Rockler 'SHARK' CNC Routers

Rockler is a large-ish wood working brick & mortar shop, and sometime around 2010 they came out / rebranded their own tiny-shop size cnc wood router.

The controller for this CNC was getting spotty and the software support was also a decade ancient. It also lacked some of the more simple things like axes-limit switches, or spindle speed control. While I am a big fan of Linux CNC, this router is small, and using a medium sized desktop seems like overkill. I'm going to evaulate off the shelf options for 3 and 4 axis control and give this machine a new lease on life.

Making a cart for the router

Wood routers generate a lot of wood swarf, tying a vacuum system directly to the lil CNC seems like a great way of keeping things from getting out of hand. Having the router on a cart also means it's not fixed to a table taking up space and can be carted off based upon need.

Making some brackets

Waterjetting and plasma cutting are a great way to crank out 2D brackets, but if you don't immediatley have access to either, you can manually make brackets fairly eaisly with hand tools. Paper and doublesided tape really work wonders for making fairly consistant parts. I used 3M thin doublesides tape [link] and used a solidworks drawing as the template. Normally when making a drawing file, I remove the crosshairs from holes, but this time they are really helpful to allign a nailpunch. Before taping down, use IPA or a solvent to clean off any grease or film from the sheetmetal surface. For these parts I'm using 1/8" thick 6061 aluminum sheet stock. Make sure the solidworks drawing scaling is 1:1 and your printer is also set to 100% scaling.

Following the lines

With the paper tacked down enough to not rip into pieces, the real trick is taking your time with the bandsaw. This is a blade that's more appropriate for straight cuts, so I did not really attempt any of the radius's. It's important to try and have adequate lighting on the cutting side to help you stay alligned.

Drilling Holes

Realistically, I should have used a smaller starting bit for this, but the large bit seemed to float quite well and allign for the punched allignment points. The paper does get quite ripped up around these holes, and for steel, you really should be using some lubricant so it will get further destroyed. The thin 3M tape realy does a great job holding the paper on for this short run. To cleanup the edge finish, a chamfering bit is used. While I would normally use this for countersinking, it does a great job of cleaning up drilling remnants.

Sanding

Finally the last bit was to cleanup the edges on a 3" wide belt sander. This makes quick work of the radius's that we couldnt quite get to with the bandsaw.

Concluding Remarks:

• How did this thing work without limit switches

• point 1

• point 2

• point 3