Category: General News

It has been a really intense few weeks and I have not had the time to post anything new.

I have made a few new updates on the design that improve the performance of the machine.

1. We have switched the bed material to 1/2″ PVC that lets us countersink the bolts and eliminates the need to thread the plates. PVC is also more cost friendly and easier to machine than aluminum. Something that I like about PVC as well is the fact that if you accidentally mill through your sacrificial bed layer for cut out milling, your endmill is not going to suddenly hit a harder surface than what you were cutting above (if you are milling something softer than aluminum.
2. Rather than magnetically attaching our clear dust guards/shields, we have added groves to the frame so that it can slot in. This design eliminates the unsightly magnets and metal contacts, which means fewer parts to deal with. Also, the groove secures the dust guard in all directions except up, which eliminates the chance of it falling off forward like it occasionally did with the magnetic guards.
3. The frame now has holes where you can use brackets to assemble the frame. A multi-piece frame lets us bring down the shipping box size over a one piece frame.

During the past week or so, we have done a few cool things as well.

We got a chance to tour Tiercel Technology, who contacted us to help us with designing our machine to be manufactured. They were awesome and gave us a lot of ideas to improve our design.

We also went to the Kitchener Market to show off our machine and sell some of the things we milled to prove that artists can mill things with our machine and to make money. We weren’t there to make money, but we sold a few things and made $22.

At the Market, we also met Grant Greenfield from the KW Woodworking and Craft Centre. He showed me around this week and gave me a box of walnut wood to mill! He’s a great fellow.

We received an extra $1600 in funding from the University today in the mail. We are still waiting on $2500 to come in from the Engineer of the Future Trust.

At this current moment, we have 2 of our 5 pre-production models claimed. Order yours now to get your hands on the first batch of machines. If you can wait, stay tuned for our Kickstarter!

It is late now and I must go sleep. Thank you for your support! Goodnight everyone!

No rapid prototyping tool is complete without an awesome software package! We’re happy to let you guys know that we will be working with Onshape to provide you with easy to use and powerful programs that will help you create 3D models and control the Sienci Mill.

Onshape is the first and only full-cloud 3D CAD system that lets everyone on a design team work together using any web browser, phone, or tablet.

Onshape was built from scratch for the way today’s engineers, designers and manufacturers really work, giving them secure and simultaneous access to a single master version of their CAD data without the hassles of software licenses or copying files.

How do we know Onshape is easy to use? We’ve had people with no previous CAM experience create gcode and get milling using our machine in only a few minutes through an addon app called Kiri:Moto.

After trying out the program and loving it, we reached out and got in contact with Joe Dunne and worked on creating a strategic partnership. He is super awesome.

Check out Onshape here: www.onshape.com

and Kiri:Moto here: grid.space/kiri

We spend most of the day at the machine shop testing the Sienci Mill One with different pieces of scrap material. The materials we tested milling on include wood, plastic, and aluminum. Check out the pictures to see the results!

Daniel from Botfeeder came by today and dropped a couple of rolls of 3D printer filament for us to give away. Want a chance to win a 1kg roll of premium filament? Subscribe to our mailing list (http://eepurl.com/b7DMhH), like us on Facebook (www.facebook.com/siencilabs) and follow us on Twitter (www.twitter.com/siencilabs) to get a chance to win.

Botfeeder makes high quality, premium PLA, ABS, Filastic (flexible), and Filaglow (glowing) filament in Taiwan.

We’ll be drawing our winner at the beginning of August, so make sure to sign up soon!

We put together the machine using the new frames and started carving a couple of things.

Here’s a picture of our progress with a 3D carving of a crater on the lunar surface:

According to our tests, we can achieve precision of about +/- 0.03mm in wood, which is slightly less than the thickness of a human hair. We’re still making a couple of adjustments to the machine, so hopefully that number will go down.

Due to some bearing wobble and flex in the XZ gantry, milling aluminum has been a bit tricky and the finish is not great. We’ll be milling the XZ gantry from steel or aluminum (it’s currently acrylic) as planned in the design which should help stiffen up the machine.

Chris has also been putting together a new 3D printer using the angle aluminum rail systems, and so far things look awesome. The design for the Y and Z axis is more or less complete and all that is left is to make the X axis, mount the printing bed, wire it up, and start printing!

I went to go pick up a set of frames milled by a CNC machine in Brampton, ON from Sawdust and Noise today as I was heading back from the Maker Festival Launch Party.

Why do we mill our frames using a $90,000 CNC machine? These CNC machines can achieve extremely high levels of precision (+/- 0.001″) that is needed to make our desktop CNC machines precise as well.

Tim just started a Twitter account to give you updates on everything that is going on.

Follow us at @SienciLabs!

Tim and I had a great time at the showcase yesterday. Gave out a lot of free timbits and business cards, and we certainly got a lot of interest in our product and company!

Oh and by the way, we updated our design. It’s has a much stronger frame, which means faster feedrates, better quality finish, and a more durable machine.

Hey guys, we just got confirmation that we will have a booth at the Toronto Maker Festival. Feel free to come by to check out our machine and chat!

The Toronto Maker Festival is happening on July 9th and 10th. It’s a free event open to everyone at the Reference Library. More details are coming out soon, and we’ll make sure to update you as time goes by.

I also wanted to mention that we will also have a booth at the Startup Showcase hosted by the Entrepreneurship Society at UWaterloo at the University of Waterloo’s Student Life Centre. The event is on Thursday, from 11am to 3pm, so if you are in the area, come by to say hi as well!