Hey everyone! This is a notice to let everyone know that the company will be away on holidays between Dec 23rd and Jan 2nd. Orders placed during this time will start shipping out at the beginning of January.
We will continue to ship out orders up to the 22nd. If your order is time sensitive, please contact us first at hi@sienci.com so that we can make sure it will get to you on time.
Although we will be away spending time with friends and family, we will continue to periodically check our emails and be active on our Facebook user group to help our community and customers. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to us as usual!
It’s been a while since I’ve blogged about how things are going at Sienci Labs. Well the answer is that things are going well. It’s been hard to get the time to sit down and blog as I usually do, especially with the Christmas rush and getting everything ready for 2018!
Here’s a few things that have been going on lately.
Looking for people to join our team
Our company has grown to the point that Chris and I need more hands on deck to grow. That’s why over the last two months, we’ve been looking for new people to help us run the business. Well I’m happy to say that we’ve gotten lots of job applications and are currently in the middle of onboarding two new people to our team! Stay tuned for updates and intros on our new team members.
If you’re interested in joining our team, feel free to reach out to work@sienci.com. We’ll probably be looking for folks in electrical or software engineering in the next few months as well.
Enclosure design
A masters student in mechanical engineering and I are working on designing a fully enclosed frame, which we plan on putting together as a new upgrade kit. Why a full enclosure? Well, a full enclosure results in a quieter, cleaner machine. The plan is to have first physical prototypes together in the next two weeks.
New software
We’re currently working on a modified version of Kiri:Moto to streamline the CNC workflow for CAM. This has been a ongoing project for nearly a month, and we’re working on setting up a server to run the program. It’ll be accessible with the public, which will help us gain feedback on improving the software.
Improved resources
We’re also working on creating a more streamlined resources page to help new users walk through each step of using the Mill One. This includes some sample projects that can be done to get users familiar with our machines. We hope to have the new version of our resources live in the next two weeks. Got an idea for a sample project? Email us at hi@sienci.com!
Small changes to 3D printed parts design
First change was adjusting the settings and tolerances on the electronics box to improve the quality of the print and allow the parts to fit together better.
Second change is with the router mount, which now has additional reinforcement around the bolt holes. This addresses the weak area around the nut traps on the mount.
Chuck’s videos
If you haven’t yet, check out Chuck’s first impressions with the Mill One.
We did have a few troubles with the assembly part, but we did figure them out. We’re always happy to have honest feedback and hear about what we can do to improve our machines and manufacturing so that we can continue to improve our product.
Once Chuck got everything running, he was really happy with the machine!
You can also check out his video on making a custom 3D printed holder for tools on the Mill One too.
Aluminum cutting end mills are back in stock
We recently sold out on all our end mills, but we just got a new batch of aluminum cutting end mills. You can check it out here.
UPS shipping option
UPS has recently offered us really competitive prices on shipping, with shipping speeds that are faster than Purolator. Based on the past week of shipping with UPS, it looks like customers can get their orders up to three days faster than before.
Those are all of the updates I can think of. Stay tuned for more as they come and happy holidays!
Every year, Make Magazine brings together the best desktop fabrication tools together for their annual Digital Fabrication Shootout. Guess who’s also in the Shootout? We are! Check it out!
We’ve started shipping with nylock nuts. For most folks, this won’t make a huge difference, but it does add a level of security from having the M3 nuts back off over time, especially if you use your Mill One all the time. We try to keep finding ways to improve our products, of course, even if they’re small changes!
If you want to get an Anti Backlash Nut Kit, use the coupon code “10ABL” at checkout to get $10USD off the kit. The code will work until Nov 30!
Github can be confusing, especially if you’re not a software developer. For the uninitiated, Github is a repository commonly used by software developers to share and collaborate on projects, as well as provide version control over the project being developed. That being said, it can be a little confusing to navigate. You can still find our stuff on Github but it will be out of date.
To make things more approachable, we’ve taken many of the files you need to build your own Sienci Mill One and put them on Thingiverse. You can also find a lot of other files, including designs and sample gcode on our Thingiverse profile as well.
For the rest of our open source files, make sure to check out https://sienci.com/resources/hardware_resources/open-source/ to get all of the files you need to build or modify a Mill One! We have started to add community contributions, so if you have anything you’d like us to add, make sure to get in touch with us!
In other news, we’ve welcomed our 300th member to our Sienci Mill One Group! Make sure to join if you’re interested to stay in the loop for the latest developments in the community.
Hey everyone! Just a reminder that the contest will be closing in a week!
To enter:
1) Share project photos and videos on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram with the tag #siencilabs
2) Share speeds and feeds and other tips and tidbits in the description for extra points.
3) Top three of our favorite projects will win prizes!
If you have been following Tom Salanderer and his livestream on the Mill One, you’d know that he finished up that livestream without getting to the milling part. Well, he’s gotten back on the horse and got the Mill One up and running in this new livestream!
So, some good results with the Mill One for this first run. We’re looking forward to seeing the results for some of the new things he makes with the machine, and it’s pretty cool to know that this is the first desktop CNC machine to be on his channel (besides the MedelMax 3D printer he put a spindle head on).
Hey everyone, we have made some small updates to the XZ gantries and electronics holders to make the Mill One slightly better. These improvements have been made to improve ease of manufacturing.
XZ gantries:
We have changed the spacing slightly on the gantry to allow for more freedom of adjustment for the v wheels. Some users may have noticed that there is not a lot of room to tighten down on the v wheels. We have had two different batches of aluminum having come from two different sources. Thus some users have angle aluminum that is slightly wider than the first batch which reduces the amount of space to adjust the v wheels.
If you received a Mill One in the past two weeks, you will have received the latest version of the XZ gantry.
Electronics enclosure:
We have made a small change to the size of the plastic around the notch that holds the cover on the electronics enclosure to make it much more difficult to break. You can find the latest model here: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2288412
