the woodgineer

Worx Maker X Review – WX988

June 28, 2021 by The Woodgineer Leave a Comment

When I found out about the Worx maker X line of multitools I was extremely excited. Worx giving me a free set to review may have just pushed me over the edge!

They sent me the WX988 maker combo kit which comes with the rotary tool and soldering iron and uses the same battery pack all the Worx tools use.

Which is fantastic as I already have a whole bunch of Worx tools and really like them!

*Maybe I love Worx tools a little too much…*

Included in the kit is the usual battery and quick battery charger – I already have about 5 of these and they are massive but a smaller one is available if you want to consider making this a travel tool.

There’s the instructions of course. Worx always give a really good set of instructions.

And a lovely little tool kit of rotary bits for the rotary tool. There’s polishers, cutters, diamond burs and even some sanding tools and grinders – nice little start kit with most stuff the average crafter would need.

I’m already fairly stocked on bits though.

The main drive thingy itself, battery just pops in nice and simple and really light and really small even with the battery so potentially good for an everyday carry or camping gear. There’s a good 1.2 metre long cable on here and it looks like its braided too so should last even if you accidentally nick it with your tool.

The Rotary Tool

The rotary tool uses a 3 pin din style connector that’s keyed so you can’t plug it in incorrectly.

*The keyed connector so you cant plug it in wrong*

Much like similar tools out there has a button you can lock the spindle on to change the tool and a little chuck and collet. It looks like it fits the fairly standard 3.2mm or 1/8^th bits that most tools take and indeed that’s what it comes with, nice.

Sadly it doesn’t fit my Dremel collets due to the inside diameter of the tub but the thread however is the same as a Dremel so you could use a mini Jacobs chuck or switch out the collar.

Bits only need to be hand tightened but there is a flat on the chuck and a little spanner included to give it some extra grip if you need it.

It says in the manual it does 5000 to 35000 rpm which is again what you expect for this type of tool and the speed is controlled from this little knob here.

It’s a shame it doesn’t have a speed control or even an on/off control on the tool itself as you would normally be holding something in one hand and with the tool in the other. This is probably a feature I would pay more for if they had it available.

The power button releases the hounds! No it turns the thing on and off obviously.

Oh and its torquey, jumps in my hand and not surprising there’s a nice brushless motor inside that’s pretty powerful for its size.

Its light and its comfortable to hold too.

I also suspect this won’t be as powerful as my foredom by a long shot but….its not meant to compare with a tool like that and my big foredom is not easy to take those outside.

Oh I can just imagine now, child playing on the tramapoline and the wife bringing me a pimms while I do some carving in the garden on a hot sunny day…..

So thats exactly what I did; took it out to the garden to do some of the most relaxing power carving I’ve ever done!

*Power carving a Colin the Caterpillar Face in the Garden*

Not content with some wood carving I tried some diamond burrs and did a little rock carving! 🙂

Soldering Iron & Wood Burner

Now before I get carried away lets give the soldering iron a go.

Its not just a soldering iron I might add – it comes with some adapters that turn it into a little wood burning tool and comes with a few different shapes of nibs. Sadly they seem to use a different thread size to the standard weller bits but still this is pretty nifty.

The soldering iron tip it comes with is pretty good but it doesn’t seem to fit my standard Antex, weller or TS100 bits and Worx don’t seem to do a spare currently. Hopefully this is something they will do as without them, this thing is only going to last as long as the tip.

Oh comes with a little stand too, that’s nice.

Turning it on it does need another push of the button on the tool itself which is a nice little safety feature.

And oh that heats up pretty fast, it has a small display like many modern irons showing the temp and it can adjust it anywhere from 200 to 480 degrees C

It also comes with what looks like a silicon sheath for extra protection so I’ve popped that on. Bit fiddly to do but worth it as you can hold the iron for a lot longer.

Heat up time there was about 25 seconds to get to 200 degrees which wasn’t as fast as advertised but certainly that’s plenty fast. It took just under 60 seconds to get to the full 480 degrees c.

It cools down from 480c in about 10 minutes so it can be cold enough to touch the end again.

Swapping the bits out is as simple as unscrewing the bit, being careful with the heating element there and sliding one of the attachments on with the tip screwed in.

Nice.

So I can imagine if you don’t already have a soldering iron, maybe you have a small desk as your maker area this could be a really really nice system but where it really shines is taking it on the go. You could take it camping or just out in the garden or really anywhere you like.

So it’s a nice day, lets take this thing outside!

Here’s a little soldering project that I’ve been putting off for ages – suddenly the motivation to finish it while I sit in the sun with the birds chirping away its not so bad. It’s a plug that needs adding to this transformer so I can test out some LED panels.

Could do with a smaller tip but this is pretty good.

Summary

So my final thoughts on this tool system? Would I take it tomb raiding with me?

*Yes – I would take it on an adventure to find the lost ark*

Some of the downsides are the incompatibility with other tools or lack of spares but this is no biggy, the rotary tool will accept any 3mm bit you can think of and it wouldn’t stop me buying one if I needed to. If I had a choice though, I might give the soldering iron a miss just because of the lack of replacement tips at this time but at the same time it makes a good emergency or site soldering iron.

However, for what it is – I absolutely love it and while it’s no replacement for a top of the line soldering iron or my foredom it’s not trying to be and it works really well. I love that I could put a more powerful battery on and carve away for hours and I love that I don’t have to clean up my mess by carving outside.

Thanks you Worx for sending me this, I think during the summer especially its going to get a lot of use!

The Maker X system is out now on amazon and I’ve popped some affiliate links in this video description so please check them out. If you do end up buying one I get a tiny cut of the sale and you don’t pay any more – win win!

https://amzn.to/3w06oKB

If you have any questions for me or Worx on the product please pop them in the comments below or on my video and as always I’ll try to get round to answering every comment.

Can I Convert a 3D Printer into a CNC?

June 8, 2020 by The Woodgineer Leave a Comment

Well yes, I did and this is the video. I turn an old Prusa i3 into a budget CNC with a spindle kindly donated by Banggood. Its not a bad little machine for the cost and will cut wood, plastics, arcylric and even just about handle aluminium (with issues) Check out the video here and see how I did!

The 3D printer I’ve a few years now just sitting in the shed
as I have my nice Lulzbot Taz 3 so its about time I gave it a new lease of life.

It was a good printer for its time and as I built it myself I’m very familiar with the design so it’ll lend itself perfectly to this project.

My first thought as I’m sure many have considered before, there isn’t much difference between a 3D printer and a small CNC machine.

They typically both have small stepper motors that drive a tool end of some kind along several axis to reproduce a digital file.

3D printers do additive manufacturing using a plastic extruder usually and CNC machines a rotary cutting tool to do subtractive manufacturing by carving away the unwanted material.

Surely it’s as simple as swapping out the extruder with the spindle right?

*bad idea*

On both a CNC or 3D printer something needs to tell the motors exactly what to do.

In this case an old RAMPS board with an Arduino mega controls the various motor directions as well as telling the extruder motor how much plastic to squirt out and when.

This would probably work just fine with a bit of reconfiguration.

Unboxing and Testing the Spindle

Lets look at the spindle first. It comes well packaged and 2 has 2 short wires with bare ends as well as a nice aluminium mounting block.

If you want to check it out you can buy it here:

https://www.banggood.com/custlink/DDDDwICBHj

This code will also get you 15% off: BGMotor003

You also get a power supply and variable speed controller allowing the spindle to be ran at anywhere between 1-3000 RPM.

I knew immediately the cables would not be long enough so I soldered on some additional length and then set about testing the spindle to make sure it worked well.

And it did. Amazingly well in fact.

I did have some trouble with the connections, partly because the PSU labels were in Chinese but this was nothing a quick google couldn’t fix. The pic below shows what wires go where.

Testing the Old Printer

I needed to know the old 3D printer still worked after all it had been in a damp shed for a few years now.

It sorta worked and the print is recognisable it’s the logo from old makerspace So Make It.

Probably needs recalibrating but I didn’t bother with all that as I was about to completely reconfigure this machine.

Plus I must admit I was a little intimidated by the tidy wiring that I would need to deal with.

(it was a state)

For now I’m going to run the spindle in isolation at a set speed using the provided power supply and speed controller rather than doing anything clever like letting the electronics handle the speed.

It’s just one less thing to go wrong!

Reconfiguring

The glass print bed is great for holding down your 3D prints but the idea of a rotating carbide endmill crashing down on it scared me a little so I knew this had to go.

Look at that image from before, an Ikea mirror tile, this thing is pretty sophisticated!

I got rid of it and replaced it with a piece of plywood so its cheap enough to cope with a few holes and be replaced if necessary as well as being fairly dimensionally stable.

The extruder also had to be removed as well as all the associated wiring like the heater cables and temperate probes which made things a bit easier to deal with.

The banggood spindle comes with a nice mounting bracket that means I just need to drill a few holes in the existing mounting plate.

But I’m impatient and a bodger so I used some of this awesome Gorilla tape to make a temporary mounting.

My sophisticated Spindle Mounting System

There. Looks proper good that as you can see! 😉

The current firmware on this board was on old version of Marlin since as awesome as Marlin is, it was designed for 3D printers not CNC mills.

Ordinarily you would expect something on this machine called GRBL.

I used some firmware that already been written called GrblforRAMPS by Per Ivar Nerseth but had limited sucess and messed around with the latest Marlin build with some tweaks.

This was easy enough to download from Github and install onto the board using the Arduino IDE.

As there is no longer an extruder or hot bed as well as all the temperature probes that come with that, I removed any references to them in the code.

Initial Testing

I used Repetier to drive the machine as that what I used on this printer before and I know it works. Its free and fairly easy to use.

And for the first cut I inserted a 3mm end mill piece also from banggood.

https://www.banggood.com/custlink/DGvyjLR317

I’ve not used any of their tool bits before but have found them to be great value if you don’t mind waiting a little longer for them to arrive.

Some scrap pine was stuck down to the bed with carpet tape.

I love this stuff, double sided, cheap and grips really well but not so well that you cant remove stuff afterwards.

OK what could go wrong I thought…..

Well a lot it turns out. My steps per inch was off and I had a major crash of the spindle into the bed causing lots of smoke 🙁

This was a quick fix in the code using the Arduino IDE

Seems to work OK.

I used Estlcam to generate the toolpaths as it can generate Marlin compatible gcode and again, its free and easy to use.

I still wasn’t happy however and things were just not working as well as I had hoped.

Changing the RAMPs Electronics

I really wanted to make this work with the printers existing electronics and it kinda’ does. It’s not easy to reconfigure however and the software I’ve got loaded is nearly five years out of date.

I could probably muddle through but there’s an easier way.

I ditched the RAMPs board and the Arduino and switched to a dedicated CNC board that runs the latest builds of GRBL, runs 3 axis and is of course available from Banggood (sorry if this reads like a giant ad, I just buy a lot of my stuff from them!)

Adding a Proper Spindle Mount

The flex in my tape mounted spindle was pretty bad during that though so I should probably make a more serious mounting bracket.

I measured up a bit of walnut, cut to size and drilled holes to fit the existing x carriage and holes for the aluminium mounting block.

Fantastic, that looks a little more professional, I could almost call this thing a fancy name and launch a kickstarter.

Final Tests

It made sense to use a shape I’m familiar with so I used the makerspace logo again, but scaled it up a bit so you can see the detail with a 3mm bit. I didn’t have anything smaller at this time.

I thought some limewood would be ideal for the first cuts since its fairly soft and I made sure it was extra secure on the bed this time.

A Recognisable Cut of the Southampton Makerspace Logo

You can see from the image I have a recognisable cut! The Southampton makerspace logo (the shape of a spanner)

I switched from Estlcam to Inventables Easel as its free and extremely easy to use, much simpler than anything else I’ve used so far.

You can just I just pick what material you’re, using, tell it how big it is, add a pattern or something that you want to cut, tell it the depth and can generate the tool paths.

I also switched to something that’s designed to run a CNC, the openbuilds control software. Again this is free and easy to use.

Oh and you can control your machine with your phone too which is pretty cool.

I just move my spindle to a reference point, say the bottom left corner on top of what I want to cut, set this as my home position and then start.

I then tried to something a bit deeper this time, a smiley face 😊 You can see from the images it turned out OK!

I then tried a stamp. I used rubber material at first designed for laser cutting but this was too soft and didn’t work well so I switched to something a little harder; linoleum.

That worked great and made a functional stamp.

I tried acrylic with a little cut of Olaf from Frozen. It was a bit too melty as I was using cheap dremel bits but still was a good recognisable cut.

The final test was aluminium.

I found it cut but bit of a weird step feature which I knew was not missing steps or a sliped belt as the artifact was not repeated. After some comments from my subscribers I think this was down to the flex of the bed.

But it cuts! – so success! (sorta)

Summary

So I learned loads making this thing, for light cuts and engraving its actually a useful machine but you can see from the wobble its not really suitable as a serious CNC.

I can say the spindle does not need to be changed, this things pretty good for a small machine. Banggood do more powerful ones as well if you need it.

I bet I could modify some stuff to improve things though.

I’ve considered adding some powerful motors, changing the plastic parts out for something more rigid, change the belts to lead screws and maybe redesign the structure to add to its rigidity.

No I’m not even that crazy when you can just buy a fairly well designed little machine for around £150-200

So thanks very much all for reading and please check out the video if you want to see some of the disasters and fun I had. If you have any questions please shoot!