[Devastator]

Decided to start an official thread on this machine. I'm kinda late to the party though because I didn't discover this forum until 3/4 of the way through my build. As I get a chance, I will take photos of all the different pieces and include them here.

My machine is being built with discarded materials. I barely have $500 into it including electronics. It has taken me about a year and a half to get to this point, most of the time spent waiting for the materials to appear by the dumpster. Like Tom Hanks line in Cast Away, "You never know what the tide will bring" has been my mantra during this build.

I've just replaced the stock power cord on my Bosch 1617 EVS router. The pics show how the wire is hooked up and how the Super-pid sensor is located. I added a ground wire to the spindle for the zero touch off function. You can see a bolt in the housing above the power cord. That originally was a banana jack for the ground wire lead, but with the new 3 conductor power cord, that extra loose wire is not needed.

I replaced the original strain relief with a PCV grommet so that the wire can be routed better. With the old strain relief, I had to turn the router at an awkward angle so that the cord didn't hit the end of the Y axis and cause it to lose steps.

I still have to route the wire through the cable chain but I'm waiting on some bracket ends that I ordered from Igus. One of the few things I've actually purchased, but they are only $5.00 for a pair, so I don't feel too guilty.

[Devastator]

A shoddy bomb casing filled with used pinball machine parts.

I turned this on the lathe one night out of scrap metal laying around the shop. Nine holes running three different clearances, all with slightly rusty pachinko machine balls saved from when I was a kid in the 70's.

[Devastator]

I saved the cutoffs from the 5 start leadscrews and made a tap with the bench grinder for the taper and a die grinder for the slots. I had some scrap Delrin rod left over from another project so I turned down a shoulder on the lathe, and added some grooves for O-rings. Then I tapped it with my DIY tap. After tapping, I chucked up my dremel handpiece in the lathe cross slide and cut the slots in the nut. It took about an hour to make all of them. Delrin machines real easy.

[Devastator]

More photos of the machine in its current state. Y end plates are 1/4" steel scrap with extra holes for no extra charge. Bolted to the gantry with 3/8" bolts into knife edge anchors imbedded into the wood. The gantry is laminated plywood with 1/8" angle iron on top and bottom.

All rails are chrome rod from a clothing display out by the mall dumpster one day. The back motor support is 3/16" steel that used to be a display for athletic shoes, again by the mall dumpster. Same with the cabinet doors.

The bed is a torsion box and is adjustable via jack bolts at each corner.

X rail supports are laminated birch plywood 8" wide. All dimensional wood used for the legs was increased to 2X8.

The angle bearing blocks on the Y end plates were made from aluminum bar scrap after the original ones failed the pull test in a bad way.

[louieatienza]

That's looking great so far.... like the mods, hope to see more pics and maybe some vods...

[Devastator]

That's looking great so far.... like the mods, hope to see more pics and maybe some vods...

Thanks louieatienza! I can't wait to get it together again for real this time So I can test your recommended fix for my arc/circle problem. You and ger21 were a big help getting my Z moving correctly.:wee:

This machine seems pretty solid to me. Hoping to cut some aluminum parts for the Z and a new router mount eventually. We'll see.....

[CarveOne]

For my wood projects, I cut sand paper to whatever width strips I need, of twice the length I want to use. Spray a light coat of 3M77 spray adhesive on the strip, wave it around for a few seconds to get tacky, then fold in half. It's stiffer, doesn't slide apart when sanding with it, it's double sided grit, and you have better grip on the sand paper. It's not nearly as tiring to work with it. Being stiffer lets you roll it into a curve that matches what you are working on.

I also make sanding blocks of any shape I need from 1x2 pine or oak strips, cut sandpaper to fit, and spray the sandpaper with 3M77. Wave the sandpaper to get it tacky and then stick it to the wood block for sanding flat areas. Don't spray the wood block, just spray the sandpaper. It acts like a Post-it note when you want to change sandpaper. Peel it off and install another piece.

[ger21]

Using Firefox on a 7 year old PC and I find the new forum update is actually a bit faster. Posting is actually a lot faster.

[Devastator]

Using Firefox on a 7 year old PC and I find the new forum update is actually a bit faster. Posting is actually a lot faster.

Seems to be faster tonight although still slower loading than before the changes.

Getting ready to tool up to make a female two piece rocket nosecone mold from MDF. The MDF will be a test mold and I'll do the real one from corian. Never done anything like this so I'm just guessing on tooling. Planning on 1/4" for roughing and 1/8" long reach ball endmill for finishing. Unless anybody else has recommendations on tooling and stepovers.

[CarveOne]

Seal the MDF on all sides so that moisture isn't absorbed over time and it will last a long time. I made my first MDF molds for the stabilator of an experimental aircraft (the R/C model flight test version) early this year. Recently I was told that the R/C model version has been flown and it performed as expected.

You should be able to make multiple copies from your mold as long as it is prepped properly and use a good parting wax. We used Part-All from Aircraft Spruce & Supply. Just remove the parts carefully. MDF damages easily. There is a spray-on film that we used and I can't remember the name of it at the moment.

[Devastator]

You should be able to make multiple copies from your mold as long as it is prepped properly and use a good parting wax.

Thanks for the tips. I just ordered some mold wax. I have some release spray for urethane coming along with the ten gallons of urethane. I'll keep track of how many cones I can get out of one mold. Destruction testing is my specialty.

[Devastator]

I've been machining quite a few of the rocket fin cans in different sizes now. The Solsylva has been doing production duty work lately, putting in 12-14 hour days. Still going strong with the EZ driver board. Machining aluminum @ 135 IPM. First set of router bearings starting to get a bit noisy.

Planning to machine parts for a CNC guitar pickup winder soon.

[Devastator]

Took some time today to clean up parts and reassemble. Cleaned up all of the pits in the rods and then used a blackener on them. All I had was aluminum blackener, but glad I decided to give it a try. It worked on the steel just fine. Took out all the scratches in the aluminum with a random orbit sander, and polished the end plates. I've got the files just about done for the spindle mount, just not sure if I want to use plywood or MDF. Aluminum would be my first choice if I had some thick scraps laying around, but like everything else with this build, it is all scrap, so if I don't have it I won't go out of my way to buy it. Probably go MDF and keep my eyes peeled for aluminum cutoffs for future upgrade.

Almost forgot to mention that all of the fancy screws came from a shoe display being thrown away at the local mall. Most of the screws, nuts, and bolts in my machine have been re-purposed this way.

[Devastator]

Just a quick thread update.....I haven't had any time to install any of the new parts, except I have changed router bearings since my last update. I'm going through a set of bearings every three months! Might be time for a better spindle.

So I've got the new Z parts and a G540 with power supply just sitting there but my production schedule doesn't have any gaps to install any of it.

I think I need to build another machine.

[CarveOne]

I'm not doing any production work with either of my two machines, but it is nice to have a backup when one needs repair. The big machine is the least used of the two, but it serves as a work table when not being used for any of my projects that need the big table size. Sounds like you could use a second machine for production or as a spare machine anyway.

[CarveOne]

The molds I used to make fiberglass/carbon layups from were machined from RenShape 440 mold material. It's expensive stuff but not as expensive as aluminum molds. I did that work for 5 years before retiring. If you want production molds consider using aluminum. Sometimes we damaged the Renshape getting parts out that had deep cuts and the release spray and wax were too thin. We repaired it with Bondo and sanded it when cured. When I was doing that work I had no idea that I would ever have the knowledge, software, and a CNC machine to make the molds myself.

[Devastator]

If you want production molds consider using aluminum.

I was planning on using aluminum until I priced it. $300 for the metal to do one of our 4" cones and we'd need at least four of them in rotation to get any decent production rate. Otherwise we'd have down time waiting for urethane to cure. We have some smaller cones that wouldn't price out too bad in aluminum. I suppose that is still cheap since we got a quote of $20,000 for just one mold many years ago. That was from a USA company. I've since gotten quotes from China for 25% of that.

Thanks for the lead on the RenShape 440. I'll do the prototypes in MDF to check fit and then order some RenShape. Cones are pretty simple parts with ample draft. so I'm hoping to not stress the molds too bad. If I can dial in the mdf mold, I'll keep a tally and run it until it fails. I'm wondering if soaking the insides in thin CA would be much better than just the lacquer sanding sealer.

Thanks for the expertise.

[Devastator]

I did my first engraving file today. It is a faceplate for a step sequencer. Sorry for the poor photo, I took a dozen and this is the only one that was halfway good.

[revwarguy]

Very Cool!

That is steel !?!

What kind of bit, feeds & speeds, etc?

What kind of step sequencer?

[Devastator]

Very Cool!

That is steel !?!

What kind of bit, feeds & speeds, etc?

What kind of step sequencer?

I have machined steel on my Solsylva, but this is aluminum .125" 6061 T6. I used a random orbital sander to clean it up. Engraving bit is a drillman1 60 degree engraver running @15K RPM, 50 IPM. Depth of the main lettering was .015", while the Vitruvian man was .010". I had to vectorize the file from a bmp so it came out pixelated. I probably should buy the vector file since I plan to do a few more of these. I thought that you would not be able to see the pixels in the carving, but it appears that my machine has pretty good resolution. The engraving file took an hour.

It is an analog step sequencer of my own design, but loosely based off of the one at Music From Outer Space - Your Synth-DIY Headquarters It is not for a synth, it is for my guitar rig.