In the last six months,10 Things I’ve learned making my first 10K with my Winmax CNC Router.

Able to make over ten thousand dollars with my desktop CNC Router machine in my basement.

So a little background on my experience, I purchased this Winmax CNC Router machine two years ago. I don’t have any prior experience before that. I’m all self-taught here on youtube,so let’s jump right into it.

No.1, I’ve Invested Money Into Things That Have Made You Money.

I can’t tell you how critical this is to my success. I see all the shops out there, there’s some beautiful shops.

I want all the tools myself, but it’s really critical that I prioritize in buying things investing into my shop and things that return monetarily.

Now, there’s a lot of things that go into that everything can make you money. Everything can save you time, but prioritizing a list from top to bottom.

I’ve upgraded the z-axis to the hdz. I’ve purchased the bit setter other than that. It’s a completely stock machine.

No.2 Designs That Can Be Easily Replicated

Designing items that are easily replicable. What I mean by that is I try to specialize not in individual custom orders with v carving and stuff, like that.

I want to design myself unique and custom items and learn how to replicate them. It’s a trade-off.

You can get more money for individually custom items, but you can’t produce as many of them, so my goal was to find sales channels where I could create unique products on a higher volume scale.

So I had to ask myself is the time for completely custom individual pieces worth the payoff and for me it wasn’t. I can make more money and sell more items when I design and produce and replicate a particular item.

No.3 Stock Material Layout

I have all my layouts for the CNC router machine exactly the same for a particular item, so I mill those items down to a certain size. So then it’s just plug and play or each piece is a certain size.

So I don’t have to re-zero anything in between pieces,I know exactly how many items I can get from a certain size piece of stock.

No.4, Preparing stock Materials Ahead of Time

Which is kind of like AAA, but it’s super important is milling stock ahead of time, so I usually buy Rough cut lumber and I mill it down myself to my certain dimensions like I mentioned.

Before I have an order I ‘ll have stock in in piles ready for my next order. Now I recently started buying stock. That’s already milled a little more expensive, but it takes less time, so there is a balance there.

Another thing that I like to do is mill stock for the next day. What I mean by that is, if I run through all my stock at the end of the day, the last thing I want to do in the morning is mill more stock to get the CNCc router running. So I like to have at least a few pieces. Maybe an hour worth of cut time to keep the machine rolling .

No.5 Dialing in Feeds and Speeds.

Now, like I said at the beginning of this, I am no expert.

Some people watching this are gonna have a lot more experience than I do. So I have my speeds for my certain items, dialed in now and they’re ever evolving.

One thing I like to do with feeds and speeds is a roughing pass and then a finishing patch, especially on my wooden trays. This limits the amount of sanding I need to do down the line.

So I’ll do a roughing pass at a faster, larger step over and then I ‘ll leave about a sixteenth of an inch for a finishing pass and I ‘ll tighten the step over to like.4, and that gives me a very, very smooth finish and very limited hand sanding on these trays.

No.6 Dust Collection

Something that I think is easily overlooked is having adequate dust collection.

Now my dust collection system is always a work in progress. Actually, last week, I modified it again to make it better, but having shop vacs having a central dust collection system, I’m having enclosure and having some way to keep that clean is super important.

No.7, Having Spare Parts

Having Backup CNC router parts and end mills. I think this is an easy one to overlook too.

But if you have a v wheel, fall off and get ran over by your ball end mill, which I had happened last week, then it’s important to have another v wheel on hand.

So luckily I did, but if I didn’t, I would have been down for two days and that just delays the time that it takes to produce these things.

No.8 Design Intent

Think about your end product and work backwards to optimize.

What I mean by that is picture, what you’re, making what you’re designing in the end user’s hand, if you can do something ahead of time, whether it’s in design,location of tabs, in roughing and finishing pass. I always like to think about how something is going to be used or what, if I’m going to have to do later, if it’s going to save me time or work better.

No.9 Limit Wood Choices

Keeping your products to two different wood species. I think this is really important, because sourcing material can be difficult and when you have all these, so when you make these things you’re going to have all these requests from people.

So you have to think about. You have to find and buy that stock.

I’ve ran into issues where I’ve bought walnut that wasn’t dry and the reason I say two is pick a dark wood and a light wood. Now most people aren’t gonna care really what it’s made out of that’s a general statement, so I think we can all relate to this.

Giving people fewer options makes them more inclined to make a decision to purchase one of them. If you give them 10 options.

They’re going to get overwhelmed and be like,I don’t know, and it’s just so much work on the back end.It’s not worth it. So I limit my designs to two colors, two different kinds of woods walnut and maple.

No.10 Clamping Techniques.

Now I’ve gone through a bunch of different clamping techniques and I’ve broken bits on clamps. I’ve done so much. What I do is I’ve installed, stop blocks on the x and y axis, and that keeps my zeroing point consistent.

So everything is off the bottom left corner from this point of that these two stop blocks create and then, when I mill all my lumber down to specified sizes, it’s all just rinse and repeat, z, all the z heights.

You’ll be surprised. I mean I’ve created hundreds of trays this way and it works for me. So I think, if you’re going for more precise milling operations, this tactic wouldn’t work or metal, wouldn’t work in that sense, you’d have to use some clamps, so I do have t-track. I do have in-line clamps. I do have those things, but you know it’s easy.

Just to go and I drill a pilot hole in the two ends of my stock and zip some screws in it and we’re going to town and since everything is exactly laid out, I know I’m not going to hit the screws.

So those are my top 10 things that I’ve learned and I would love to hear from you guys if there is anything, that’s applicable that I could do better. Please tell me down in the comments, or just whatsApp me here, because I am constantly revising and coming up with better ways and more efficient ways.

So I encourage you if something like this is your goal to invest in things that make you money, that’ll wrap up this one.

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