As of this evening there’s officially an ATC-spindle equipped Sienci Labs Altmill in the stable! It’s the 4x4 version, with the pwncnc ATC spindle. It runs grblHAL as the firmware.
This thread will serve as a development log as we work towards ATC setup and integration. Much more to follow!
Update time!
I’ve added a shelf using the provided holes for some scrap 2x4 ledgers and a sheet of 3/4" baltic birch as the shelf for rigidity, along with some cable management.
And with that out of the way, it’s time to fire it up for the first chips!
With the T tracks installed, it’s time to cut the 6.125" MDF spacers, then face the table to the spindle.
Some updates - spoilboard installed and surfaced with MillMage. I also have both the touchoff probe and the corner finding probe working! Building out some macros has been fun, and has definitely highlighted the need for us to provide macro templates when possible, because not everyone is going to know how to write GCode by hand for the common macros (go to machine corner, tool change position, etc)
Pocketed down .5" .375" diameter bores with a 1/8" 2fl flat endmill, then drilled thru with that same endmill. Slats between the T-tracks were fastened down with two strips of 2" wide double sided tape along the long edges, then burnished down with a hammer, and finally screwed in with the particle board screws.
Altmill T slot Table - Spoilboard Inserts.mage (31.1 KB)
I spent a little time and connected my CW-5202 chiller to the IOT port on the PWNCNC ATC VFD with an IOT relay - now, when the VFD turns on, the chiller does too. Nice!
Made some signage today and poked through the ATC macros now available from Sienci in gSender 1.6.0-Edge-1 - 📌 Release Thread - Sienci Community Forum
There are some pretty awesome improvements in there. I’d like to get my spindle tool changing, but am looking into what IO is required to the SLB-EXT controller. The Sienci first-party spindle appears to use a daughterboard that is mounted in the spindle to handle the tool presence detection and actuating the solenoid/dust blast, so figuring out how that is wired into the macros/board will be critical for me to proceed.
Hey Colin
Are the MM stickers on the spindle going be available for sale , id def throw couple of my machine to promote MM in my videos 
Eventually!
What are the chances of an ESS option.
The ESS does does not do motion planning - it needs Mach to operate as the controller, and that’s a whole different ball game than being a gcode sender like MillMage.
So, unlikely.
I have replaced the PWNCNC spindle with the first-party Sienci ATC.
This is for a few reasons - first, like most devices, good hardware is nothing without good firmware (and software, for that matter). While the PWNCNC spindle certainly can do the job - the tightly integrated ATC offering direct from Sienci takes no integration effort on my part. Install was smooth, the dust boot is excellent, and the tool rack setup (and additional awesome features, like the tool-stud sensor to prevent crashes) is flawless.
I used GSender for the setup process, but am operating the machine entirely in MillMage. The wizard in GSender is very well-developed, and is recommended for the ATC setup - Sienci are the experts here and have built out the tools to make the setup a breeze. May as well use them!
In MillMage, I’ve set up the Device Profile to have Touch Probe enabled, ATC enabled, and made a few macros and G-Code flavour updates to rely on the firmware to perform all the critical actions like:
$341| $341=0 | Normal | M6 is handled manually; no automatic tool-length probing |
|---|---|---|
| $341=1 | Manual touch-off | Tool change, then manually touch off/probe |
| $341=2 | Manual touch-off at G59.3 | Moves to the stored tool-sensor location, then manual probing |
| $341=3 | Automatic touch-off at G59.3 | Automatically probes the tool after each tool change |
| $341=4 | Ignore M6 | Ignores tool changes entirely |
Macros
Along the way we found some bugs, and summarily crushed them with the help of our lovely Devs. As we approach the release of MillMage 0.9 much of the team is in their respective workshops using MillMage Pro’s new features, and validating bug fixes to make 0.9 as stable as we can.
As of writing, I’m around 3 hours into a 10 hour 3D Relief carve - the longest I’ve ever done. Initially there were a few false starts that I attribute to macOS’s USB fault tolerance (or lack thereof) and static from my dust collection.
When connecting directly from a Macbook Pro to the SLB-EXT controller of the Altmill I was having intermittent USB disconnections, or so it seemed. I both swapped to a USB hub with it’s own USB controller onboard (an Anker dongle) and ran stranded copper wire between my dust collector, spindle, machine frame, and the building’s ground. One of those seems to have been the fix, and the spindle’s been turning for about 2 hours solid at this moment.
The current project is a topo map pulled from Topomiller of a local mountain range, carved into a ~24" Cedar round, which was chainsaw cut from a large burl.
Using the Facing toolpath, I decked the top and bottom planes to thickness. Using a combination of MDF scraps pinned down with composite nails, and the world’s jankiest t-slot clamps.
Then added a little water, to see the colour.
Next step was to program the job. This will get a 12" x 16" piece of 0.25" thick glass, so I designed a 0.25" x 0.25" pocket to fit that glass, +0.030" for clearance, and added dogbone corners, plus a tiny .010" fillet on those sharp dogbone corners.
3D Surfacing Softwood Template.mage (13.3 KB)
