Our New $10 000 Router!
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2019-05-06
·
2,666 words · ~13 min read
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ah you thought i meant a wireless router
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like for the internet get your mind out of the deep web
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today's video is about our fancy new cnc
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router that i hold on i know what you're about to
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say i will admit that here at Linus tech tips our track record for maker type
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projects isn't exactly pristine
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but the point is we want to get better now we could spend
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years honing our craft making mistakes
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learning from them and eventually becoming masters at working with our
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hands but instead of doing that we're going to
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build a robot to do all the difficult machining for us so here it is this is
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our four foot by four foot cnc router
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that cnc router part sent over to us and we're gonna walk you guys through
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how to build it and how to use it to do really cool stuff like make this memory
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express is the go-to place for your electronic needs and services in canada
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and they're opening a new store in victoria bc they're hiring for all
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positions so check them out at the link in the video description
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so here we've got 13 boxes that's maybe what like a ton worth of crap
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and we're gonna have to make all of that using
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a 244 page document and in the end hopefully we'll have a
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fully functional cnc router
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i guess we'll just start now
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they call this the industrial erector set and i don't know anyone who's an
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engineer definitely gets 80 20 boners so it makes sense
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this must be for the gantry that thing is huge
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so once this is tightened down on there that is not going to go
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anywhere at all putting the router table together is
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pretty straightforward thanks to the excellent included instructions you just
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join the extruded aluminum together using the anchor fasteners tighten them
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down and then repeat what feels like 10 000
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times extruded aluminum is actually great for
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machine frames because you can create extremely strong joints without giving
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up modularity so compared to a welded steel frame if we decided in the future
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that this router wasn't quite big enough for our needs expanding the bed is
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relatively simple this table is so
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freaking sturdy like holy crap i can like
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this thing is not going anywhere at all
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i guess that's why it's called the pro version holy crap
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precision linear rails are added to the sides of the table to give an excellent
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bearing surface then to make sure they run smoothly we just need to add a
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little bit of grease yay the gantry holds the spindle and moves
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around above whatever we decide we want to cut
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so from here we added the stepper motors and we were basically good to go
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mechanically onto the electronics
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so you guys have seen computer power supplies before but look at this guy
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holy crap so i'm just making this up
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because i don't actually know what everything is but i'm guessing that these two are
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power supplies we've got a board here that's going to
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be the controller that goes to your computer
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and each one of these is a stepper motor
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or it'll be an output to a stepper motor so we'll connect one to each one of
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those and they probably take fairly high voltages i'm not totally
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sure but this power supply right here is for
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one motor only and it's good for
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2200 watts that's wow there's not even a whole lot in
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there that's crazy that they can get all of
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that power in that small of a thing
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oh god that's heavy
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so this is going to be the real business end of the
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cnc that's good for three horsepower and 24
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000 RPM oh
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okay okay hey don't don't be a show-off i don't want you hurting yourself jeez
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yeah we're gonna have to move it too that'll be fun we're gonna need like six seven people
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to move this like comfortably oh yeah it's not gonna be a great time
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this end's not so bad but like is this all manual assembly like every
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one of these plates yeah
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how are their instructions really good i guess we should probably close that door
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everyone's being loud yeah guys we're filming here
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yeah the spindle on its own has a 2.2 kilowatt power supply
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what holy crap so to put that in perspective
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this motor consumes more power than even the
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beefiest gaming rig including its monitor and peripherals
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i'm gonna hit it and see what happens
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it's alive is this wood here because we're
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sacrificing it or no it's just a table this is okay
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really this is a table i would never have known that you had a
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table based on how many of the tools
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for this project ended up on the ground
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there's a little light that's turning on on this okay that's good i guess
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so the sensor is definitely working but i don't know if it's inputting into that
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i was like oh it'd be nice to see this stuff a bit big
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no so it turns out that if all we wanted to
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do was turn it on there was a switch that we needed to flip but that wasn't
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our biggest problem anyway so basically what we're doing here is i
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was an idiot and put the spindle and the whole gantry
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assembly on the wrong way so when it homes over here it's like a good foot
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off the table so we need to pick up this whole piece
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right here and flip it and that's why we have four
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dudes okay so one person just stop it
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from tilting all right that looks like me all right
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picking up the feather the feather forward okay all
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right do the twist which way anti-clockwise
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okay so i think me and john are going to have to hold it and you guys will have
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to go under oh my god
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okay watch fingers everybody
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now that everything is assembled correctly time to fire it up so now that it's all
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working let's take a look at our finished router now i'm sure many of you
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haven't seen one of these things in operation before
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how the heck does it cut things how does it get to one
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thousandth of an inch of cutting resolution basically
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code is sent from the computer here and then executed by the stepper motors
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which you'll find here here here and
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over there so those are the ones i alluded to earlier now
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a normal dc motor will rotate continuously when a voltage is applied
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more voltage means more faster which is great if you just want to go
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but it doesn't give you any control of the position
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stepper motors contain a stationary magnet attached to the output shaft with
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magnetic windings all around it so by energizing these electromagnets the
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internal magnet is attracted and aligns with them to move the motor one step the
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next set of electromagnets gets energized moving the shaft however far
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it is between electromagnets so our stepper motors have 200 electromagnets
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meaning that each full step is 1.8 degrees
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then that resolution can actually be doubled with half steps so that's where
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two electromagnets are energized to have the shaft move only half as far and then
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beyond that microstepping which relies on multiple electromagnets at different
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ratios can be used to further increase
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our resolution all of that lovely precision can be ruined though and very
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quickly by bad gears so right here we
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have a 3.2 to 1 gear reduction to increase our torque from five foot
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pounds to 16. this allows us to remove
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more material at a time but anytime there's gears involved
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backlash can quickly become an issue so backlash is the slop between two gears
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that causes a loss in precision when you reverse the direction experiencing
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something like this once in a run might only result in a couple thousandth of an
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inch of accuracy being lost but on a machine that will normally be changing
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direction hundreds of times while making a part
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all of those little errors would really add up so to combat this our gears are
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actually pre-loaded with a high stiffness spring right here this
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smashes the gears together preventing them from shifting about willy-nilly now
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of course our previous explanation of the instructions come from the computer
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wasn't exactly the best so let's take a closer look at where those
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come from because it's not quite as easy as just hitting
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go like on a 3d printer for some of our parts we'll use solidworks and hsm
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express to create the cad and toolpaths but we will also be using vcarve pro for
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other parts due to its greater ease of use in the software we end up having to
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define many parameters like how fast the
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router will cut for example we have to do this because
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well think about if you were using a handsaw
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you'd actually find yourself adjusting how fast you move your blade how hard
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you press and all kinds of little things intuitively based on how it feels
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but the thing is that this robot isn't going to back off if something's amiss
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and it will happily destroy a cutting tool or anything else in its way if you
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don't program it correctly that's actually one of the reasons that they have built-in safety stoppers that we
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have to wire up before we start doing anything so to make sure this doesn't
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happen the correct RPM for the cutter and how fast the spindle moves has to be
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calculated based on the force of the cutter from there those instructions are
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compiled and sent to the laptop that's connected to the router
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now down here we're running what's called mach3 which directly interfaces
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with the router and runs gcode a programming language for cnc machines
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and because this has all been pre-set up we should actually be able to just hit
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go once we are of course fully clear of the machine
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so right now what we're doing is we're giving it a known
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zero height is that correct yep okay cool
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i only know about these what my neighbor told me during scrapyard wars 2. next
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time it goes past and here it's going to be taking about a thou off so just clean
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this up are you ready yep boom
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i don't think what you're doing is really helping
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you might as well just get that out of there
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this poor laptop well hold on hold on at least get a shot
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of it if it's going to suffer it might as well all right go ahead
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well no don't scrape it back over it doesn't seem quite so you go through
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with the big bit yeah you get most of it done and then you come in and do the
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fine details got it the smaller one beautiful so where's our smaller bit
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uh it's in here
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and this is safe to just go right in there yep that's considered
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safe practice i want to make sure whatever we're doing in this video is what you're supposed to
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do it's pretty close okay
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yeah we definitely clearly need a better
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material capture solution here so is this the last thing on your wish list
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because this is one of the things you've been trying to get me to get since you
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started a metal lathe would really top it off
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and a tig welder we're at the point now where we can basically make anything out of acrylic
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though oh yeah okay
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or like any plastic like our dust collector is gonna be made out
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of this guy oh okay wow uh that sounds heavy
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is it considered safe for me to just reach in and grab this yep well you
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can't pick it up i can't oh it's double-sided taped down yeah what the
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crap uh okay i think we need to use not that
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gopro tape because this is ridiculous
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that stuff like how much did you use you could have used just like a tiny amount
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of it the world's most spectacular
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you put that much on yeah well i could have told you that was
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gonna happen yeah it broke wait no it didn't it did
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oh this is just some cleanup that we need to do
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yeah you could have put like this much times four or five and it wouldn't have
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gone anywhere and that my friends
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is about how this whole thing goes down so it does take a little bit of cleanup
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to get it uh to you know quite this
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stage but surely you guys can kind of see how we get there so
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we are to say we're really excited to make some crazy things with this would
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be a gross understatement
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we do still have a little bit of work to do before we can really go ham like
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there's the dust collector that is highly necessary um we're going
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to attach that to the cutting head and we're going to be making a spoil board
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that goes on the table for easier mounting
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but we're well underway and that's pretty much it for this so huge thanks
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to nathan from cnc router parts for sending this guy over and to rod from bs
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mods for giving us some extra advice and big thanks in advance to you
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for the awesome suggestions that you'll be leaving in the comments for projects
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that you guys want to see while you're at it by the way we actually need a name for our friend here
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because uh that joke at the beginning of this video um the router video hahaha
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get it well it's actually really confusing referring to this as the
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router around here so the top upvoted name in the comments below we're going
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to cut out a sign with that name we're going to mount it to the machine have
15:09
fun the massdrop xakg k7xx red edition
15:13
open-backed headphones featured their predecessor's legendary sound and build
15:17
quality which were both big hits with the audiophile community and some
15:21
additional tweaks the highs were boosted by an innovative flat wire voice coil
15:26
the mids were brought up to better balance the range and the lows were
15:29
raised by three decibels for an immersive sound this collaborative
15:33
design between mass drop and akg includes a custom ruby red colorway to
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help the aesthetic really pop from the competition as well as a 10 foot detachable cable
15:42
check them out now at the link in the video description
15:46
so thanks again for watching guys if you disliked this video you can hit that button but if you liked it hit like get
15:50
subscribed or maybe consider checking out where to buy the stuff we featured at the link in the video description
15:54
also down there is our merch store which has cool shirts like this one and our
15:57
community forum which you should definitely join