Designing new Router called Maximus

Hi Dan - Maybe but I think it will surprise you. As a one off done in a manual sheetmetal shop, yes maybe but I think it will be cheaper then a fabricated version. But in a semi automated laser bender production line its economical. The smaller routers I have made have been very economical compared to extrusions and other techniques. Once its designed & costed we shall find out. Plus I have it made in 2, 3 or more units so it's a production run vs a one of. Its intended to be a volume machine so its aimed at 10's, 50's hopefully 100's. Then it will be very cheap.

Currently this router is stiffer on paper then most small mills. So it has a fair bit of metal in it. Once the design is detailed and I run the final simulations it maybe honed down a bit. But it will still have the same amount of bends and a bend generally costs the same no matter what thickness the metal is.

On another matter nuts, bolts and washers have always been hard to deal with. Do I put them into the sub assemblies or GA, do I use patterns etc etc. All of this comes down to we need a BOM at the end so I can order the right amount of screws. I've tried various methods but they all involve manual consolidation at the end. I think I have finally found the best way. 1) I created a bolt rack assembly that I placed into the GA, as I need bolts etc I duplicate from this rack. In this way all the bolts washers etc live in the one assm. This means at the end it has its own single BOM that I can send to the fastener place for orders.... hallelujah!! unfortunately I have started putting bolts in before I thought of this so I either rework it or leave it. Easiest to leave it for now. Peter

Hi Dan - I answered your Q a bit fast. I'm surprised that you think sheet-metal work is expensive? Expensive compared to what? per linear unit, sheetmetal is the cheapest metal manipulation technology we have. Cheaper than simple machining, definitely cheaper then CNC machining and cheaper than welding per unit length. If you are saying its cheaper for a person to buy a std SHS tube or some angle at the hardware do some welding and fettling at home in the garage then sure that DIY maybe cheaper but that's not a fair comparison. But after the DIYer scenario I'm not sure how to manufacture something more economically than sheetmetal. I'm always looking for better if you have a suggestion. Peter

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Originally Posted by peteeng

Hi Dan - I answered your Q a bit fast. I'm surprised that you think sheet-metal work is expensive? Expensive compared to what? per linear unit, sheetmetal is the cheapest metal manipulation technology we have. Cheaper than simple machining, definitely cheaper then CNC machining and cheaper than welding per unit length. If you are saying its cheaper for a person to buy a std SHS tube or some angle at the hardware do some welding and fettling at home in the garage then sure that DIY maybe cheaper but that's not a fair comparison. But after the DIYer scenario I'm not sure how to manufacture something more economically than sheetmetal. I'm always looking for better if you have a suggestion. Peter

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My only suggestion would be to have the hardware pressed in, take full advantage of it being made of sheet metal.

Hi Dan - Not sure what you mean by "hardware pressed in" could you explain? Peter

Without going through all the posts:), may i ask, is your frame going to be made from welded tubing??

Thasnks
Erick

Hi Ericks - My personal bench and stand will be made from plywood as per the attached image. As the machine is a kit its up to the maker as how they build the bench. I've designed a torsion box bench and two stands. The stands have levelling feet and levelling jacks to the torsion box. Cheers Peter

Thanks...i actually mean the machine frame?

Hi Ericks - No tubing in the machine at all. It's all made from cut and folded steel. All the machine parts shown in "Maximus Machine" except motors and std parts will be laser cut and folded metal. I've built one half sheet machine like this called Scoot and 3 benchtop machines called Brevis. Maximus is a very stiff full sheet size machine. Peter


Images
B-4 is the mechanical kit for Brevis which is for sale. Folded mild steel and powdercoated
B-5 is Brevis2 in build. B1 & B2 are now functioning. B1 is an engraver/small router, B2 is being set up as a 10W laser. There are videos if you search for brevis cnc router you shall find them
Scoot has been running for 2 years. Its my development machine that I do various trials and make things with it. Scoot 1 image is a hydrofoil plug for a trimaran. Scoot is for sale and I shall replace it with Maximus.
Maximus-HD will be available as a mechanical kit with a shopping list for all std parts.

You may see the family resemblance in each model.

Wow that's really interesting:) thank you

Hi Ericks - I have a couple of enquiries for machines that want a ready to go electronics box. If your interested send me a PM. Your PM's are off. Peter

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Originally Posted by peteeng

Hi Ericks - I have a couple of enquiries for machines that want a ready to go electronics box. If your interested send me a PM. Your PM's are off. Peter

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Sorry about that...should be fixed now.

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Originally Posted by peteeng

Hi Dan - Not sure what you mean by "hardware pressed in" could you explain? Peter

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Just anywhere you would need nuts or tapping. Since you are using sheet metal you could have hardware pressed in to streamline some of the assembly work for your customers. It's pretty common practice for formed sheet metal assemblies and it's very cost effective. It would also cut down on your hardware bom since you would only need to supply bolts and screws. Just a idea that I thought I would bounce off you since I didn't see it being implemented in the design.

Dan

Thanks Dan - Having nut inserts put in is actually quite expensive here as a person has to do it. In the plates that are thick enough and screws are "blind" the plate has threads tapped into it. All other places that have finger access use nuts. I supply a nut and bolt list. Not much point shipping N&B all over the planet when people in USA for instance can buy these cheaper then I can.

Hi All- I've had my first technical mishap. I stripped down a model to send the gantry to a metal place for comment. Alibre has a new STEP export which is very good but it keeps the same file names as the originals. Last version it used a serial "product" name. Plus the new version keeps the part colours whereas the last step translator changed everything to single colour. The upshot of this is that if you have the STEP file open at first look its exactly the same as the original. So I have this model and went out to do something came back and started working on the model, but it was the STEP file. It then did an auto save and saved the "dumb" steps over the original files!! Major angst!! I found this when I wanted to change a hole size and opened a part and it had no history tree!! Down tools!! Think it through and have a dig into various histories to figure out what happened. Can't regenerate the original.. But there is a saving grace! The step files are part files and the originals are sheet-metal files so the originals are still there! Yippee. So its a re-assembly exercise not a re-build exercise. That's not too bad. But will send note to Alibre to put some sort of warning with their STEPS, current situation will create a major headache for someone someday, could wipe out years of work.... Will keep yuz informed. Peter

Hi All- Rebuilt the gantry assm nearly and reinstalled in th GA. Still a few bolts to fix. Alibre was horrified when I explained what had happened so they are looking into it quickly. Last version the file names changed when you did an export. This version the files stay the same name but worse is that the directory path stays the same even though you save the assm somewhere else like the desktop and change the top level name. So if a auto saves occurs all your files get overwritten. Disaster. Now I'm nearly back to where I was yesterday I can forge forward. Peter

~15 years ago, Alibre came out with the "free CAD for everyone" deal. I think their goal was to get people to use their product, so they'd buy it down the road.
Then they started taking away features, and eventually getting rid of the free version. I think this had the opposite of the intended effect, as you rarely hear Alibre mentioned these days.

Hi Gerry - Yes I was an early user, been with them since version 5 (think its 20 years) . They have always been great to deal with except when they were taken over by Geomagic. Then it feel into a hole. The very early subscription based and free versions where before their time. Look at Fusion360 now. The subscription model depended on everyone having good internet capacity but this was not the case or the culture back then. Now everyone is moving to the cloud and subscription biz models vs the local application model. Alibre has a strong user base and its getting stronger now the original owners have bought back the farm. Unless the software is open source such as freecad there will be a price to pay someday with Fusion. Haven't seen a real free lunch yet. All CAD systems have strengths and weaknesses. I think freecad is getting to a point where I'll have to have a go at it. Been using open office for over 10 years and its great... Pick your poison. :) Peter

I do look around at CAD CAM and FEA occasionally to find out where the tech is at and costs etc and haven't found strong reasons to jump from Alibre to something else or my FE Strand7 to something else. Only recently I've jumped to Simsolid for FE but still have to do composites in Strand. But I think Freecad with its many modules including CAM is maturing nicely and does somethings very well . It handles assemblies differently and more efficiently then traditional CAD for instance. But its the learning curve thats scary so need to take a long term approach to these things, slowly slowly learning along the way.

Hi All - My idea about using a sub assm in the GA for the bolts has fallen over. Mirrored parts and patterns have become dissociated making it a mess. So I am going back to an old rule I had. That is the screw or bolt lives where the head touches in the subassm. No screws in the GA if possible. This makes the GA very clean in terms of the BOM. So a little more rework and were back on track. I've put a request into Alibre to create a bolt bucket that these things can be thrown into irrespective of what assembly they are in so at the end, the bucket has its own BOM. We shall see. More screws to go, then more holes.... Peter

Hi All- I have been plugging away making holes and filling them with bolts. I have also been mucking around with configurations, patterns and mirrors. Turns out there's lots of smoke and mirrors in these things. The idea of having these is to save the CAD person time. But I have found over the years that these are complex, unreliable and time wasters. But Maximus and some other projects I have have 100's of screws and these need to be dealt with so I need a better way. So funny things happen when you mirror a pattern or config a bolt then mirror the bolt. A configuration in the bolt case is when you use one file but set it up to have lots of lengths say. So instead of 5 different screw files you only need one. But then pattern it and mirror it and see what happens. In Alibre anyway. I usually don't model all the screws only the ones I need to check clearance on, Saves days of work. But with Maximus I want to run the bolts thru simsolid so all the bolts have to be there. Got tired of the 300 bolts and holes so moved onto setting up the Z Axis, will come back to the holes later when I'm into dwgs easier to manage then. I've decided to call this model Maximus-HD for heavy duty and the economy version Maximus-M, M being for Maker. Cheers Peter

Hi Girls and Boys - Haven't done any simulation in a while and I've been sorting out the cross gantry belt bracketing. Main intent was that the bracket moved in harmony with the Z Axis plate which it does. I applied 100kgf to the bracket. I supported it at the top and bottom of the Z PLate. In reality its supported at the bearings close to the belt anchor so eventually I'll look at it more completely. The interesting thing is it bends across the bend relief at the top. Can't extend the bend here as the gap is needed for the Z axis to pass thru. But will keep this in mind as I'm building the assembly up. The other thing is that this model has the bracket actually bolted on not bonded. The surfaces have a friction co-eff of 0.1 and the M6 bolts are preloaded to 10kN. Cheers Peter

HI All & Sundry - More holes and bolts, plus more....Been adding the Z Drive to the machine. Looking at the drive brackets , do i use 4 screws per bracket or only two? The lead screw can push with 414kgf or more so they have to be substantial. So a quick calc shows that 2 M6 C12.9 screws per bracket can support 1140kgf so that's cool. 2 bolts its is.

The convention of putting the bolt where the bolt head fays in the subassm is working well. But means I'll do an atomic BOM to figure the bolts out. Time to test that theory I think BOOM. I usually try to do things in the order it will be manufactured but for bolts this has proven to be difficult. I have even stopped doing that for parts and have adopted the "Resilient Modelling Strategy" and that is working very well.

There is argument over what the friction co-efficient is. References state from 0.1 to 0.6. I've measured plastic at 0.1. 0.1 is a typical sliding bearing spec so I'm sure its better than that. 0.2-0.3 is used for some stds. I've used 0.2 but its probably more like 0.35. Cheers Peter

Just checked AS4100 and it uses u=0.35 for bolted connections so 2 bolts is heaps...