Table of Contents

Jaxen CNC Operating Guide

Visit Jaxen's homepage here.

This page documents procedures on Jaxen that should be followed when doing any projects. Purposes of this guide:

This page is specifically for Jaxen, although lots of general info about milling applies to other VHS CNC machines.

Started 2026 March by ColinL

See other member-written guides.


Jaxen Training Program Overview

The Training Program for Jaxen will teach you all the following skills:

Housekeeping:

Milling:

CAM:

CNC:


General Process of Using Jaxen For Your Projects:

The roadmap:


Basic Reminders

Startup Procedure

Shutdown Procedure

If you don't do this after you're done, you will be slapped on the wrist :)


Basic Milling Procedures

Jaxen is really just a manual mill with electrical controls added. Most mill skills won't be covered in this guide, but here's some important ones:

Installing Collets

It is very easy to drop bits when doing this. They chip when they fall! You need to touch 3 points of contact when installing collets:

Put lower fingers on the bit, upper fingers on the collet. When installing a collet/chuck:

Always ensure the allen key is out of the top screw of the drawbar after tightening!!!

The “draw bar” mates with threads on the top of the collet.

Squaring Stock

Identify the flattest faces to use as clamping faces, then face the roughest first. Next, put this newly faced face against the jaws, and face the next face, 90* from the first. However, when clamping, use a round stock (rod) against the unfinished face to prevent it from altering squareness. Continue using these principles. For the last 2 sides, can use an endmill bit to make faces perpendicular to the spindle axis.

Top-hat method:

Good for when you don't need fully-faced sides, but complete top and bottoms. (Technically this method cannot perfectly face the full sides, but it's practically unnoticeable)

Can use a chamfering tool for final step as an alternative to de-burring.

Facing/Surfacing

If you climb-cut a face around the edges, it won't produce a burr, because the burr is sucked inwards and naturally cut off.

Speed and feed resources

Always set both cutting speed and feed rate properly to avoid tool damage and poor results.

TODO need to link a metric version!!

https://www.autodrill.com/resources/recommended-tool-speed-chart Notes: above assumes: HSS tools, appropriate coolant (although says you can reduce RPM by 25% to not use coolant in “most metals”, stainless requires more reduction).

https://www.carbidedepot.com/formulas-turning.htm

Slots

For plunging, you need an endmill with center-cutting ability (no center hole). When plunging, the bit will vibrate, causing hole size to be slightly larger than the bit's size. Width of slot is dependent on rigidity of machine. Blondiehacks example: 1/4“ cutter, 1/8” steel plate. For ideal finish, make a slot in 3 passes: 1 smaller rough pass, then go back around the edges to get final dimension (3thou is a good amount to take off)

Blind Slots:

'Blind' means a hole that does not go all the way through the material.

These are tricky, because chips fill up the hole, and ruin the quality of the cut. You need good coolant/chip removal. It gets worse for deeper slots.


Workholding System

Like any mill, there's infinite ways to hold your workpiece. Here are some examples on Jaxen:

Why not always use the vice?

If you're going to be milling most sides of your part to be non-flat, you can't clamp your part in a vice. You'll need to hold it by it's middle somehow.

Also, when milling large flat pieces, the vice does not support the middle, letting them flex. This can reduce the quality of the surface finish. From experience, if something is more than about 20 times wider than thick (considering the stiffness of the material), it'll start bending too much when surfaced.

Examples: gears, oddly-shaped flat parts, decorative items, etc.

By using a standard hole, this has 2 functions:

You MAY need a custom mount if:

You will definitely need a custom mount for your part if:

The standard mounting method currently is M6 threaded holes spaced 10mm apart, passing through non-threaded holes in your workpiece. Recommended to use hex bolt heads so that the head can be as large as possible without needed to use a wrench because it would hit adjacent bolt heads.

Preparing workholding for your project:


Tool Bit Examples

Examples of types available for Jaxen:

Hobbyist uses generally shouldn't use carbide tips, since it has stricter limitations for feeds/speeds. Instead, use high-speed steel.

4 flute is better for cutting steel, 2 flute is good for aluminum/brass.

Corn cob bit is for roughing, can feed faster.

TODO make into table

R8 collet > 1/8 bit - examples: V bits 20deg, gold corncob endmills,

R8 collet > 1/4 bit - examples: yellow ball nose

R8 collet > 1/2 bit - examples: endmills

R8 collet > 5/8 bit - examples: endmills

R8 Tormach adapter > 3/4 bit - Tormach type toolholding - examples: Tormach edge finder

R8 Tormach adapter > ER20 Tormach nut. > ER20 6mm collet > 6mm bits

ER16 collet > 6mm bit - examples: 6mm endmills

ER20 collet??? > 3/16 bit - example: V bit 90deg


Cutting Fluids:

Here's a sample of different lube and chip control methods compared side-by-side:

The “chip clearing” is referring to using a vacuum with narrow nozzle at the tooltip to continually suck the chips up. (this is in experimental stages with Jaxen, but can be done).


Material Tips:

316 Medical Grade stainless steel is used for food/body safe items.

Flat stock has internal stresses that cause a phenomenon where the part may warp in a direction parallel to the surface. Cast stock avoids this problem.


Machine Maintenance:

If you find yourself using Jaxen more than 10hr/month, then it would be nice if you can contribute to maintaining the machine. Otherwise, it is a fairly solid machine.

Maintenance involves:

General Maintenance Tips:

Generally, grease goes in harder-to-reach places, oil is for ways.

For lubricating gears or parts that have high forces between them (normal to the surface that the grease is on, not sliding across): use High-pressure grease. Blondiehacks reccommends: MAG1 High Temp Disc Brake Wheel Bearing Grease Lithium Complex https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8tx-cBulno

Never use acidic cleaners (Clorine, bleach) because it causes rust!!


CAM in FreeCAD

The following is a general process for setting up CAM for your project.

Very detailed video including CAM operations, which these steps are mostly based on:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7nBCaV5J0Ts

After building your “body” in FreeCAD, you're ready for CAM!

Jobs

Tool Setup

Next, you need to setup “tools” (such as a milling bit) you are going to use. You should already have specific tools in mind, since your model features need to be constructable, and will depend on the tools.

Job Milling Parameter Entry

Now to make your operations / toolpaths!

In this small tutorial, we are going to create a simple surfacing/facing job, to prepare stock for a later project.

Engraving Tips

Engraving in FreeCad and converting to toolpaths can be tricky because the methods have changed significantly with recent updates of FreeCAD.

The following is for FreeCad 1.1 !!!

Jaxen training demo project

Skills/operations that will be part of the demo project:

General Tips


CNC

After you completed your CAM setup, you'll be left with a bunch of G-Code programs. What are we supposed to do with that? Read on!

We first have to do some setup to bridge the physical and digital worlds:

Manual Positioning with G-Code

You'll be doing a lot of manual G-code to setup the machine.

MDI = Manual Data Input box.

There are two types of linear moves that you can do:

A G0 is used for a “rapid move” (at the machine's native feed rate). The controller will decide the best way to get to destination. For example, it will always move Z up first before X/Y.

A G1 is used for cutting (interpolated).

Note that all GCode distances depend on what mode you're in. Either:

In UCCNC, you can see the current mode in the white text just above the MDI box.

Cheatsheet

The most used G-Codes you'll need for typical operation are:

First specify your positioning mode if not already:

Then move:

Workspace manipulation:

Spindle set to 1000 RPM:

Workspaces:

Before you can run GCode, the most important concept is telling UCCNC where your workpiece is relative to the machine's coordinate system. You have to do this every time you move your workpiece! (unless you have a system that positions it automatically).

WARNING: when axis is homed, any error corrected will cause all workspaces to shift by that amount!

DO NOT HOME the machine between operations!

This is because all user-defined workspaces are relative to/nested inside Workspace #0.

However, they are not all nested within each other consecuitively. Example: Workspace #2 is not affected by workspace #1, only Workspace #0.

Currently, the hard-limits on Jaxen are providing about 0.005mm repeatability. You can see this when you see the machine coordinates being non-zero as the machine stops on the limit switches during homing.

There is one more offset: the “tool offset” which is nested in every workspace. It only affects Z.

Note that this is not the same as “tool radius compensation”.

In UCCNC:

In the “Main” window 3D view, the blue pointer represents the origin of the SELECTED workspace.

The yellow is the actual toolbit location relative to the selected workspace.

The following is a visual capturing various depths that you'll need to be familiar with in the CAM and milling processes:

Setting Workspace Coordinates:

This concept is the core of CNC. There's many ways to do this, but the key concept is moving the spindle manually to known positions relative to your workpiece (like the same point as the origin in CAD), then saving that position in UCCNC. This is how you tells the machine where your workpiece is. It must be done before you can execute CAM GCode.

You will be setting your workspace often! Generally, every time you move your workpiece, or change G-Code jobs with different origin points.

Almost always, we only need to setup workspace #1, which is referred to as “G54”. In the CAM software, usually it will say what workspace # you are exporting for (you can't easily change after you export to GCode).

Touch-Off Procedure

This process is more of a hands-on skill that will be taught in person. It takes practice. You must be slow and careful not to crash the machine while doing this. The exact method will depend on:

The general steps are:

Now, your workspace coordinates match what you have in CAD, and you can move on to executing your operations!

Variations:

Practice!

How to get to the Tool Setter position

This little procedure is for using the tool setter. TODO to be put into a UCCNC macro

First, home all axes.

G54 (choose workspace #1 to be active)

G92 x0 y0 z0 (set workspace #1 origin to home position)

G90 (absolute positioning)

G0 x358 y112 z-150

More G-Code:

Great G-Code reference:

Marlin Firmware G-Code Reference

UCCNC G-Code Execution

It is highly recommended to first, raise the Z axis above your workpiece, then temporarily set the G54 workspace Z zero to this raised space. Tip: if you already set your Z zero when setting up your workspace, you can “copy” this into G55 (workspace #2) and then come back to it after testing your code! Alternatively, you can use a G0 command to translate Z by an exact amount that you can undo easily.

Whenever running your code in UCCNC, always do the following:

BE CAREFUL that the CYCLE START button actually starts from the current selected line! If you scrolled your file, or partially ran your code before, it will resume unpredictably, not restart!!

Using the 'RUN FROM HERE' Button in UCCNC

This button is really useful, because it allows you to run an operation/Gcode part way through, then resume it. You can even manually jog the mill between GCode, then resume. Or you can skip whole parts of files! This is really useful when you need to change workholding part way through an operation.

For best results, you should resume at the start of a line of GCode. For example, you shouldn't resume part-way through a line segment (a single G1). You can try, but it may not do the same thing as what was intended by the CAM job.

Think of the button like an inserted G1 command to “get setup for the next highlighted line”. UCCNC will move the tool to the start of the selected line. If you click CYCLE START without clicking RUN FROM HERE, the tool will simply move in the direction it was going before, but there's no guarantee it will follow the right path (if you moved it for example).

Steps:

Other GCode Commands

M6 = Tool change. Usually exported by FreeCAD, but ignored for our machine.

M3 sNNNN = turn on spindle AND set spindle RPM

Jaxen Exam

All answers to these questions are above on this page or will be explained explicitly in-person!!