[TiagoSantos]

Yeah, if I think back on my previous handyman type projects, and how bad they were, I really should be proud. But then I see the incredible work some guys do here on the zone and I realize I have a lot to learn and improve!

[TiagoSantos]

Just got a reply about sea shipping for that table - $180 not bad but it is terminal to terminal, so who knows what kind of trouble I'll run into to pick it up from the port. I'll give it a try though, we'll see how bad I get stung..

[TiagoSantos]

Well, I told them I'd buy it with the previously agreed terms - $240 for the table, $180 C&F shipping. Asked them for payment details and the reply I got was they had to make a new table, so there was an extra $80 processing fee. Hmmm.. They also wanted to change the shipping terms to $110 for FOB terms rather than C&F.

Unfortunately I've heard one other story about How Mau doing something similar with someone else, so I don't think I'm going to take the risk of dealing with them.

[BAMCNC.COM]

I wouldn't either.

[TiagoSantos]

Well, the table saga continues the guys at Weiss finally got back to me and he got in touch with the actual factory that made my RF45 and offered to ship me a table. $300 for the table plus $380 shipping.. :/ he's going to try and find a better deal on shipping after the new year, we'll see what happens.

Anyway - finally got the machine running and making chips again. Spent some time today tramming the head and squaring up a big piece of steel for my Z axis ballnut mount. Have the drawing all nice and done, and did most of the CAM. Current cut time estimate is almost 2 hours..! I got to get the belt drive done..

I also keep jonesing for servos. DMM tech is a local company and it would make a lot of sense to just do it, but.. It's still a fair chunk of cash. Anyone want a g540 controller and some steppers?

[TiagoSantos]

Made half of the ballnut mount today (it's 1.5" thick steel, so I'm machining the top half then flipping it over). The first half came out pretty well - used a rougher at 1500rpm 14ipm, 0.2" DoC and 0.15" cutter engagement, then finished with a 3/8" end mill 0.8" deep and cutting 20 thou. Worked fine! I think I could have pushed the cutter a bit deeper, but I'll take it easy for now, just want to get the part done without breaking anything.

The first real cut it made blew the breaker at the panel. Turns out the wiring in my basement is an incredible mess. All the basement outlets are plugged into a single 15A breaker. I had plugged the controller and mill motor to one outlet and the computer and compressor to a different outlet in another room. Anyway, moved some stuff around and got it running again. Roughed it up, changed tools, did the finish pass and was cleaning up the chips, ready to flip the stock over, when I see something moving in the base of the mill. What the..... A WASP!

My best assumption is they made a nest underneath the mill when it was in the garage. Then by the time I moved it inside, they were hibernating, but woke up today from the heat and vibration. Scared the crap out of me.. I sprayed the base with wasp spray, hopefully it avoids any more surprises... And it doesn't damage anything too badly

[doorknob]

That will certainly get your adrenaline pumping...

Reminds me of when I went to change the air filter on my DR Brush mower - that 'paper' inside the air filter compartment wasn't actually part of the filter, and when I saw some movement around it, I set a new land speed record getting out of there...

[Analias]

That's nothing, when I was ten years old, I was out at my cousins farm playing during the summer . This is in North Dakota, where everyone has a snowmobile. (No, we don't have to use them during the Summer.) While playing, I ran up and jumped on to the seat of the snowmobile as if I was making a get away. Unfortunately, there was a full nest of wasps under the seat and they came out to show their appreciation for having their home crushed. I discovered that I was not allergic to wasp stings that day. I got stung at least a dozen times. I remember the pain being pretty bad.


Sent from my Xoom using Tapatalk 2

[TiagoSantos]

I understand how it can look trivial to see a half asleep wasp crawling out of your CNC machine. But what I didn't mention on my first post is that there is only one thing I am more afraid of than dying. Guess what..

[Analias]

I understand how it can look trivial to see a half asleep wasp crawling out of your CNC machine. But what I didn't mention on my first post is that there is only one thing I am more afraid of than dying. Guess what..

Oops I neglected to put the <sarcasm> tags around, "That's nothing...". There's nothing trivial about the fear of wasps. My apologies if I seem to be making light of your fear.

I have a full blown, flight or fight, phobia about cockroaches. My fear is so great, I would run over you without the slightest notice trying to escape their presence. When I start getting too sensitive to my fear, I have to de-sensitize myself by placing little plastic cockroaches around my office and on my computer monitors. Thankfully roaches don't survive too well in the mountains of New Mexico.

[SCzEngrgGroup]

I have a full blown, flight or fight, phobia about cockroaches.

Don't EVER go to Florida or Louisiana.... :-)

Regards,
Ray L.

[Analias]

Don't EVER go to Florida or Louisiana.... :-)

Regards,
Ray L.

hehehe - Biggest roaches I ever ran into were in Texas - no kidding. Three to four inches long. I lived in Florida for four years - yes roaches. Been to Hawaii and stationed in the Philippines at Clark AFB. Both had the flying varieties.

Ugh, thanks. I'm reliving the worst situations I've ever been in with roaches. You would think a grown man would be able to conquer this kind of phobia.

[TiagoSantos]

They're called phobias for a reason I'm getting better about my fear of bees and wasps, I can now move enough to get out of the way. I used to freeze completely solid. Growing up in Portugal, where the weather is usually good enough year round to have our meals outside, this was a problem more often than you'd think

[TiagoSantos]

Anyway, here's another rambling post.

Hopefully tonight I'll get the Z axis ballnut mount done and can move on to a few other more interesting things. The belt drive is of course the main objective after getting the dovetail column on the machine.

I want to mount the 2hp 3phase motor on the side of the head, upside down. It's a TEFC motor so chips shouldn't be a problem. This will clear up the top of the head for the rest of the stuff that needs to go there, like the pneumatic drawbar. I'm also hoping it'll give me a bit more roof clearance. Since the motor will be on the side, I'm wondering if I can do away with the thick, heavy cast iron plate on the top of the head. Again it just seems unnecessary once all the gears are gone. Going with a thinner (say 3/8" or 1/2" thick) plate might also let me have the quill dropped down (and locked, of course) an inch or two and still have enough room up top for the pulleys and drawbar. This would let me reach the table without having the head sticking out of the dovetails at the bottom or having to come up with a fancier ballnut mount solution.

I have so little time to play with this stuff when I'm at home, I should really start sketching it all up in CAD.

[TiagoSantos]

Little progress. Had some trouble machining the Z ballnut mount, basically what I thought was horrible, horrible repeatability. It's basically a 1.5" thick block of steel with two operations on either side. Roughing with a 1/2" endmill and then a .020" finishing pass with a 3/8" endmill, full depth. Did the first side with no trouble. Then flipped it over and roughed it out, and I could see right away that the second pass was offset by maybe 10 thou. Trying to make it work, I changed my work offset in mach and ran the finishing pass with the 3/8" endmill. Well, turns out it wasn't just off in X, it was off in Y as well and it tried to take a little too big of a bite on one of the radii. The part lifted off the vise and I cut a nice diagonal chunk into the part haha.

After all this, I tried to salvage the part (although ugly as hell, it'll work just fine) by finishing the rest of the finish pass. Busted out the edge finder and was in the process of finding my edges when suddenly I noticed "the wobble". Got my indicator and turned out I had like .006" runout on the edge finder shaft. Seems like that'll mess things up a bit...

Still haven't figured out if the indicator is bent or if the 3/8" tormach set screw holder is that bad. I have some Er20 collets arriving today which should help either way.

[SCzEngrgGroup]

Tiago,

Are you saying you cut 1.5" deep, 0.020 wide, with a 3/8" endmill? If so, you were getting LOTS of flex, and I would expect very poor surface finish, and a surface that is far from perpendicular to the top surface of the part. At that depth, you shouldn't be taking off more than a very few thou. Even in aluminum I would not expect that cut to work well.

Regards,
Ray L.

[TiagoSantos]

Hi Ray,

Sorry it wasn't clear, but it was about 0.8" deep (rough to 0.8" with multiple depth passes, then "finish" at 0.8" DoC, 0.020"WOC - flip the stock around and do it again). Yeah, in hindsight even 0.8" was probably not a great idea. The endmill was only had about 0.9" sticking out of the holder, so I don't think it was flexing TOO much, but yeah.

One of the reasons for such a deep pass is that the rougher leaves maybe 0.010" of "ridged" material that I wanted to get past on the finishing pass. Again, I should have just made 2 or more contour finishing passes.

Lots to learn! For now I'm working out the kinks on the machine while making parts that either aren't critical or will be hidden from view. It'll take a bit more learning to work out how to make stuff pretty and shiny!

[SCzEngrgGroup]

Tiago,

Yeah, you'll have much better luck going easier on the tool, especially in steel. I would try taking off maybe 0.005" per pass at that depth, or maybe taking off 0.010-0.015 at perhaps half that depth, then doing a pass full-depth at 0.003, and a final one at 0.002.

[TiagoSantos]

Cool, thanks for the suggestions!

Also something I forgot to mention on my previous update. When I had the machine going with the stock leadscrews, my 425oz/in steppers (very high inductance..) could only get me up to 30ipm reliably. When I took it apart to add the ballscrews and put it all back together, I was surprised and excited to get 120ipm easily.

Of course it was too good to be true. Part of the troubleshooting I did over the weekend was discovering that the gibs were not adjusted right - at all. I had about 0.003" wiggle in the table and saddle. Once they were adjusted to get rid of the play, things got a lot tighter. Now the X axis will only go up (reliably!) to about 70ipm and the Y is at 50ipm. There's a definite tight spot on the Y axis that I might eventually try to fix, as it moves great at 70ipm everywhere else but always snags on the same spot.

All that said, if the new table materializes (and there's a good chance it will!) then I can put the RF45 together and use the RF40 to make the mounts, etc. Lots of the lessons I've learned with this machine could be put to good use on building a new one from scratch, so I'm leaning towards that.. I visited DMM-Tech on Saturday and talked to Hui and Tianyu, really nice people. Them being local is a great incentive for going for servos on the RF45, and they made me some pretty good offers that would be hard to pass up on.

The RF40 was built hastily and taking lots of corners. I had promised myself that I'd have it running by the 1st of Jan, and I did what I had to do to get it going with the limited time I have to work on it. I'm a bit deflated that it didn't turn out as well as I would like it to, but realistically I knew what to expect whenever I cut another corner. I need to figure out if I have enough room to put the RF45 together while having the RF40 in place, might get a bit tricky to move things around. The only room I have left to set them up is my boiler room in the basement. Probably 7x7 usable room, with the 40x67" enclosure on one side and the boiler in the other corner

[SCzEngrgGroup]

Keep in mind too, that just because you can reach 120 IPM does NOT mean you should run there. It is good practice to see what the maximum capability is, then back off 30-50% for your final settings. Friction will vary considerably from day-to-day, due to temperature changes, lubrication variability, etc. If you run with the best-case settings you get in one day of testing, you will almost certainly run into trouble down the road.

Regards,
Ray L.