[zeeflyboy]

I do have them yes.

They fit fine, I thought maybe they were a little loose but once bolted up they are great and I use them to attach an MDF spoil board no problem.

[Dustmite]

Ok i could modify my plans a bit then and switch to m8 bolts rather than 1/4 or 5/16... i was gonna use flat head bolts, which woulda been a 82 degree countersink but metric flat heads are 90 degree right?

[zeeflyboy]

Yeah

[Dustmite]

Never noticed that about the SAE vs METRIC countersink angles until just now! Everything ive done at work requiring any countersinks have been 82 degrees .. learned somethin new!

Think im going with these:

50pcs/lot Steel With Zinc 30TN M8 8mm T Sliding Nut block M8 for 3030 Aluminum Profile slot 8-in Nuts from Home Improvement on Aliexpress.com | Alibaba Group

$13.28 for 50pcs and free shipping. And the top part is slightly wider at 8mm vs 7.8mm (cuz im sure the .2mm will make a huge difference lol)

My mdf is 3/4" thick, did you go all the way to the bottom for the bolts? Like only ~ 0.200" of material left for clamping with the bolt to the table?

[dharmic]

FWIW I'm using M8 round head bolts in my T-slots. Their flats fit the grooves nicely and they have that square section at the root of the bolt which locks into the thinner part of the slot nicely, leaving a moveable stud sticking up that I can put fixtures onto and tighten up with an M8 nut and washer. Cheap as chips from the local hardware and in plentiful supply.

[LeeWay]

Those are carriage bolts. I used them a lot on my plasma cutter. I used the 5/16 18 version. When constructing a machine with those, you have to give it some forethought to get all the bolts in the slots before covering up the ends. I finally realized after pulling it apart several times that I could use a hole saw and cut a circle in the track in an inconspicuous spot and then slide the carriage bolts in that way.

[dharmic]

Thanks, I always thought of them as "coach bolts" but apparently not, according to my local hardware. I'm only using them in the T-slots for mounting the workpieces and fixtures, so there's plenty of room to load them into the slots from the back.

I could imaging the "D'OH" moments from order of assembly issues, though

[Dustmite]

I've got two of these coming:
Shop the Shop Fox H5740 - Cam Clamp at Grizzly.com

And plan to square up two strips of scrap mdf in a corner of the spoilboard to press against with the clamps and give me a repeatable origin as well as a square loading place so I'm not crooked or guessing on loading straight!

[dharmic]

Nice. I already had one of these clamp sets for the X2 mill, the threaded rods and t-nuts don't fit the Omio (too wide) but the rest of it hangs off the carriage bolts just nicely.

[Dustmite]

Oh very nice! Nothing wrong with the ol toe clamps! I was going for a top surface clearance type of setup, I plan on doing a lot of work the involves surfacing my material. I have a 6" Kurt vise that I would totally use if there was enough clearance in the Z dammit!

[Dustmite]

Got my power supply yesterday. I'm all wired up and its running successfully! Big vouch for omio's response time on customer service / warranty coverage!

Not to mention they have always answered my emails within 24 hours!

[dharmic]

That's great news, Dustmite, glad to hear you got it all up and running.

Let's hope the new supply lasts a little longer than the first one!

[dharmic]

Oh very nice! Nothing wrong with the ol toe clamps! I was going for a top surface clearance type of setup, I plan on doing a lot of work the involves surfacing my material. I have a 6" Kurt vise that I would totally use if there was enough clearance in the Z dammit!

I have a 6" vice which does fit ok, but will only let me use up to 12mm thick stock before the height stacks up to the bottom of the gantry. Most of the flat stuff I've doing now is done with toe clamps, overwidth/length stock, a routed profile and machining tabs. Takes longer but the clamping seems to be a lot better for thin stock than the vice anyway.

[StarkJohan]

My machine arrived earlier today and I have it set up except for the spindle. It was moving a bit slow out of the box but after calibrating "steps per unit" in the settings tab I get satisfying rapid movements all over. Original steps per unit was 2000 for some reason but it was calibrated to 3200 on all axis. I guess this just means the Omio provided settings wasn't that great... I'm using metric settings if that matters.

I'm struggling a bit with setup of the limit/home switches. They all register just fine when looking at the plugin XncPod config window as Input-MachPins 0 through 2. I just can't figure out how to setup Mach3 to accept the switches from the plugin. What am I missing?

Edit: I had to set the port to port 1 in the input settings. Pretty obvious once I found the right place to change it. Time to set up the spindle.

Edit 2: Well. I can't get the spindle to start up. I haven't changed any settings as I assume the settings provided from Omio should be OK? What are your settings for the spindle? The only thing happening when i issue "M3 S5000" or otherwise try starting the spindle is that the GUI "revs" the RPM indicaton down from 5000 to 0. The VFD display is 0.00 when spindle is of and goes up to a maximum of 400.00 when I set spindle speed to 24000 but the spindle does not move.

Edit 3: Seems like Mach3Mill.xml was corrupted some way. I reloaded it and now I've got the spindle running. It was probably the PWM base for the spindle control that was way to low. I wasn't courageous enough to change it without any more info. I think the standard was 5 and the proper setting is around 120.

So everything works and I'm done for tonight. I'm sure I'll have lots of questions tomorrow.

[dharmic]

FWIW - if you've installed Mach3, rebooted, and installed the settings files from OmioCNC exactly as they instruct, there should be no need to muck around with i/o settings for steppers, speeds, spindle or stops. Because they've already done all that for you. It should all just work.

Glad you've got it up and running though, look forward to hearing how you get on with it.

[Dustmite]

Your default steps per on motor tuning for metric should be at 320. And like my friend here stated, should be no need to change any settings really. Your home switches should already be set, just go to diagnostic tab and make sure they light up when you click the switches by hand.

[Dustmite]

I just ran into an odd issue that for now my way of fixing is to just restart mach3. What's I'm seeing happen is strange, I'm losing control of y axis and z axis via programming but can still jog them, and the axis are being homed during program execution. Its like the connection gets a lil fudged and I gotta restart mach3 and its back to normal. Hmmmmm.... Strange stuff.

[StarkJohan]

Yep. Everything worked out great once I got the uncorrupted settings file in use. It had only partially been imported as it was corrupted for some reason.

Today I've routed the first test patterns and also my own design from Fusion360. I'm going to have fun with this setup! There is room for improvement but nothing urgent.

[dharmic]

Plenty of room for improvement on these units but they're already a long way in front of the competition. No need to upgrade from acme leadscrews to ballscrews, already done. No need to upgrade from shower-rails to proper linear bearings on square rails, already done. The motors are decently torquey. The stepper drivers and VFD work pretty well. There's no need to futz the electronics because it all mostly works out of the box and is already USB so no need to dig up ten year old hardware either.

Yes, could do with a slightly longer Z. Yes, the 4th axis is utter garbage. Yes, you could replace a lot of it with epoxy granite and/or steel. But for the price I reckon it's got a lot of nice hardware on it and it lets you get on with making chips (or sawdust) instead of fighting the tool first.

Dustmite, that is strange... some kind of soft limit issue maybe? If you home it will it let you kick off the program again?

[zeeflyboy]

Haha, shower rails - I like that description.

Indeed it is fantastic for the money. Even building your own I don't think you could do any better for the same budget.

Some obvious points for improvement - spindle ground is the big one since that actually has the potential to kill you... Shielding at least the spindle cable from the factory would be a nice addition too.

One small little thing that would help - stop supplying that crappy tubing, PU tube is cheap and far better at avoiding kinks/crimps.

Other than that it really is a very solid machine for the money. I will no doubt do some small modifications but overall I can't see myself needing to do a whole lot. I think somewhere down the line I may build a new Z-axis so that you can use the full gantry height without having to reposition the spindle, but it already has very decent z-travel for a router.