Good afternoon everyone! Thanks to the makers who entered the contest for this week, where we asked you all to share your Spring-Themed projects made on the LongMill.
Last Week’s Winners
We are happy to announce that Jeff Small, Lydia Fitzpatrick, Clint Christy, Caleb Givens, Darian Gatling, and Frank Mailloux are the winners of the “A Project That is Spring-Themed” contest! A prize is on its way!
This Week’s Theme: A Project That is Spring-Themed Part 2
Happy Spring, everyone! We are continuing our Spring theme for this week. Help us celebrate this wonderful season by posting any Spring related projects such as Spring themed signs, flowers, raindrops, Mother’s Day gifts, things made for your backyard, and any other Spring themed items that were made on your LongMill. We will select what we think are the best ones and send those creators some free stuff!
The Vortex Rotary Axis* will be available on June 1, 2023, at 1 PM Eastern Standard Time, where the first 300 units will be available for pre-order.We expect to ship in August 2023.
New videos and content coming out for the Vortex soon! Make sure to sign up for our mailing list, for new updates and other Sienci-related news. Subscribe to our Youtube channel where we’ll post more videos on the Vortex Rotary Axis in the new few weeks!
*After much debate, we have decided to call the name for this new add-on the Vortex Rotary Axis
It’s been a long journey for developing the Vortex Rotary Axis, but we’re finally excited to share a launch date for our new add-on! This new product aims to make doing rotary projects like making bats, wands, furniture legs, bowling pins, and other turn-able projects with your LongMill and the Vortex.
The Vortex is unique in that not only is it a compact, precise, high-quality rotary axis we designed from scratch, but our direct integration into gSender also plans to add functionality not found in other CNC systems. Additionally, just like all our products, the Vortex will be supported by our team with high-quality tutorials and resources to make it easy to install, learn, and use your rotary axis.
The Vortex can be integrated, plug and play, in any standard LongMill CNC**, and comes with the hardware, electronics, and instructions to help you find success with CNC rotary carving!
**With the exception of the 12×12 LongMill MK1. Integration for the Vortex Rotary Axis on 12×12 machines may require moderate modification to fit.
Video Content
What is a Rotary Axis?
The Vortex Rotary Axis is an add-on created to allow users to integrate a rotary axis into their LongMill.
Most CNC routers like the LongMill use a 3-axis system, which consists of an 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.
To address these limitations, CNC machines can come with additional degrees of motion, typically including a 4th or even 5th axis. In the case of 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 the material as well as a series of bearings and pulleys connected to a stepper motor to rotate the material as the machine carves. This allows for users to make projects like:
Bats
Chess pieces
Furniture legs
Wands
Figurines
Busts
and more!
Production and Pricing
Each Rotary Axis will come with all of the hardware and electronics to integrate the kit into any existing LongMill CNC.
The Rotary Axis will start at:
$600CAD/$449USD – For 12×30 and 30×30 LongMills
Dimensions below.
$640CAD/$469USD – For 48×30 LongMills
Dimensions below.
The main difference between the two options is the rail track extension that allows users to mill larger items corresponding with the X-travel range on each version of the LongMill.
All options will come with a standard jaw that can hold material in several configurations:
Additionally, customers should budget purchasing rotary axis ready CAM software, such as:
DeskProto Multi-Axis Edition (€249.00 for the hobbyist edition, €995.00 for commercial)
*Based on our testing, we strongly suggest Vectric software for its simplicity and user friendliness.
Resources and Support
It’s important for us to stress that the Vortext Rotary Axis follows our philosophy for providing a complete product, not just hardware, but high-quality support, resources, instructions, and tutorials to make sure users are able to use their rotary axis to the fullest.
We’ve recognized that not only are affordable rotary axis options are limited in the hobby CNC space, but the resources needed to learn it also are lacking. We’ve taken the initiative to provide support through the Vortex.
Did you know that we regularly post tutorials and educational content for the LongMill on our Youtube channel? Make sure to check it out and subscribe to us if you haven’t yet!
Production Timeline
The Rotary Axis is already in production, with parts expected to complete and arrive between June and July. We are expecting a late July to mid-August shipping date. Please note that because this is a pre-order, timelines may change due to delays and unexpected circumstances. We will continue to share production updates for the Rotary Axis on a regular basis on the blog here, so that customers can sign up for our mailing list, for new updates and other Sienci-related news.
Development Timeline
Mechanical and electrical design and development of the Vortex Rotary Axis is now complete, and we are currently waiting on production parts to complete and arrive. Our engineering team is currently working on stress testing and resource development, as well as preparing for assembly, QA, and packaging for the final product.
The software development team continues to finalize the development of the software support in gSender, such as implementing new features and getting testing feedback from users of gSender Edge. We expect basic functionality to be available at time of shipping, and we will continue to add more features in future releases of gSender.
FAQ
When will the Rotary Axis ship?
Production on the Rotary Axis is currently ongoing, with the first units expected to ship in Late July to August 2023. For general development and production updates, please check our Blog. Orders will ship in the order in which they are placed.
What is the between the 48in and the 30in versions?
These lengths describe the track width for the rotary axis. Customers should purchase the size that matches with the working width of their LongMill.
When do you take payment?
We take the full payment immediately. Customers may cancel their order for a full refund anytime before their order ships.
What happens when all 300 units are sold out?
Based on early demand, we’ll decide on when we’ll start building a new batch. Turnaround times to build each batch takes about 3 months, so there may be a few months wait time additional once the first 300 units are sold out.
Will I get a notification or email before my order is ready?
Yes, we’ll send you an update email to let you know that your Rotary Axis is ready to ship.
Which machines is the Rotary Axis compatible with?
The Rotary Axis is designed to be compatible with all versions of the LongMill, with the exception of the LongMill MK1 12×12, due to the track width (however it can be modified to work).
We will be providing full assembly resources for the Rotary Axis.
Although users may be able to integrate the Rotary into other hobby CNC machines, we will only be providing compatibility and support for LongMill users at this time.
How is the Rotary Axis driven?
In the current configuration, the Rotary Axis uses the X-axis and Z-axis to move along the rotational axis of the material, with the Y-axis drivers disconnected and reconnected to the Rotary Axis motor to provide rotational movement. This means that in this configuration, the system is not a full 4-axis machine, but more of a 2-axis + rotary system. Each kit will come with a switch to toggle 3-axis and rotary axis modes.
In the future, we are planning to provide full simultaneous 4th axis motion through the SuperLongBoard, expected to launch at the end of the year (at an added cost).
Does the Rotary Axis come with software?
We’ve implemented gSender to integrate the ability to control, set up, and home the Rotary Axis. Users will need to use or purchase CAM software that supports rotary carving. We recommend VCarve Desktop or VCarve Pro, as this is the software that we primarily use and do testing on.
Can I order other items alongside my Rotary Axis?
For logistical reasons, we strongly recommend users to place separate orders for the Rotary and other items. However, if you place an order for other items with the Rotary, we will ship them separately based on the stock availability of the items.
When your Rotary Axis is ready to ship, if you wish to order additional items to ship together with combined shipping, please Contact Us for assistance.
Happy Friday! Thank you to those who participated in this week’s contest, where we asked creators to post their LaserBeam projects.
Last Week’s Winners
We are happy to announce that Mike Rickard, John Fischer, Nelson Joseph, Jackie Christiansen, Mike Born, and Shane Fairchild are the winners of the “LaserBeam Projects” contest! Watch out for a prize!
This Week’s Theme: A Project That is Spring-Themed
Happy Spring, everyone! Help us celebrate this wonderful season by posting any Spring related projects such as Spring themed signs, flowers, raindrops, Mother’s Day gifts, and any other Spring themed items that were made on your LongMill. We will select what we think are the best ones and send those creators some free stuff!
I’m excited to share that we’ve recently hired two new technical writers and resource developers and a second videographer to help continue to bring awesome instructions, troubleshooting, projects, and content to the community and our users! Some of the things our new team members will be working on include:
Additional involvement in the online community, through our social media and forums
Helping create documentation for new products
Sharing more news about our company and the amazing things we’re working on
We hope that by continuing to share our information, knowledge, and wisdom of hobby CNCing, we’ll continue to make CNCing more accessible for everyone. For more info about why resource development is important to us, please check out this article.
Working on Rotary Axis documentation
LongMill and Extension Kit Orders
In April, last month, we ran into some part shortages for the Y-axis rails due the extrusion die getting damaged unexpectedly. This pushed back production by about 2 weeks while the broken die was remade. We have received the rails and have been able to ship a large number of machines. We also ran out of the front and back steel feet for a few days, but we have also received a new batch last week as well. We believe that we should be able to ship most of the units with a turnaround of 4 weeks, better than the 5-6 weeks we promised, but we expect to run out of T12 lead screws in the next coming weeks, so we will continue to have a 5-6 week lead time listed on our product page in case there are delays in receiving our next batch.
Otherwise, although we have had to pause shipping at times, we have been continuing to deliver within the promised times for our customers. Additionally, we have recently brought on a few new staff to help continue to bring lead times down.
I should note that due to the high volume of orders we are processing, we are finding that on some days, due to space constraints of the truck picking up orders, some items may need to wait for the next truck to ship. Since we are trying to clear the backlog, it’s a bit slower than usual, but we expect things to ship out without delays once we get caught up.
Our engineers have been working on a few new projects to help improve the productivity of production in a couple of different areas. One notable update is with our tapping setup. We do hole tapping in several different areas, including with the ends of the rails and several of the gantries and feet that make up the LongMill. With our original setup, we used a tool to tap each hole individually. However, our engineers are trying a few new ways to tap several holes simultaneously with a special jig by essentially driving multiple tapping heads at the same time. With each batch needing tens of thousands of holes tapped, we expect these new tools to greatly speed up the tapping process.
Our engineers excited to get their multi-material rapid prototyping Bambu printer
LaserBeam Orders
A new batch of laser drivers recently arrived at the shop and we are currently processing our queue. We expect to have the rest of the pending orders cleared by this week. We expect to have a fairly short lead time of around 2 weeks going forward based on part availability.
SuperLongBoard
We’ve had an overwhelming response to the SuperLongBoard, with over 400 survey respondents. If you didn’t read the full article, you can check it out here. Thank you, everyone, for your support!
Based on the results, it’s very clear to see that our users are very excited about this massive upgrade to the LongMill and for the future of the hobby CNC industry.
Our team and team and Expatria continue to work on the development of the board. We don’t have any major updates yet, but a few things we’re working on include:
Enclosure design
Compute module integration
Testing and QA jigs
Rotary Axis
We are reaching the final stages of rotary axis development. We have now placed orders for just about all of the parts and are waiting for things to ship. Our gSender development team has now implemented rotary axis functionality in the Edge version (our beta, experimental public version of gSender for internal and external testing). You can learn more about the release here: https://forum.sienci.com/t/gsender-hal-rotary-support-early-alpha/8462.
Additionally, are currently fine-tuning the homing sequence for the rotary axis which will allow the machine to self-home, zero, and align the rotary axis, which is unique to any rotary axis system in the hobby market.
Our team, primarily Daniel and Johann have been vigorously testing and fine-tuning the Rotary Axis over the last few weeks with some amazing projects and results.
We expect to have launch dates, interviews, pricing, and new content to come out soon in the next 2 weeks so make sure to stay tuned!
So many gifted projects! Thanks to the makers who entered the contest for this week, where we asked to share your LongMill projects that you have gifted.
Last Week’s Winners
We are happy to announce that Jeremy Forsythe, Hank Vanderaa, Tim MacIntyre, Brent McLeod, Derek Scott, and Gar Whitenton are the winners of the “A Project You Gifted” contest! A prize is on its way!
This Week’s Theme: LaserBeam Projects
We have been seeing many of you enjoy using the LaserBeam and now is your chance to win some free stuff with your LaserBeam project. Show off your best LaserBeam projects with us and we’ll send makers of the ones we like awesome prizes!
Hey everyone. Thank you to those who entered this week’s contest, where we asked makers to share their favourite furniture projects with us.
Last Week’s Winners
We are happy to announce that Phonic Bloom, Christopher Thompson, Reo Jibran, Jean-Pierre Houde, Kenny Silvern, and Fotios Sklomponakis are the winners of the “A Project That is Furniture” contest! Lookout for a prize!
This Week’s Theme: A Project You Gifted
This week’s theme is “a project you gifted”! Post any project you gave to someone, whether it be a custom sign, gift, or any other item made with the LongMill, and we’ll choose our favorites to send our makers cool stuff.
We’re at the point in EDGEs life where we’re mostly focused on improvements to performance and hunting down any remaining bugs. This version is largely that – going through our backlog of reported issues and making sure they’re handled.
That said, I’d like to highlight specifically some major improvements to file parsing/loading and visualization – we’re seeing 200-400% faster parsing and about 2/3rds less memory usage on some larger files. We also (finally) have a progress indicator when handling larger files.
As always, thanks to everyone who has reported issues or given feedback on EDGE – we’ll continue to work through our backlog, and are excited to release it to the general public.
New File Loading indicator that also includes progress
Significant improvements to file parsing to increase speed and reduce memory usage on large files
Fixed issue with laser offset and differing preferred units and file unit modals
Altered connection workflow to be more forgiving for non-standard startup messages
Fixed bug with feedrate unit conversion parsed from file
Fixed issue with reported bounding box not handling relative movements correctly
Fixed bug with feed override shortcuts
Firmware flashing modal now only shows Sienci profiles for flashing
Shortcut improvements to help consistency with migrations from version to version
Happy sunny Friday! Thanks to everyone who participated in the contest for this week, where we asked creators to post their festive Easter-Themed projects!
Last Week’s Winners
We are happy to announce that Sara Lynn, Albert Tejera, Karen Tripp Van Thournout, Chad Jones, Robyn Stillie-Mountjoy, and Carmine De Luca are the winners of the “A Project That is Easter-Themed” contest! A prize is on the way!
This Week’s Theme: A Project That is Furniture
The theme of the week is “projects that are furniture”. Share with us your tables, chairs, cabinets, desks, beds, and other furniture-related projects that were made using the LongMill, and we will reward the ones we liked best with great prizes.
Hey everyone, I’m excited to share with everyone a project that Chris and the rest of the Sienci Labs team have been working on in collaboration with Andrew and his team Expatria Technologies to develop a new CNC control board and firmware system. The SuperLongBoard (SLB for short) represents a huge step in hobby CNC technology, as it’s advanced electronics and software bring not just new features and functionality to the LongMill, but at a price point that we believe will be affordable for hobbyists.
LongMill running at 10,000mm/min and 750mm/s^2The SuperLongBoard taking its first baby steps
What is the SuperLongBoard?
The SuperLongBoard is a next-generation control board for the LongMill CNC. This development gives access to a whole new set of features, functionality, and integrations more commonly found in industrial applications to the hobby CNC market. Some features and functionality include:
Full integration of gSender within the control board, removing the need for a separate computer to run the CNC
Advanced, programmable stepper drivers that run motors faster, quieter, and with more torque
Faster, more accurate motion control processing for smoother movements
Ability to control more than 3 axis, for full 4th and 5th axis motion control
Networking and file transfer with wifi and ethernet, USB port and SD card for removable storage, HDMI output for display outputs, and more
Standard PWM control for laser and spindle, with compatibility with industry-standard RS485 protocols for industrial-level spindle control
Rapid tests using the SuperLongBoard
Additionally, this design will have many input-output connections and ports to allow for new features and accessories to be used with the new board, effectively future-proofing your machine for years to come. Some of these features include:
Automatic tool changing support
Skew, cutter, and joint compensation
External wired and wireless pendant control
Camera and machine vision for features like failure and crash detection, auto zeroing, auto-tracing, and more
Please note that although these features are something we want to work on down the line, we currently do not have specific timelines on these features and they will not be available during launch.
You can even set up the SuperLongBoard to send messages through Slack!
The SLB is a system of two different parts working together. The first is the board itself, which contains all of the core functionality. This includes motor control, sensor inputs and outputs, and lower-level processing of g-code. Users will be able to tether this part of the controller directly to the computer using a USB cable in the same way as the original LongBoard currently used in all LongMills to control their CNC machines.
SLB takes things to the next step with the addition of an onboard compute module. The SLB has a small connection interface at the bottom of the board that allows for a compute module to be attached and replaces the computer or laptop. Users can connect a keyboard, mouse, and monitor to control all functions of the machine directly through the SLB.
The SLB can operate with and without the compute module. I expect that given the considerably low price of the compute module over a computer, around $40-80 dollars plus the cost of the monitor, keyboard, and mouse, as well as the extra speed, user experience, and reliability of an onboard system. But we are planning to allow for the board to be used in either configuration.
This control board will be backward compatible with ALL LONGMILL CNC MACHINES OF ALL GENERATIONS, which means that users can upgrade their machine’s capabilities by simply replacing the controller. All of the hardware and software will come ready to go, plug and play for all LongMill CNCs, and will have a similar form factor to the current LongBoard so that it can be integrated easily into your existing machine.
Why the SuperLongBoard?
The creation of the SLB comes with a series of motivations. The first and main motivation is our belief that at this current stage, the integration of smarter, more reliable, and more capable CNC control electronics will make the biggest improvement to the CNC user experience.
This new design will aim to eliminate many common issues universal to hobby CNC at this time, including:
Electromagnetic interference issues
Computer, compatibility, and connection-related issues
Resonance and driving issues restricting motor performance
With the integration of an onboard computer and far more sophisticated electronic systems, the SLB will not only be able to eliminate these issues, but it will also allow us to have better control of the hardware and software to optimize every aspect of the board and iron out bugs more easily.
As some readers know, we’re also in active development of the rotary axis. The SLB will also open up more possibilities for integrating new add-ons and improving already existing add-ons such as the AutoZero touchplate and LaserBeam. Some other potential add-ons include:
Plug-and-play router or spindle with programmable speed control
Bitsetter
Toolchanger
Plasma cutter
There are no specific development timelines for these items, but the SLB will allow for better compatibility for add-ons such as the ones listed above.
Development of the SuperLongBoard
The SuperLongBoard has been in development since the Fall of 2022. We’ve received our first batch of prototype boards and have been working with Andrew to develop the firmware and software for the control boards, finalize the PCB design, and prepare them for long-term beta testing.
The development of the SLB actually comes with many different individual developments that all work hand in hand. First is the integration of grblHAL, a rewrite of GRBL that was originally designed to work on Arduino-based controllers. One of the limitations of GRBL was that since it was designed to work on low-performance microcontrollers, it has limitations on what features that could be added. Additionally, there are limitations on things like how many processes could happen at any given point and the raw speed of the processing of g-code and motor signals.
grblHAL essentially uses something called a hardware abstraction layer (HAL). The HAL is essentially like a switchboard that the GRBL core knows how to use the microcontroller to communicate with different aspects of the board, such as the spindle control, motor drivers, and networking. This means that the development of core firmware that includes all of the functionality can be developed and only the HAL needs to be adapted to each model of the microprocessor. This means that the development of grblHAL benefits the whole community since features that are developed for one controller can be implemented on other controllers almost immediately with basically no modification. grblHAL, although still fairly new, already has a fair number of plugins that can be used to add functionalities.
The next part of the development is with the gSender integration into the SLB and to use grblHAL. Since the plan is to integrate gSender directly on the compute module, we are working on optimizing it for the hardware, such as improving the general performance and UI, adding new features and functionality, and testing the speed and reliability of gSender as a whole. We’re already working on the new gSender, and you can find an early access version here.
And lastly comes the design and production of the PCBs themselves. At this stage, we’ve mostly finalized the design of the board and are making the last few touches to the design and layout. The new control board uses a larger number of components, adding to the challenge and complexity in manufacturing, but we’ve been able to work closely with PCB manufacturers for the first batch of prototypes and expect this area to come along relatively smoothly.
We are expecting to work on testing the boards in-house for the next few weeks and start beta testing in the next coming months.
Pricing
At this time, we’re expecting the manufacturing and production cost of the SLB and case to cost around $100 (prices here in CAD). The compute module is expected to cost between $40 to $80 depending on the model and spec, bringing the total cost of production to around $150.
Chris and I have been talking about the pricing and how we want to figure this out, but we do have a few goals:
To offer it with new LongMill machine kits with minor changes to the current price
To have a simple and inexpensive upgrade path from the original LongBoard to the SBL
Reduce buyers remorse for currently existing customers
Here is our tentative pricing. Please note that pricing may change and is not set in stone.
SuperLongBoard, onboard computer, and enclosure: $280CAD/$210USD
This would be the full package with everything you need to plug and play with any LongMill. This also includes the onboard computer. Users who wish to use the onboard computer will need to provide their own monitor, keyboard, and mouse.
If you want to mix and match parts, you can use the pricing estimates below:
SuperLongBoard only: $180CAD/$140USD
For users that only want to upgrade the controller, but do not have the onboard computer. This would mean that you would still need to connect a laptop or computer to your controller. This also doesn’t include the price of an enclosure, so users can either make their own or integrate it with an existing enclosure. The case for this version of the controller is not backward compatible with the original LongBoard currently used in the MK1 and MK2 LongMills.
Onboard computer: $80CAD/$60USD
The onboard compute module is essentially a Raspberry Pi CM4 or another compute module of the same form factor. There are many different versions of CM4 form factor modules, all of which have different price ranges and specs. The price points of these modules vary greatly, which means the specific cost of this will be tied to which module we decide to choose. This would be available to users who choose to start with the SuperLongBoard and decide to add the onboard computer later in the future.
Enclosure: $30CAD/$23USD
The enclosure serves to protect the controller from dust and damage, as well as provide some mounting options onto the LongMill.
What’s next?
With regard to the LongMill
Once we get the SuperLongBoard into production, customers will be able to order them from our store to upgrade their machine electronics or as the controller that ships with new LongMills.
Here is our current general plan:
Once the SuperLongBoard is launched, to offer the original LongBoard and SuperLongBoard as separate options. The option for the original LongBoard would be the same, and the SuperLongBoard option would be a little more expensive.
Once we run out of or decide to phase out the original LongBoard, all new LongMills will ship with the SuperLongBoard.
For existing LongMill customers, we may provide a coupon so that users who wish to upgrade to the new controller can do so at a lower cost.
Based on where we are in current development, we expect SLB available sometime in the late fall or winter of 2023.
The exact details and pricing will come later.
With regards to other CNC machines
Given how powerful and integrated the SuperLongBoard is, we expect other CNC users to want to integrate the board with their own machines. While the board itself isn’t expected to cost a lot, given the complexity of support, resources, and documentation, we expect that a significant consideration in terms of support and price point will come down to many different factors.
We do plan on releasing the board designs open source as we have done for all of our hardware and software, which means that even if we don’t provide any official support, users who want to tinker should be able to figure out how to integrate things.
Here is our current general plan:
Users who want to use this board for other machines will be able to purchase it from our store, but they will not receive any technical or setup support. We will provide resources that we feel will be adequate for an experienced user to use for setup. At some point, we may also set up an online community where people can help each other.
In the future, there may be a certain tipping point in terms of scale for us to offer specific machine support, or if a third party decides to provide support themselves.
SuperLongBoard Survey
If you want to help contribute to our development for the SLB, please feel free to do our survey!
Happy Good Friday, everyone! Thank you to those who entered this week’s contest, where we asked you to share game projects made on your LongMill.
Last Week’s Winners
We are happy to announce that Jacob Columbus, Daniel Pilkey, John Corbin, Morris Forbes, John Lupacchino, and Lori Shell are the winners of the “A Project That is a Game” contest! Lookout for a prize!
P.S. We will be closed Friday, April 7th for Good Friday and back in the office on Monday, April 10th.
This Week’s Theme: A Project That is Easter-Themed
Happy Easter holiday, everyone! Celebrate the Easter holiday with us by posting your Easter-themed projects. We want to see all the bunnies, baskets, eggs, and any other Easter-related projects that were made on your LongMill. Share them with us for a chance to be one of the winners of this week’s contest and win free prizes!
