Surfacing your wasteboard helps level the surface in relation to your machine. This means that if you have bumps or uneven surfaces on your wasteboard, or if your wasteboard is higher on one side that the other, surfacing will even out and flatten the board.
Cleans off old marks and scars, leaving you with a new, clean surface to glue, clamp, and mount your workpiece.
Check out our newest video that covers how on Youtube:
Hey everyone! It’s been pretty busy at the shop as we continue to ship out LongMills. We are just about to complete our first batch of machines and we have started packing our second batch.
We’ve made small improvements between the first and second batch I’d like to share. Here’s some of them:
The arm that sticks out to hold the drag chain is now made of steel. This will eliminate this part from breaking
New electronics enclosure integrates bent sheet metal and comes with mounting points to allow users to screw it directly to their board
Additional circuitry in the control board to prevent issues with EMI
Longer motor cables to provide more flexibility with mounting
Notched Z-axis gantry to increase travel
Higher-strength filament on 3D printed parts
Improved mounting for dust shoe
We are always working on new ways to improve our machines and user experience with our CNC machines. We look forward to continuing to add improvements to the LongMill!
It’s been pretty crazy ride the last several months, but we’ve done it! We have now shipped all the LongMill Kickstarter machines to our 300+ backers in 23 countries. Thank you so so much to all of you for making this project possible. With the campaign coming to a conclusion, what better way to end it than with a walk through memory lane…
In 2018, the LongMill was born. We wanted to create a machine that was bigger and more powerful than the Mill One, but still kept the same philosophy of being simple and easy to use.
Here’s the first working prototype. (July/Aug 2018)
Our first working prototype
From there, we kept working on improving the LongMill (at that point it was called a LongBoi). This was when we were a scrappier startup: living in student residence, building machines in the garage, and running only a handful of 3D printers.
As time went on and we started to share the development of the LongMill publicly, we started to gather more and more people interested in the machine and the project itself.
We also moved into an actual office at 44 Gaukel in Kitchener, an office space of around 500 sqft. (Aug 2018)
Moving into 44 Gaukel
One of the folks interested in the project was Terry, who became one of the 10 beta testers for the LongMill.
We spent the next two months finishing building our beta machines and working with makers in Canada, US, and France to improve and further develop the LongMill. We built the LongMills by hand, making changes and updates along the way.
Assembling the Y axis rails for the beta machines
Here’s us hanging out with our beta testers.
Chris at Terry’s shop
And also, here’s Greg.
Our beta tester, Greg
With valuable testing and feedback from our beta testers over six months, we continued to improve the machine.
In February 2019, we went to our first woodworking trade show in Toronto. There were so many people interested in the LongMill that we felt pretty confident that it was a good time to launch our Kickstarter campaign.
Interested folks at the Toronto Woodworking Show
From our Kickstarter launch on March 26, 2019, we quickly raised our $60,000 goal in 16 hours, and soared all the way to $436,197 during the 30 day campaign.
No one should have given Chris access to Photoshop…
And thus began our journey of manufacturing our first batch of 400 LongMills.
Here are some highlights:
– Growing our print farm from a small handful of machines to more than 40 3D printers
– Working with the BETS students from the University of Waterloo during the summer
– Growing our full time team from just me and Chris to 5 full time employees
– Having fun fooling around while packing hundreds of thousands of parts together
– Designing our own fun little touch plates
– Moving from our 500sqft office to our new 2400sqft office
– Designing our new LongBoard controllers with our friend Chris Hadjuk
– Being in the Record (our local newspaper)
– Loading enough steel into the cop car until the bottom of the vehicle would touch the ground
The start of our printing farm (May 2019) with around 12 printersToday’s print farm (Dec 2019) with more than 40 printers! There are more behind me.
Here’s what our office looked like when we were showing it:
Here’s the office in August (top), and today (bottom). It’s gotten a little bit more crowded.
Top (Aug 2019), bottom (Dec 2019)Sienci Labs in the news!Packing router mounts (June 2019)Moving over 7000lbs of aluminum by handDesigning the control board for the LongMill (June 2019)Before and after loading gantry plates
We hit a lot of snags, some small, some big. We learned a lot of stuff.
Over the course of 7 months, we worked hard designing, testing and building. We started shipping in October, 3 months past when we were expecting to ship our first machines, but during that time, we’ve improved the LongMill in many ways.
Some of those improvements include:
– X axis reinforcements on the 12×30 and 30×30 to significantly improve torsional rigidity
– Stronger 3D printed parts all around
– Solid aluminum router mount
– Steel Z axis motor mount plate
– Improved bearing system for constraining the lead screw
– Better, more efficient motors
– New control board with integrated drivers, pinouts, and button control
We wanted to make sure that we shipped a machine that was not only great, but something we could be proud of. The results speak for themselves.
First backer to pick up their machine (Oct 2019)Loading the last batch of Kickstarter machines (Dec 2019)
Here’s some cool projects that have already been done by Kickstarter backers!
Not to mention the awesome table setups that have already been shared to the community as well:
And to bring this whole story back around to the end: from everyone here on the Sienci Labs team, thank you to all of you guys for supporting us on this campaign and project. We couldn’t have done it without you. Thanks to your trust in us we’ve now been able to bring the LongMill to life in a way which is so exciting to see.
With the Kickstarter concluding, all our future communication will be happening on our already vibrant communities on both Facebook and on our Website forum, so come and join the discussion over there if you haven’t joined them already.
Lastly, we’re going to be having a party! If you’re in the area, then come join us this Friday evening at our Waterloo office to celebrate the conclusion of this momentous campaign! For more info, visit https://www.facebook.com/events/939478149771378/
Again, thank you everyone. Have a Merry Christmas and thanks for the great year.
Until next time,
Andy, Chris, and the rest of the Sienci Labs team.
Hey guys, check out our latest tutorial for your LongMill!
Taking images (JPEGs and other bitmap images) and carving them into wood and other materials is an awesome way to make signs and other projects. In this video, we’ll be walking through the steps on how to turn an image found on the web, making a v-carving, and carving it into a piece of material.
The description below covers some additional information that may not be covered in the video if you want to do some extra reading.
—Note: I personally use Inkscape and Carbide Create to do projects like these. There are many alternatives that you can use. Some programs that can also turn images into carvings include Easel and F-engrave. Your process and results may vary.
Tooling for v-carving:
A general purpose 60 degree or 90 degree v-bits for routering are quite easy to find, especially at your local woodworking or hardware store. If your project has a lot of wide lines, then typically a wider bit, like the 90 degree v-bit, would be preferred, as you don’t have to cut as deep to get a wide line. On the other hand, if your project has a lot of thin lines, using a narrower bit, like the 60 degree v-bit, can be a better option, as you can get a little more detail, and more contrast in the carving since it cuts deeper.
Speeds and feeds:
The general settings used in the video work well for most woods, but you should have a lot of headroom to play with on the LongMill if you choose to boost your speeds and feeds.
One other factor that can play a role in your cut time is your retract height. You may choose to lower your retract height to speed up your cut as well.
Material prep and finishing:
You will get the best results with material that is flat. This is because the variance in your material’s thickness can also cause variance in the width of your lines for your v-carving.
Having a contrast between the surface of the material and inside of the cut is important in ensuring that your carving is visible. For this particular project, I used melamine covered particle board, which has a reasonable contrast between the top white layer and the underlying brown particle board. Some methods of increasing contrast can be pre-painting the surface (paint outside of the cut), painting and sanding the surface (paint inside the cut), or choosing materials that have contrasting layers or surfaces (such as with color core HDPE)
Ideas and further learning:
You can use the first technique of turning images into vectors for a large number of other projects, such as with contour carving. If you have sketched artwork or hand-drawn pictures, you can also use photos of those items, as long as they have white backgrounds and are mono-colored.
We have gotten a lot of questions about the settings used for the LongMill. This post will cover details on what settings we use for printing our parts.
3D printed parts have a bit of a reputation for being weak and inferior to metal or injection molded parts. However, we believe that the flexibility that 3D printing affords us to be able to improve on our designs incrementally is much more important for us. We’ve spend countless hours to continue to improve our designs and our printing process to make the strongest and most durable 3D prints possible.
Material
We print all of our parts using black PLA+. We purchase a special formulation of PLA+ designed for high strength in bulk to use specifically in our farm which is not available to the general public.
Parts designed for 3D printing are usually made so that they are relatively forgiving in terms of material quality and printing settings.
Printers
We use a combination of Ender 3s, Anycubic Mega-S, and Prusa i3 printers. Parts are usually segregated by printer depending on its strengths and weaknesses (ability to print overhangs, bed surface, speed, ect). However, if you are printing at home and not in a production environment, any FDM printer will do.
Most of our printers have small modifications such as all aluminum extruders, higher quality levelling springs, and glass beds which help improve print quality and reduce maintenance.
Settings
Here are our settings.
0.6mm nozzle
We have found that a 0.6mm nozzle gives a good balance between print speed and quality. Larger nozzles may be good for larger parts like the angle mounts and feet.
235 degrees C
We have found that layer adhesion is strongest for our particular filament at 235 degrees. However, your filament may vary.
0.3-0.35mm layer height
Like above, this setting balances print speed and quality.
30-50% gyroid infill
We found that gyroid infill provides good strength in all directions. A higher infill can improve part strength, but we use a lower infill on parts that are more prone to warping, or do not require high strength. Instead of increasing infill, it is usually better to “beef up” the part for higher rigidity.
3 perimeters (1.8mm appx)
Higher number of perimeters improves print strength. I would recommend using more perimeters if you are using a smaller nozzle.
3-4mm top and bottom solid thickness
For some parts take loads along the plate of the solid walls of the printed part, increasing this number can help improve the rigidity of the part.
Tips and conclusion
If you are printing parts for yourself, you can choose settings that best fit with your printer. Increasing infill, number of perimeters, and top and bottom solid thickness can improve the strength of your parts.
One set of parts takes approximately 40 hours of printing.
Every printer is a little bit different and thus works best with different settings. We recommend using the settings that work for you. The settings above are what works for us, and gives us a high quality, high strength part.
Can you believe it?!? This is a pretty big milestone for us, as it means we’ve ironed out enough kinks to finally get a machine out the door.
Our first pickup
Here’s some things you should know.
– We’ve gotten in touch with the first handful of local pickups to arrange for pickups for their machines.
– We’re starting with some of the pickups because 1) if there’s an issue with the first set of machines, they will catch them the fastest 2) we can help these users in the local area the fastest if there are any issues.
– You will get a message with your tracking info and other important info before your machine ships. We will get in touch with you if there is any other info we need on our side.
Boards and testing
As mentioned in the last update, the boards have arrived and are going through testing.
Intense testing on the LongMill
From our testing last week, we ran into a snag. We found that we are triggering an alarm that freezes the machine under these circumstances:
The machine is experiencing a large cutting load (10mm dado bit at 6-8mm depth of cut)
The machine is cutting left to right
We suspect that the electromagnetic interference going to the Arduino on A0 pin is causing the machine to stop and send an alarm. As a quick note, we are using A0 pin for the “Stop” button which stops the machine and cancels the cutting job.
To mitigate this, we’ve added a capacitor across the ground and A0, A1, and A2 pins to mitigate the noise which are causing these issues. Solving this issue has resulted in spending some extra time testing and troubleshooting.
We have run the boards continuously multiple times for 20+ hour stints, to make sure that the EMI issue is fixed.
Capacitors on the board
Just as a note, most of the boards will have the capacitors hidden on the underside of the board, so you won’t see them.
We’ve been holding our breaths for these boards to finally arrive. They are finally here! We’ll be doing the final assembly, QA, testing, and assembly for the boards before we pack them into kits.
Final board enclosures will be made from stainless steel and acrylic, and will be pre-assembled in house.
Here are some features:
– Detachable screw terminals for power, fan, coolant control, spindle control, probe, motors, and end stops.
– Pause, Play, and Stop buttons
LongBoard enclosureThese boxes hold our boardsTesting jig for the LongBoard
New 3D printers
Adding to our 3D printer bank
With the continual influx of orders, to boost our production rate for printing, as well as the additional dust shoe orders that have come in, we’ve added another 24 printers to the farm, for a total number of around 37-38 total printers!
Some small improvements we’ve made to printed parts:
– Stronger front Y axis mounts
-Stronger, easier to install Y axis drag chain holder
Woodstock Woodworking Show
Thank you to everyone who came out to the woodworking show in Woodstock! We had a blast there. It was awesome to meet a bunch of our backers, as well as other people in the community, and it was a fun way to get our heads out of production work for a little bit and actually get to talk to woodworkers.
Our next show will be in November at the Hamilton/Ancaster Woodworking Show November 8-10th! Learn more at: https://woodshows.com/Hamilton/
First batch of shipments
The first batch of shipments will start to trickle out soon. We will get in touch with backers who will be receiving their machines in the next few weeks via email/phone. If you have not answered your surveys, please do so.
Surveys
Thank you to everyone who’s answered their surveys! Everyone at this point should have gotten their surveys. Please check your inbox!
You might have seen on our last update that we were in the process of looking for a place to move to, or at least move to a different part of the building at 44 Gaukel. As time went on it looked more and more challenging for us to do so, and we focused more of our efforts into moving out to a new building all together.
Given that we only had about 2 and a half weeks to find a place to move, we were in a bit of a rush to find a new place. Luckily, we found a place nearby that had everything we needed, and an awesome landlord that helped us move in early and get the space set up.
All of the filament and other parts have showed up (finally)
400 sets of drag chains packed
All of the filament, as well as other parts have finally arrived last Friday! Getting everything in ended up taking a lot longer than expected, especially because of the customs delays.
This means we will be busy packing up these items over the next few weeks, as well as getting the print farm up to speed on new parts.
1/4″ end other add-ons!
Now that we’ve received and packed all of the end mills, the remaining bits are now on the store!
If you want to order other stuff for your machine, we’ll have a coupon code for free shipping for add on items that we can ship with your machine. It will be included in your surveys when they come out. More details are here: https://sienci.com/2019/07/26/ordering-extra-stuff-with-your-longmill/
If you are not sure of what items you ordered with your machine, you can calculate it out based on your pledge amount. Please check your account and pledge amount if you are unsure of what items you opted in for.
Electronics board design
We have finalized the design for the LongMill’s electronics board. A special thanks to Jeff from JKVC for giving us a once over for the design. Another special thank you to Chris Hajduk for working on this project with us!
We’ve made some changes to the parts and design of the board in the last few weeks to improve its safety and reliability, as well as easier to use features like the end stops and touch plate on the board, especially for people who will be adding their own functionality.
This is our last step in the LongMill’s manufacturing process. Once we have those, we will be able to ship out the machines. Current estimates for production is around 28 days. In the meantime we will be packing as much of all the other things as we can. Stay tuned for more updates on that.
Thank you for everyone who have filled out their surveys. We have sent out surveys for all *Early Bird* backers. If you backed the Kickstarter after the first three days, the surveys for those have not been sent out yet.
We did make one small mistake. In the section that lets us know what add-ons you selected, there is no option if you did not get an add on. If that is the case, please select one of the add-ons and note that you did not order any add-ons in the Kickstarter.
If you have any topics you want included in the resources, feel free to leave a comment and we’ll add it to our list of things to write on.
Electronics boards
Our last batch of parts we are waiting on are the electronics boards. We are expecting them to arrive in approximately 2 to 3 weeks given that there are no delays. There was a delay with acquiring some of the PCB components in China, but the boards themselves have all been made.
Once the boards come in, we will start doing some of the assembly here, which includes putting in the drivers and assembling the cases for them.
Our goal is to pack all of the other components up first and ship as quickly as we make the electronics. As this is our last part, our shipping time is more or less up to when these boards show up, but it should happen within a week once they arrive. We will update backers on the progress. Thank you everyone for their patience!
You might have noticed that the Mill One V3 has been out of stock for a few days. The reason is because we are out of aluminum rails for them (although we think that we might have a few left lying around in the office somewhere). We’re at the end of the production batch for this set of Mill Ones, and we’ve cleared out most of the parts used for the Mill One.
With the recent success of our Kickstarter campaign for the LongMill, and its ongoing sales, we’ve had the opportunity to buy parts and materials in volumes much larger than we’ve ever been before. It has also allowed us to use parts and components that were otherwise harder to obtain in lower volumes. There are also new parts and materials that didn’t exist when we first designed the Mill One which are superior to old parts.
We want to take this opportunity to refresh and improve the Mill One with new parts and a new design. We believe that since we have the opportunity to make a better machine, we should take it.
What does this mean?
The newest version of the Mill One (or Mill Two?) will come with better, higher quality components that will make the machine better.
The new design will be better and more powerful, drawing from years of design and manufacturing experience we’ve gained through building the Mill One and the LongMill.
It will be a few months until we’ll have a new machine available.
If you have a Mill One and need support and parts, feel free to get in touch with us. We’ll still be able to help you out. If you wanted to get a machine but missed out, we still have designs available online if you want to make your own.
Make sure to stay tuned for updates on further development.
Hey everyone! We’ve been getting a lot of excited people for our dust shoes, end mills, touch plates, and all the really cool stuff that we’ll be selling alongside the LongMill.
Brand spanking new 1/4 inch end mills
Don’t worry, we’ll make sure everyone is going to be able to order stuff for their machine, as well as get it shipped alongside everything else.
We are currently in the progress of completing the product pages and doing all the work to get that up, they will be available before your machine ships.
We will be providing a coupon code that will allow you to order items for your machine with free shipping since we will be putting it alongside your machine. We do not plan on releasing that code until all of the items have been uploaded so that customers can make the full purchase in one go instead of having them split up.
Kickstarter backers will get the code in their survey. Folks who placed a pre-order will receive a follow-up email.
You will be able to include items such as:
Touch plates
Dust shoes
End mills
T-shirts
and anything else in the store.
If you want to order something right away and have it shipped, we will ship your items out within a few days.
