using off-the-shelf components for the whole kit, doing QA testing, and shipping to customers, but as we have continued to do testing and research, we have started to reconsider and look at custom designing and making some or all of the rotary axis from scratch.

There are a few areas that must be improved to reach large-scale production, especially in the quality and tolerances of the components that off-the-shelf rotary kits have shown to be inconsistent. First is the edges of the bottom of the rotary axis, which need to be accurate to allow it to mount and align with the track accurately. Second is the motor mounting plate, which needs to line up with the rotary pulley. And lastly, the overall fit and finish need to be consistent and of good quality. We found that from the sample, these were notable areas that needed improvement.

When we started manufacturing LongMills, we used many off-the-shelf components as they were the most affordable at a small scale. However, as time has gone on, basically all LongMill components are toleranced and custom-made to our specific requirements, even if they are otherwise exactly the same as an off-the-shelf alternative. At scale, quality issues compound, and making custom, higher-quality parts helps mitigate issues and ensure fewer issues with assembly and use.

I share the same sentiment with the development and production of the rotary axis. For it to be a viable product, we need to produce hundreds (and eventually thousands) of kits. To accomplish this, we need to take control of the whole production process.

At this stage, we are currently deciding how we want to progress with the production of the rotary axis. We are doing a cost-benefit analysis and working on design ideas. As far as where we are with things now, for us to bring up quality, we also need to bring up the price. Based on our survey results, it seems like interested customers are able to accommodate some increase in price, given that we can provide more value for their rotary axis. It seems like increasing the price and budget of the project will overall provide more value, as we can dedicate more to the software, hardware, and resources for the rotary axis.

The software team is also currently working on the implementation of 4th-axis support in gSender. Some things in consideration include:

Visualization of rotary axis code
Switching between both modes
Homing and zeroing of the rotary axis
Firmware and control board changes

The engineering team has currently made tons of progress overall with regard to documentation and processes that will eventually be used with whichever rotary axis we will provide.

At this stage, we do not have exact dates on when the rotary axis will be launched, but we expect the earliest time for it to ship to be in late summer. If you’re interested in the project, I encourage you to stay in the loop on our blog and social media.

A Year in Review – 2022

Posted on January 9, 2023January 17, 2023 by Andy Lee

Happy New Year all. It’s been quite a year in 2022. Here are a couple of milestones we’ve hit in the past year.

This post was originally shared in our internal company newsletter.

Launch of the LongMill MK2

In early 2022, we launched the LongMill MK2, the successor to the LongMill MK1. This was a big milestone for us as the LongMill MK2 was a culmination of learning and experience in two years of shipping the LongMill MK1.

Also with the LongMill MK2, we introduced a new size, the 48×30. This new size allows for the use of full 4ft wide sheets. It is now the most popular variation of the LongMill.

Chris and I are happy to say that the launch of the MK2, albeit with some hurdles, went smoothly, with our resource development and customer service teams handling these areas amazingly well.

Launch of the AutoZero Touchplate

Our launch of the Autozero touchplate is a major milestone in the hobby CNC industry as the first to allow for zeroing straight and irregularly sized bits. This project took a lot of time to develop, especially in the manufacturing side. To date, we’ve sold close to 1000 units, and this continues to eclipse the original touch plate in sales.

gSender development

gSender, first launched in closed Alpha in early 2021, has now gone through 10 iterations through 2022. This is an insane pace of development, with a new version almost every month. Some new features implemented this past year include:

Improvements to the surfacing tool, such as adding zig-zag pattern and overall stability
Addition of machine profiles outside of the LongMill ecosystem
Better visualizations to firmware settings
Pendant mode
AutoZero touchplate compatibility
Updates to keybindings and joystick compatibility

Additionally, there have been many back-end improvements to stability and performance. gSender is becoming widely known as the best gcode sender for hobby CNC machines in our industry (https://www.reddit.com/r/hobbycnc/comments/zdw2tl/whats_the_best_gcode_sender_out_there/).

Health and safety

We now have further established our health and safety at Sienci Labs. Thanks to Kelsey, John, Mike, Steph, and the rest of the operations team, we now have stuff like training videos, first aid, WSIB certification, eye wash stations, and properly stocked first aid kits.

SR&ED

Thanks to Kelsey, we made our first filings for SR&ED in 2022. This means we are able to receive nearly $300,000 in tax credits to apply against the corporate taxes. While the engineers aren’t thrilled to do the paperwork needed to make the claims, it does cover a substantial amount of our R&D costs.

We expect to make a new filing for 2023 covering additional developments for items such as the laser, rotary axis, and control board development.

Team growth

2022 is also highlighted by a big jump in the size of our team. In 2022, 10 new employees joined our team, with most new members being in engineering, software development, and marketing. Given we were about 19 people strong at the start of 2022, this means we had a 52% growth in our team.

2021 was an extreme growth year, with our revenues growing by 75.5%. This made put a lot of stress on our team as we received way more traffic than we expected. 2022 was a year of establishing our team. By bringing on new talent, we were able to streamline and improve many aspects of the company, such as inventory management, customer service, marketing, and resource development.

Revenue growth

While smaller than the spectacular 75.5% revenue growth in 2021, we still saw a respectable 34.7% in revenue growth. We saw a big jump in revenue in software and add-ons sales, as we grew our offerings in those areas.

The start of 2022 was quite slow, partially due to economic factors and issues with our supply chain causing lead times to extend and cause delays. Despite these issues, once we had them resolved, we’ve reached record sales at the end of the year, October to December being the highest in sales we’ve seen in company history and exceeding my initial projections.

Operational Improvements

There have been many improvements to operations. Some notable ones include:

USMCA certification: By creating USMCA certification, we’ve eliminated a large of taxes being paid when LongMills and other Canadian-made products cross the border. Those working in customer service would have been familiar with issues arising when folks needed to pay for duties and taxes, which this new certification eliminates.

Improved QA processes: Thanks to Mike and Jon, as well as the other engineers, nearly all components now have QA processes and documentation. This has greatly eliminated having to ship out missing parts and overall improved the quality and performance of the LongMill. Employees can now use tablets, calipers, gauges, and other tools to collect more data and improve the quality of our parts.

Katana to Batching system: Kye and the rest of the operations team spent a lot of time in 2022 establishing a new inventory system. Initially, we were using ATUM, which worked for the most part but introduced instability in the website. Katana took inventory management a step further, but the work order system met resistance with the packing staff. We learned that with the high level of experience our packing staff had, work order systems aren’t as critical. We have now since doubled down on the batching system that was originally implemented in the inception of the company.

Improvements to the 3D printing farm: 2022 brought a number of improvements to the print farm. While the Ender 3s were good in the way that they were cheap and easy to come by, at scale, the overall improvement to the print consistency and features like auto bed leveling and filament run-out sensors of the Prusa printers turned out to be worth the extra cost. Also, with the implementation of the Kanban system turned out to streamline the inventory tracking process as well.

Ron has also been implementing improvements using his CAD skills, making brackets to hold power supplies and USB cables, further optimizing the farm.

Extrusion saw and tapping arm: Given that the cost to have extrusions cut and tapped out of house would have been around $30,000 per batch of around 500 units, it made a lot of sense to bring it in-house. I’m very proud of the purchase of our sub $2000 extrusion saw as well as the tapping arm system that Mike, Jon, Dylan, and Nini has put together to make this process cheaper, faster, and easier.

Workshop improvements: We’ve brought in a lot of new tools and equipment in 2022, especially with Adam’s organizational skills and Mike’s retail therapy. Our workshop started off as a mess but has now been better tamed, with easier access to working CNC machines and tools.

Forklift: We held out on getting a forklift by using liftgates and other lifting contraptions, but the propane forklift was ultimately a great investment. With the new sea cans, growing amount of inventory being transported, and the cost of using a liftgate, we now use the forklift all of the time. It’s also important to share that we now have several staff now certified to drive the forklift.

Marketing and content creation

One of the largest areas of growth in our team is with our marketing and content creation team. With over half of our customers coming from Youtube, one big focus was in content creation. And with all the hard work, you can see we’ve greatly increased the number of engagements in our Youtube channel. Other marketing and content creation achievements include:

Establishment of our weekly contests
Improvements and optimizations to our Google and Facebook Ads
Improvements to our file management systems and use of NAS
A Sienci Tik Tok
Regular LaserBeam podcasts
Way better lighting in our videos
and more…

Filming bootcamp

Looking forward in 2023

2023 will be a year of innovation. I say this as our engineering and software development team continues to push out new products and developments which will play a significant impact in the establishment of the hobby CNC industry. Some developments include:

A new, smarter CNC control board
Continued developments and features in gSender
Rotary Axis
Continued development in the LaserBeam
Improvements to the mechanical components, such as the couplers and locking nuts on the LongMill MK2

Additional potential developments on the horizon include:

A new router/spindle system
New, unique end mills and bits
Heavy duty Z axis and other mechanical improvements to the LongMill
AltMill and YesHappy development
Plasma CNC development

First iterations of our new control board

Additionally, we expect to continue putting out more educational content and tutorials for our products. These include project videos, livestreams, and resource videos. This is expected to increase sales, as more than half of our customers find out about us through Youtube, but also bring more value to our community as we create useful content for the public to help them learn how to use our products.

As our company continues to grow and scale, it’s important to acknowledge the changes to Chris and my role in the company as well. I am grateful to have talented and hard-working people surrounding us to continue to push our company forward and take on many of the responsibilities that we previously handled. This has given us more freedom and satisfaction in our personal lives because of the talents of our staff.

Thank you to everyone who was part of our 2022, and we look forward to continuing our journey in 2023.

What do you want to see in 2023? Did I miss anything for 2022? Let me know!

January 2023 Production Updates

Posted on January 6, 2023April 14, 2023 by Andy Lee

Hey everyone and happy new year! As of Jan 3rd, we are back in action at the Sienci HQ.

Some of our team members enjoying a nerf battle at our holiday party

We have quite a large backlog of orders to ship that have come in during the holidays, which we are working on shipping at full steam.

For all news and updates, please see our Blog.

LongMill and Extension Kit Orders

LongMill and Extension Kits are shipping on schedule. There is currently a large queue of orders, so we expect new orders to ship in around 3 weeks. We were expecting to have shorter lead times at the end of December, but due to a high number of orders, we’ve kept our lead times to 3-4 weeks.

We are currently in the process of bringing on 1-2 additional packing and assembly staff as some members are moving into customer support roles. We expect having a few new members on the team will help keep pace with the new sales as well as for future products.

We are expecting our queue to take about 2 weeks to clear and lead times to come down to around 2-3 weeks around the end of January.

LaserBeam Orders

We are currently waiting on a new batch of fans, bodies, and heatsinks for the LaserBeam. These parts are expected to arrive in the next few weeks. Some orders will ship earlier than scheduled with currently available stock, but customers are advised that some orders may take 4-6 weeks to fill based on part availability.

Dec 24 – Jan 2, 2023 Store Holidays Notice

Posted on December 23, 2022December 23, 2022 by Andy Lee

Hey there! I hope its been a wonderful year for everyone. Please note that our offices will be closed for the holidays from Dec 24, 2022 to Jan 2, 2023. We will reopen for regular business on Jan 3rd.

Some of our staff may be around to a limited degree to tie up some loose ends and receive incoming shipments, but most of the team will be on vacation during this time.

Shipping and support may be limited during this time.

Support

Support through our contact form and phones will be limited during this time. If you are looking for help with something, please see our FAQ (sienci.com/faq/) or resources page (resources.sienci.com). If you can’t find an answer on our website please submit a ticket on our Contact Us page. We will reply back to your messages when we return from holidays.

Shipping

Shipping of orders may be limited during this time. If your order has not shipped yet or you place an order during the holidays, it will ship after we return.

Sunsetting the Business Directory

Posted on December 14, 2022December 14, 2022 by Andy Lee

The business directory at https://business.sienci.com/ has now been sunset. Users will soon no longer be able to access this page (if it hasn’t already been shut down).

The goal of this directory was to help connect LongMill users and members of the public looking for custom CNC services. However, due to the lack of engagement, I have decided to shut the page down.

Looking to connect with other CNC users still? Please check out our forum post “Where is everyone from?”.

AutoZero Touch Plate macros now available for alternative gcode senders

Posted on December 8, 2022December 8, 2022 by Andy Lee

I’m excited to share that new macros for the AutoZero Touch Plate can now be found in our resources! This means that users who wish to use the Autozero Touch Plate with gcode senders that are not gSender can now do so with senders such as UGS, CNCjs, and Buildbotics/Linux CNC controllers.

We hope that users outside of the LongMill ecosystem will be able to use our unique touch plate for their CNCing.

For folks not familiar, the AutoZero Touch Plate is a revolutionary CNC touch plate design that allows for homing of both straight and irregularly shaped bits (v-bits, ball nose, and tapered) in the X, Y, and Z directions automatically using a unique chamfered-edge design.

Unlike most conventional touch plates, AutoZero also automatically measures and calculates the size and position of the bit that you’re using, allowing users to skip the process of measuring and inputting their tooling sizes into the software. Plus, with our gSender control software, users can use pre-built settings to have a seamless experience homing bits on their CNC machines.

Go to Autozero Resources

Everything you need to know about 4th/Rotary axis on the LongMill (so far)

Posted on December 8, 2022May 8, 2023 by Andy Lee

One of the common asks that users have been requesting has been adding a 4th axis or rotary axis to the LongMill. We’re now happy to share some of the work we’ve been doing to add this support to the machine. We are currently in the early stages of development for this addition but have been able to get some good results from our testing.

A survey can be found at the end of the article, where you can help us understand your needs and get feedback and comments if you wish to participate!

Table Of Contents

What are we trying to sell here?
What is a 4th axis?
What can it be used for?
Who is it for?
Limitations
Pricepoint
Next steps
Survey

What are we trying to sell here?

Although things are not finalized yet, here’s a breakdown of a rotary axis kit we’re looking to develop for the LongMill. Our goal is to have a kit that allows for a plug-and-play addition of a 4th axis to any LongMill.

Motorized chuck and headstock, along with a mounting solution to the machine
Cables and switches for connecting to the LongBoard controller
Resources and customer support to help set up and use the kit

What is a 4th axis?

Most CNC routers like the LongMill use a 3-axis system, which consists of a X, Y, and Z linear motion system that is used to position bits and end mills. One of the limitations of a 3-axis system is the fact that 3-axis machines cannot make “undercuts” without flipping or material manually. Since the machine only can orient the bit vertically, there are limitations to the types of geometry it can carve.

Source: https://waykenrm.com/blogs/undercut-machining-for-cnc-machined-parts/

To address these limitations, CNC machines can come with additional degrees of motion, typically including a 4th or even 5th axis. In the case for the LongMill, a rotary axis positioned along the X direction allows the machine to turn a part as the X and Z axis can move in sync as the material turns and rotates.

On a mechanical level, the 4th axis for the LongMill will come with a chuck to hold material as well as a series of bearings and pulleys connected to a stepper motor to rotate the material as the machine carves.

What can it be used for?

The best way to think about 4th axis is to look at it as a computer-controlled lathe. Projects that are best suited for using a 4th-axis include making table legs, chess pieces, threads, and other mostly cylindrical objects.

Who is it for?

At this current time, we are exploring the suitability of a rotary axis as examples of practical use are limited on the market. We’ve put a link to a survey at the end of the article to help us understand the use cases of a rotary axis by asking what the community is interested in creating!

Based on our research and experience, we feel that this is best suited for early adopters and people who are wanting to tinker with the technology and can accept that at this current time, it is quite primitive. There are quite a few steps to using this add-on and the learning curve involved that may not be intuitive to folks that are mostly familiar with the typical cartesian coordinate system. Additionally, there are a lot of new software features that need to be tested and created, and we expect software bugs in the initial development of the rotary axis that may be frustrating if it’s not expected in the early stages of this product.

Limitations

Software

By far the most important aspect of the viability of this project comes down to the software since a rotary axis is useless without being able to program it. At the current time, the number of software that supports 4th axis machining is limited and the ones that we feel are best suited for this application are paid. Some options include:

Vectric VCarve Desktop, VCarve Pro, and Aspire ($349USD, $699USD, $1995USD)
Fusion 360 ($1600/year)
DeskProto Multi-Axis Edition (€249.00 for the hobbyist edition, €995.00 for commercial)

From our testing, Vectric’s software, in terms of functionality, ease of use, and price, is our recommended choice.

We won’t get into any specific details comparing the software today, but it’s likely that when we start to create documentation for 4th-axis programming, that it’ll be done using Vectric software.

Electronics

It’s also important to specify that with the current setup, this is not a true 4th axis. Rather, this setup uses the motor control from the Y-axis, disabling the linear motion from the two motors and redirecting the power to a single motor that controls the rotary axis. At this current stage, the plan is to provide hardware that allows for switching between rotary and linear motion by connecting directly to the control board.

While this seems like a big downside because the programming of true 4th axis is quite complicated and not supported by most hobby-level software.

Users who wish to explore true 4th-axis machining will need to use a more advanced control system and sending program to control the extra axis. We are working on creating electronics and software that will support this in the future, but we are not quite ready to share these details yet.

Hardware

Due to the size of the LongMill and the size of the rotary axis, users should expect to be able to cut materials up to 4.5 inches in diameter and roughly 10 inches less than the length of their X-axis. So 12×30 and 30×30 users would be able to do up to 20 inches in length and 48×30 users would be able to cut up to 38 inches in length.

The longer the material, the less stable the cutting is, since the material is only supported from each end of the machine with a chuck and headstock. Further testing will show practical speeds and feeds at different sizes.

Pricepoint

During the development of the project, we explored using either an off-the-shelf rotary axis option or designing one from scratch. It turned out that at this stage, it would be difficult to beat the cost of an off-the-shelf option purchased in bulk since if we were to design and manufacture it ourselves, the investment into design and the high volume of custom parts we’d need to produce would make it economically unviable.

Additionally, the off-the-shelf option appears to be quite well-made and good value, and ubiquitous enough that customers on a budget and willing to tinker may be able to source the same or similar option and use it for their machine, rather than buying it straight from us.

We’re estimating a landed unit cost for a pre-made unit in bulk will cost around $200. Additionally, the cables and electronic hardware required would add roughly another $15-20 to the unit cost. We also may need a precision fixturing plate that may cost around $100. Once applying a margin to account for things like development cost, customer support, shipping, resources, packaging, quality control, and everything else that we need to run a business, we’d estimate a price of around $500-700CAD per unit.

Additionally, users should budget to purchase software, as at this time we do not have a recommended free software option.

Next steps

Our next step is to determine the demand and viability of providing a rotary axis option to our user base. If we see enough demand, we can start to invest more time and resources in additional work and development such as:

Sourcing parts to create a rotary axis kit
Developing new features into gSender to add 4th-axis compatibility
Design of hardware for mounting to the machine
Resource development
Stress and long-term testing

Our first step is to share this survey so that interested LongMill users can share their thoughts, wants, and opinions on what they want to see in a kit.

In terms of timeline, we expect to make decisions on the direction of this project by the end of January. Depending on demand, we’ll start taking pre-orders for the kit and start sourcing components. We expect the sourcing and manufacturing process to take around 2-3 months, which brings us to around April-May 2023 when users may start getting their rotary axis kits.

Survey

To participate in the survey, please click the link below. Your participation is greatly appreciated!

https://forms.gle/nStvHGw78abFCcEZ8