Shortly after I retired, Fox Alien put their 4040 Vasto CNC on sale. The timing was perfect. I had already decided I wanted to get serious about carving wood, and although I had highly modified my 3018 (now a 3040), it was limited.
First impression: the Vasto is massive. The name should have warned me, but rampant shrinkflation has tempered my expectations. Realizing I wasn’t going to be moving this often, the size necessitated a short delay while I built a workbench for it, complete with wheels and a shelf for the controls.
Fox Alien supplies the Vasto with a 400-watt spindle but strongly suggests buying a bigger spindle. They also supply a fixture for an 800-watt hand router and one for a larger CNC spindle motor. I have a hand router, and the noise is deafening. I selected the spindle motor because it was supposed to be quieter and have a smaller run-out. This turned out to be a great decision. Spindle motors are much quieter.
My 3018 sitting on the Vasto bed
Spindles come in 800 watts, 1500 watts, and 2100 watts. I wanted to go with the 1500-watt spindle, but a little math convinced me the 800-watt spindle was a better choice. In the US, your typical power outlet is rated at 15 amps. That comes to around 1800 watts. Given the losses in the converter and the other equipment, I was out of margin. Yes, you can squeeze more out of an outlet, but this was going to run all night, and charred outlets are not conducive to sleep—especially if my wife sees it.
After watching a lot of CNC YouTube videos by James Dean, I realized I was out of my depth. The bigger spindles run on 220V 400Hz. The Vasto controller puts out 0 to 48 volts for their spindle motor. I needed a separate controller, known as a VFD, for my 800-watt spindle. The wiring was easy, and the soldering was simple, but by cleverly skipping the heat shrink, I saved five minutes and managed to short two lines together. This resulted in a big flash and lots of smoke. More delays followed while I rewired the spindle connector (with heat shrink) and waited on my new VFD.
With the new VFD, I finally had a working CNC. There is one downside to my setup. The controller for my spindle is manually controlled. I have to stop and start my spindle independently of the Vasto—not a good plan if the spindle continues running when I hit Emergency Stop. I have an Arduino design that will change this, but I’m not there yet.
Having gone this far, it was time to start carving—and I had to hit the Emergency Stop almost immediately. Wood is not supposed to smoke while being carved. A quick test showed my spindle was turning in reverse. No cutting was happening; the friction from my router bit was burning a path through the wood. I wanted power, and this was a good demonstration. Fortunately, it was also an easy fix: swap any two of the three wires going to the motor.
The working area for the Vasto is 15.75” x 15.75” x 3.7”. The 3.7” meant I could stop readjusting the spindle mount every time I used a different thickness of wood. On my 3018 this was a necessity.
With that in mind, my first project was a 2” thick piece of fir. I was cutting to a depth of slightly over 1”. I neglected to consider that my bit wasn’t that long. On the last pass, my collet hit the wood, causing more friction cutting, smoke, and another Emergency Stop.
With great power comes great responsibility. I had the power, but I had to make sure my bit would support the carving depth. Thanks to some slightly longer bits from Amazon, my second attempt was a huge success.
With this success, I wanted to push my capability. A few attempts with ChatGPT, and I had a very nice dragon suitable for CNC. Using the newly released version 8.0 of DeskProto, I had it carve the dark areas 4mm deep. My thought was to fill the recessed areas with wood putty, giving me a very high contrast. The wood putty I used had high shrinkage, giving me ridges. I wanted a nice even surface, so I found myself applying several layers of wood putty and finally sanding the top layer away for a smooth surface. The final result was even better than I hoped.
Still, like most engineers, I felt I could do better. Emboldened by my success, I decided to try epoxy. Never having poured epoxy before, I bought a small kit with a large assortment of colorants. My dragon became seafoam green. Here, I used far too much epoxy and had to sand it down, losing much of the vibrancy of the green epoxy. A little polishing, and I could see color ripples in the green.
While there’s room to improve these techniques, both the wood putty and the epoxy produced amazing effects. The only drawback is the time. In order to get the detail, I’m using a bit with a 1mm diameter. This results in a run time of almost 12 hours for a five-inch square.
As a summary, the Vasto exudes power. After playing with my 3018, it feels like the Hulk of CNCs. It’s massive and certainly heavy-duty. I have yet to try metal, but I’m confident it has all the power needed.
I love the 3.7” Z range because I can do much deeper cuts. And as my dragon cut with the 1mm bit shows, it can also do precision. The Vasto is a major step up for me.
There are a few companies that deserve some credit here:
- James Dean Videos for helping me understand what I was trying.
- ChatGPT for the dragon design.
- DeskProto for translating the design into a CNC program and allowing me to see the effects of different-sized router bits.
- Amazon for the router bits, the epoxy kit (lots of colors), and the headlight polishing kit (to correct my overzealous sanding).
© 2024, Byron Seastrunk. All rights reserved.
