I've been working on an engineering project involving BLDC motors and some coding. It's a heavy duty project and I've been cutting/drilling metal but then I met my match.

I used a 4amp hand drill, and it could drill a hole in my work piece, though slowly and messy, no way was gonna get a clean cut. It's a thick piece. And I just wished I had a CNC machine, but they're costly and big.

Then, it hit me. I have a motor and a gearbox lying around.. And what is a CNC machine but a motor and gearbox floating on wheels?

Bought a couple adapters and a chuck, one of the adapters didn't fit. M10 has 3 thread diameter sizes to choose from ;-; The correct adapter will come in tomorrow, and then we'll see how well this motor can cut!

I have high hopes for this, as the motor I have is several times more powerful than what I've seen come standard on cheap CNC machines. The gearbox is a 10:1 and can stand way more torque than I even know how to give it.


I'm at that point in my life where I'm very excited about cutting metal 😂

Make sure the hand drill has a clutch. Otherwise if it sticks it will twist right out of your hand and ....

Well the motor and gearbox are kinda heavy. Gonna anchor the metal and drill down, then slowly push one towards the other. Should be pretty safe.



You know what happened if you don't hear from me again.

its often cleaner to drill up, starting with a small bit and moving up to the next size, several times for a large hole. The gearbox may not care, though. Also you may want to oil the places where you drill, so it does not get as hot.

I made a hole with the hand drill which will help. With a gearbox, it definitely wont matter as much. But a small hole can help center the drill and make things easier for sure.

This metal is only aluminum, but I'm learning that hard way that you can't underestimate it's strength. That 6061 stuff is tough as nails.

an empty soda can will support over 150 pounds, and a pure cylinder (the cans have insets and structural problems) will hold over 200. The slightest dent and that falls to a very low number, but think how thin those cans are -- slightly more than paper. Its amazing stuff.

Happy to say the idea worked out pretty well. Had a hiccup where the screw used to hold it all together broke in half though.

Usually it would be a complete pain to get the screw out of the shaft, but I had a screw extractor and got it out in seconds.

It's called Speed Out Screw Extractor. You can get it for $10 which blows my mind. The metal and construction is unbelievable. I originally got it after a transmission fluid plug got stripped. It grabbed the plug so well that to THIS DAY I cannot separate the screw from the extractor.

In fact, I used a hand wrench from a set and not only did it not separate the two, but the teeth of the wrench STRIPPED and the Speed Out extractor didn't even have a scratch on it. I thought I had broken the Speed Out extractor, but I had broken the wrench. For $10, you get 4 sizes all that high quality.


This account is a fraud, I was here to sell you guys Speed Out's Screw Extractor all along.


It's honestly incredible how strong and well it works for so little money.



Anyway, buying a stronger nail and going at it again tomorrow. I used a 16mm drill and got the depth I wanted. Screw broke with the 20mm when expanding the hole.

It makes nice clean cuts that I could never have made with a hand drill!



EDIT: Also, since I'm using a BLDC motor, I'm using VESC Tool which allows you to control everything via code. But it really only supports LISP. Awful programming language, one of those functional languages.

I mean it's not completely terrible once you get use to it, but it's still pretty bad. Just not a fun time coding with it at all.