[thkoutsidthebox]

Ok, so here she is! My next router.

You may notice similarities to the solsylva build, thats because I wanted to keep the ability to route oversize pieces. But the similarities stop there, and its fundamentally different in almost every way....its better!!

After a very interesting read in another thread about the best type of wood to use, it turns out I can't get most of the types that would be better (Such as Baltic Birch Plywood) locally, so Im still building from hardwood. But Im going to take Geof's advice, and build from mahogany instead of oak. Not sure about the viability of laminating it yet, but we'll see.

I made an animation in Google Sketchup to post in Google Video for you all to look at, but the commentary (By yours truly ) didn't merge so I'll try again tomorrow.

Im using my adaptation of ger's rail design. Thanks for the idea ger :cheers: . This will use lengths of steel tubing bolted and glued into routed channels on my various rails. I attempted in the design to always have support on four sides. I managed this everywhere except in the up/down movement of the Z carriage, where instead, the opposite sides will be tightened outwards against each other to achieve stability.

Also I'll be using regular ABEC7 bearings. ( Shielded this time, unlike my solsylva build ). This design uses a lot of bearings.....40 in the Z carriage, and another 32 between the two X rail runners.

I'm again using a laminate trimmer as my spindle, picking it up tomorrow because my other cheap Chinese one broke and I can't get a new collet nut....anyone know where I can get a collet nut for a 700W 'MacAllister' laminate trimmer? But the design makes it real easy to mount a larger router spindle simply by cutting new clamps. For now the trimmer will be fine because I dont want to go over the width of my Z carriage and cut down on my working area.

Working Area at this point I calculate at 28.2" Wide x 33.1" Long. But this may be slightly smaller/larger when I can measure the exact size of my spindle. I also think it is possible to adapt the design to get another 2" or so in width and length. I'll look into this over the next few days before construction starts. My Z movement will be around 6". This has to be confirmed tomorrow when I get measurements for my spindle.

I don't have a jointer, so to get the rails square I plan to measure thicknesses about every 4" along them with a caliper (Another item on order) and use lots of sandpaper. We'll see how this goes and how forgiving the design will be.

I have sent 8 emails to different companies requesting quotes for 16mm ballscrews and bearing mounts. Im hoping to buy from Marchant Dice or Reliance Machining. Reliance are more local and I talked to them on the phone already, but they cant machine my ends. But they are quite helpful. Marchant Dice and the other 6 companies on the other hand, haven't bothered replying to my e-mails (Or my pm). But anyway, they're probably just busy, its only been a few days. Ideally I'd like to buy from marchant dice since I picked suitable products from their site already. All thats left is for them to take my money....if they want it? (Hint Hint...reply to my message Marchant Dice....please.... ) !!

Along with the laminate trimmer tomorrow Im picking up a nice new 2HP (Or 2.5Hp...I can't remember ) router to use building this. The DeWalt 625. And last but not least a decent shop vacuum aswell. I dont have space for a proper extractor at the moment, but I need something on this build (Something...ANYTHING that sucks!!), the MDF dust was killing me with my solsylva machine.

The main aim of this build is to have a strong and solid machine at the end.

Loctite will be used on all fittings.

1/4" steel angle will be used in most places instead of 1/8" aluminium. (Thanks again to ger for that one.)

All joints will be bulky and reinforced somehow wherever possible (Thus the ends of the X beams are morticed into a groove in the end beams). Not many parts are less than 2" thick, and even fewer are less than 1". But I think I've hit a nice balance. I'm hoping that it'll be as solid as it looks without being too heavy. But if it ends up too heavy, I'll just get stronger motors.

Im using a dual leadscrew design, and am ordering the 4th Axis Upgrade Kit for my HCNC system. Im intending to slave one X Axis motor in Mach3 (Don't know how to do this yet!). Even with this system, I may need to go stronger than my 200oz/in motors. We shall see.....I have found up to 640oz/in steppers online that are rated at 3Amps (Max Amperage of my HCNC board), so if I need to upgrade the steppers I can do so without having to make an entirely new controller.

Im also ordering more stepper cable from HCNC, and Im going to either buy or make E-Chain to keep everything nice and tidy this time.

Limit switches are another item to be included.

The base is 1" MDF ( The only MDF Im using...uugh! ), with square sections 6"x6" cut in it. This will reduce weight, and also allow me to make hold-down clamps which will fit under my surfaced sacrificial 2x1's.

Im intending to make my stepper mounts from my polymorph plastic. I'll make it into as close to rectangular as I can, then plane it flat and route a depression into it for the steppers. This will allow there to still be a more solid thick area around the stepper for the bolts. With my solsylva system I found that the approx 8mm thick stepper mounts were not rigid enough.

Im also going to make a perspex enclosure. this will be hinged on all four sides to allow it to fold away, and it has two hinged doors on the bottom ends to allow me to feed in oversize pieces.

Last but not least, when its finished and I've seen how the design works, if its fairly ok, I'll do up proper plans for it (Time dependant) and upload them for anyone who wants to build and/or improve on it. (Or build and burn it! )

Ok, so for now, there she is.....I await the most harsh judgement (Don't be too harsh...its my first design and took too long to start from scratch!) of my peers and those who know sooooo much more about this stuff than me. All comments are welcome, just keep it clean!

[CNCkitsandBITS]

Hi

If you use polymorph plastic it will soften with the heat of your steppers.

John

[thkoutsidthebox]

I thought of that, but it doesn't soften until 60 deg C. So I think it should be ok. My steppers get hot, but I can still touch them. Im also going to look at the possibility of using ACME rod instead of Ballscrews.

[ger21]

Too many tabs open in Firefox and I lost a 15 minute reply.

Wherever possible, try to laminate two pieces of stock thickness material. It may require design changes, but will give you stronger, more stable parts.

I'd use 1/4" aluminum angle instead of steel. Still very strong, but much easier to work with.

Don't cut the holes in the mdf base. It will take all the strength away. Drill holes and use T-nuts.

I don't like plastic motor mounts. Aluminum is best, but you might want to try phenolic (which is a plastic, but much harder and stiffer). I used phenolic for my leadscrew bearing mounts.

Try to get rid of the motor mount standoffs. I really don't like them at all. Much better to mount them to a flat plate, if you can figure out how to get at the couplers.

[CurtisU]

Pics of mounts I used.

First one is a plywood laminate showing two holes for coupler screw access, the other side has one larger hole to see the space between the two coupler sections.

Second pic is just as it looks, aluminium angle, real pleased with how that worked , the only reason I didn't use that method on the Z is because the Z went together first (so long ago, I wasn't as smart).

With the polymorph, you could put a chunk of aluminium, oversized, between motors and mount if temp becomes an issue on the plastic, might sink enough heat. Actually stripping the heat off your components is always a good thing, which is a good argument for metal mounts.

Curtis

[thkoutsidthebox]

Thanks for the comments folks:

Re drilling the holes into the base and using T-Nuts, a major part of doing it this way was so that I could surface the cross members sacrificial table style. I cant surface a base that has T-Nut rails in it.

My lack of shop tools means that Im not sure about the likelyhood of getting the base at a perfect perpendicular angle from construction. Also to be able to feed oversize pieces the entire surface that the piece is sitting on needs to be machinied perpendicular to the spindle. I cant do this with my main base piece because the spindle doesn't go out far enough.....however I do have an idea ....I'll drill the holes as suggested, then glue a nut into every hole on the underside nice and tight. That will allow me to still put on sacrificial boards for a flat surface over the top, and to make DIY hold downs from hex bolts that simply screw into the nuts....Cha-ching! Problem solved.

As for the motor mounts, I agree with all your points. Because my end plates are 2" thick Im now going to route a bearing sized pocket 1" deep into the end plates. This will allow me to bring my steppers 1" closer to the end plate. Its better than nothing for a start.

Re. the polymorph. Using it for my mounting plates is stemming more from an experimental curiosity, than any sound engineering principles .......
So what Im going to do is this:
Option1) I'll make one mounting plate from polymorph, and the other 4 from hardwood. Then as soon as the router is up and running to a standard that Im happy with, Im going to use it to make mounting plates from aluminium. This'll be a good excuse to try out some aluminium milling on the machine. I'll attach these mounting plates to an aluminium box structure like the ply one posted above so that the stepper is actually directly in contact with the frame and not hovering.

or

Option2) I'll just move my bearings to the opposite side of the beam's and bolt the steppers directly onto the beams. This will lose me width on my Y travel though, and it will stop me from trying out something Im drawing up at the moment (I'll post pics later) to get the full travel length from the X rails. If this works I'll get another few inches in length, but Im not sure if it'd be solid enough.

So good news: I picked up my new toy's...oops...' tools ', today (pics to follow). Vaccuum to keep the place a bit tidier. Laminate trimmer for the spindle on this. Nice big manual router to build it all with. I think that if I get a nice long endmill for the manual router then I can use it to give me pieces with perpendicular sides. They may not be square, but perpendicular rails is most important I think.

I'll see about getting 1/4" aluminium instead of steel.

Ger suggested I should use ACME rod instead of ball screws. Where can I order ACME rod from in Europe anyone? Thanks.
Also the other problem with ACME rod (Apart from not knowing where to get it) is that I dont have the capability to turn down the ends of it. I can order ballscrews machined to my specs...but I dont think I can do that with ACME rod....

L8rs.

[ger21]

No, T-nuts that go under the table.

[ger21]

I turned my acme screws down with a router mounted in a table and 2 bearings in a jig.
http://www.cnczone.com/forums/showpo...5&postcount=83

[ger21]

Ger suggested I should use ACME rod instead of ball screws. Where can I order ACME rod from in Europe anyone? Thanks.
Also the other problem with ACME rod (Apart from not knowing where to get it) is that I dont have the capability to turn down the ends of it. I can order ballscrews machined to my specs...but I dont think I can do that with ACME rod....

L8rs.

Contact Roton about their Hi Lead screws. They have a number on their website for those outside the US.
http://www.roton.com/hi-lead-screws-...x?line=Hi-Lead

[ger21]

All joints will be bulky and reinforced somehow wherever possible (Thus the ends of the X beams are morticed into a groove in the end beams).

Mortised joints are not that resistant to racking. I'd use a piece of 1/4" angle (1-1/4x1-1/4, or maybe 1-1/2") on each side of the joint to spread the load out wider.

I'd recommend building some type of test bed for your rail system. I'm not sure it will be as strong as you think, with such long spacers betwen the bearings. Better to make sure it works before you spend all that time and money and find out it doesn't.

[thkoutsidthebox]

Ger, thanks for all those links. I'll send an e-mail to roton tomorrow for a quote. They have 2 start 4tpi ballscrews a lot cheaper than 2 start 8tpi stainless ACME, both are 3/4"...what gives??

If I'm not going with ballscrews then I'd like to get stainless ACME type, with brass nuts ...snicker....sorry dont mind me....But I think because of the spans covered I need at least 3/4" diameter. Do you all think that I should prioritise the thickness of the rod instead of having it in stainless? 3/4" steel ACME type rod instead of 1/2" stainless...what do you all think?

Lastly, the three pics below show the laminate trimmer which Im going to be using as a spindle. My new 2HP router which Im using to build the system, but which I have decided I'll also build a set of mounts for to try it out. And lastly is just the vaccum I bought that I'll be attaching to the router when in use.

Im thinking 8TPI 2 start rod.

I'll build one X rail with some cheap 2x4 to test the principles.

[ger21]

This would be my recommendation
http://www.roton.com/Mating_Componen...family=7060404

1/2-8 2 start, regular steel, with plastic nuts. Screws are about 65% cheaper than stainless, and plastic nuts are 10-20% more efficient than brass. I don't think the machine is big enough to warrant going to bigger diameter screws, and bigger diameter screws will definately need bigger motors due to the increases inertia.

[P.Passuello]

HI
I Agree with Ger about the large holes in the base board making it incredibly weak. There is very little left below unless you are going to put another structure below. I am in the process of building from Dave Steels plans ( The same as your first router) and have been pondering a hold down system. Yesterday I saw the Jorgensen 1652 hold-down clamp and it is exactly what I have been looking for. It will only require a 3/4 inch hole every 3 or so inches which should keep the bases strenght and allow flexability.
With regard the sacrifical board my plan is to route out the board size about 2 mm deep and cut a scacrifical board to fit it out if 3mm. This will make it easy to replace and it will sit in place.

Here is the website.
http://www.coastaltool.com/cgi-bin/S...820+1175407951

How say you?

Cheers
Peter

[thkoutsidthebox]

Ahhh, now I see where you were coming from with the base holes comments Ger.
I am not worried aboout strength in the base. The entire system will be sitting on the floor, and later on a custom bench I'll make. Therefore all weight will be passing directly through the legs, through the corners of the base, into the floor.
The center of the base with all the holes wont have any weight. Re the strength to resist the lateral loads from movement of the router spindle when carving, now thats a fish of a different colour, especially if I manage to get some good speeds. I think the idea of holes drilled in the base is a better idea than the square cut outs anyway, and although those jorg hold downs look gucci, I'll still go with my DIY ones, because I think that the ease of having permanent nuts on the underside of the base to screw into is a slight advantage, and also, because Im on the floor with this for a while, then I can't fit those long screw rods down under the base. (My DIY ones will allow for this).


Ok, so, one other thing, I forgot to mention that I intend to include an e-stop with this. I want the same button wired into both the router spindle, and my controller. The spindle is no problem because I can splice it onto my mains input wire, but I dont know how to wire it into my HobbyCNC system, or into Mach3. I'll have to learn this later (Hopefully with help from people here).

Im hopefully going to buy some wood this week, and a suitable diameter cutter to use for my channels. I'll also probably order my HCNC upgrade, and my sealed bearings. Plus I need a calipers.

Next on the 'to do' list (Which I'm writing up today) is to build a proof-of-concept rail in cheap 2x4 white deal like ger suggested.

L8rs.

[thkoutsidthebox]

Hi again,

I sent an email to Roton asking for a quote on the stuff you suggested. In the message I asked for a quote on 4 of the threaded mount nuts. Will these fit the flanges or should I have asked for 4 of the 'not' threaded sleeves?

Thanks.

Diarmaid.

PS: I received a quote from Marchant Dice on the ballscrews. It was a bit more expensive than I expected, so ACME threads are definately on the table. Although, judging from the quote, for my next BIG machine, ballscrews will be around my expected price. 3k give or take.

[ger21]

Threaded mount nuts fit the flange, part #91052

[ger21]

I am not worried aboout strength in the base. The entire system will be sitting on the floor, and later on a custom bench I'll make. Therefore all weight will be passing directly through the legs, through the corners of the base, into the floor.
The center of the base with all the holes wont have any weight. Re the strength to resist the lateral loads from movement of the router spindle when carving, now thats a fish of a different colour, especially if I manage to get some good speeds.

Having a solid base to mount you're work to can be just as important as having the rest of the machine solid. If the workpiece is not mounted solidly, vibrations from the cutter can cause your cut quality to suffer.

[thkoutsidthebox]

Ok so, I ordered 96 sealed ABEC7 bearings from e-bay . I'm now waiting for some money to go onto my credit card, then I'm going to order the rest of my bits. I've priced wood and will buy it this week. I'm not going to get a chance to do my proof-of-concept until next weekend, so at the moment I'm re-drawing my design with the few changes.
I'm going to get a break-out board which massa suggested :cheers: for my e-stop.

Still waiting for the quote from roton. I'll ring them tomorrow if I havent heard.

Thats it for now.

L8rs.

[matsuura]

I like your design, should be interesting, now take your time and mesure twice cut once.

[thkoutsidthebox]

Thanks matsuura. Im considering adding in something else to this design...a G100 drive from Gecko with my HCNC controller, to use ethernet and replace my parallel port.
One question: If I get a G100 can I use some of its outputs for an e-stop or will I still need the seperate breakout board?
thanks.