24" x 80" cut area, 8020 build...

Hey Arbo I went ahead contacted ahren at CRP and had him give me a quote on all the parts needed for the z-axis. I decided on using a R&P on my x and y on your advice. I ordered all the parts I needed and have built the z-axis already. I'm just waiting on my 4 axis plug & play electronics I bought from CRP. I really don't know how to wire my own so that's why I dicided on the Plug and Play system. Without a motor its hard to finish my z-axis because of the distance between the coupler and bearing block it's not aligning. I still need more parts but I'm very excited with all the progress I have made with my machine. Reading all of your threads on the different projects you have done has made me kick my build into high gear. If everything goes the way I wanted, it should be finished by the summer. Thanks for your advice.

@Jerseydog, how's the machine going? I haven't had much time to even set foot in my shop until recently… just got it cleaned up and a few litho's made… starting to get my head back in the right place to come up with stuff to make.

But I need to come up with a way to mount two small fans to my machine, one to blow across the z motor and one to blow across the y motor as those get really hot as they seem to be in motion the most.

@Arbo
Well I'm pretty much finished with my machine. It has taken me a long time to get to this stage because of the amount of money needed. Well I'm just waiting to get a water cooled spindle. Just saving for the last part of my build. I decided with a water cooled because of it's lower noise being that I have neighbors to keep happy. I'm going with an American company so it's going to be twice the price of the Chinese knock off, but a better quality. So once I'm finished I will have more questions for you. I can't wait to finally have it running. Here is a pic.Attachment 246740

Looks nice. I love the risers… I probably would have gone that route if they were available then… and definitely would have done R&P on the Y had I even thought about it.

Threw this together quickly. The lettering is burned, then the top sanded.

Attachment 248638

Arbor
That came out great. I will like to make similar things with my machine. But after I have got this far with my machine. I'll have to put it on hold for now because my wife and I will like to move to Florida from Jersey. Now I have to figure out how to pack it up to protect it during the move. If everything goes according to plan, we should be in Florida by January. Once there I'll order the spindle to finish it. Keep posting pics of your projects.

Good choice moving from Jersey to anywhere. ;)

Am at the point of making a new big plaque for the HS marching band. Seems I am having more difficulty getting my hands on some corian to use… so thinking of MDF, then sealing/priming/ and using the metallic paints… just wondering what other things are out there that might not be too expensive that can be finished out without massive amounts of work…. like that sign board stuff or something.

Hey arbo i will not be able to move to Florida at the moment becauseof some health issue that i have to take care. I can't risk not having health insurance at the mment. So i went ahead and bought a VFD with a 2.2kw water cooled spindle. I will like to get it up and running. What type of spindle do you have? I need help getting this spindle running but i don't have any electrical knowledge. If you have the same i will like to see images on the wiring. I thought it was going to be just plug and play but i was wrong.


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Hoping you got it running by now... clearly I don't check in often. Have not done anything with mine in a while, just started cleaning out my shed so I can get back into it today.

I'm so glad you finally posted on here. I haven't been able to get my machine running yet because of the lack of knowledge in electrecity. I will greatly appreciated if you were able to help me. I need to know what else I have to get as far as wiring is concerned. Once everything is wired I'm going to hire an electrician to supply power to it. Hope you can help me I will like to start making wood chips with it soon. Thanks

Ask away.... ;)

Has been a long while... but a friend asked me to do a little project for his son. A prop knife he drew up for his costume for comic con ... so I used his drawing as reference and put this together out of corian.

He will paint it up and wrap the handle with leather and such.

The other good part of doing this is it re-energized me to get back to doing more stuff with the machine.

I am cutting more stuff, having an issue... i move the y back and forth for the finishing pass (there is only a finishing not a roughing), it does one piece, then there is a mirrored piece next to it... back and forth on the y, slowly stepping the x. When it is done one and goes back to start the mirrored one, it is off in the x ... about 1/2 an inch. but I measure out the piece it cut, and it is not wrong. Found one side of the x was a bit loose and fixed that, but same problem persists. Did tests where I drilled a spot at a x0 and y0, then ran the machine back and forth and back and forth on the x and went back to x0 y0 and it was spot on. Not sure what is going on. Any ideas?

So each piece is perfect and there is a 1/2" shift between the first and second? Sounds like a gcode / cam issue

That's what I was thinking. I looked through the gcode, found where it ends the first piece and moves to the second, the X locations match. So not sure. I made a test up with just two squares situated the same, smaller, so I can run it and watch the whole thing and maybe catch what is going on. Will also try to generate basically the same code with a different program as well and compare.

Tried some tests cutting foam just to see how the alignment went, seemed to work, so started cutting another... just a single, and the holes and cut out are definately not aligned. Something hokey is going on. Then I compaired the new one to the first tries, and the first cuts, before adjusting one side of the X, were shorter. Clearly it was missing steps there. But it seems it is still missing steps.

So I set it up in Rhino and rhino cam instead and did a cut, perfect. Must be something strange with the g code in the other one. Will dig into it more when I have time, and will just use rhinocam for now.

I take all that back, it seems only one of them cut properly even with the rhino setup. Clearly somewhere, somehow I am losing steps. Didn't used to, did loads of lithos, you would notice that in a picture.

Three images taken, showing the good one (far side) to the bad one (closer)... how the start of the cut lined up, then how much smaller the bad one is and how the end cut (cutout) was thus off.

Guess I need to stop all progress and clean up the machine, check all adjustments, check to see if any of the bearings need replacement, etc. Not sure how to generate some gcode just to test it stepping back and forth and back and forth these small amounts to make sure it's not losing steps any longer.

Found a loose set screw on one of the x motor pulleys. Fixed that. Checked all sorts of other stuff. Ran test again in foam. after only cutting about 4 1/2 inches back and forth on y, with x stepping back only 10% stepover on 1/16 bit... stopped the program, went to x0 y0 and brought z down to the whole I drilled there as a mark of 0... x was off about .25 of an inch. ARGH.

Can the gecko g540 just go bad like that? I can't find any mechanical reason.

There is a setting for pulse width in the Mach3 software that has a wider pulse width option. Try changing it, saving it, then restart Mach3. See if that works. Use some blue thread locker on the set screw if you haven't done that already.

I had same problem missing steps, and all started when using 1/16 ballnose with large a stepover. I fixed by shutting toolpath display off in Mach3. Easy test, maybe worth a try.